Higher top-up fees

There is serious trouble brewing over the Government's plans for student funding. With ministers facing a backbench rebellion on top-up fees, the Commons Education Select Committee today publishes a damning report which suggests real problems with the plans, due to be introduced into Parliament this autumn.

The report suggests that universities should be able to charge up to £5,000 a year in top-up fees, rather than the £3,000 proposed by the Government, in order to create a "genuine market" - whatever that might look like.

And it suggests that student loans should be charged interest at market rates rather than being subsidised by the Government. Yet at the same time the report says that the proposed grant for students from poorer backgrounds - £1,000 a year - is nowhere near enough, and should be £5,000. It calls for plans for an admissions regulator - surely an entirely unnecessary piece of new bureaucracy - to be scrapped. And it criticises the Government's target of 50 per cent of young people going into higher education. Yet raising top-up fees and making student loans more expensive is sure to discourage those from less advantaged backgrounds from applying. British universities are in dire need of higher funding, and it is only fair that students should meet some of that cost through fees. But the Government's plans are as yet simply not coherent enough. They are full of contradictory aims, allegedly trying to improve access - with ministers sounding off loudly against so-called elitism - at the same time as making the system more complicated and less affordable for most families. As these poorly thought-through plans stand, they simply do not add up.