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The next spending review seems likely to include a mechanism for linking students' university fees to inflation, immediately prompting a rise to over £10k per year, but this is just papering over the cracks temporarily.
The growing financial crisis that has beset UK Higher Education in the last decades will not be solved (or even really alleviated) by tinkering with fees.
A wholesale reform of university sector financing is required. Until then the crisis will continue!
#universities
h/t FT
@ChrisMayLA6
I went to college in 1970 on a full grant. The economy was struggling but it was accepted that the country needed teachers, medics, engineers, architects... and, yes, writers, artists, actors, directors too. And in order to get a sufficient supply of them of decent quality there had to be grants so smart people from poor families could study. Of course I'm grateful for the benefits it brought me but more than that I think my work as a teacher was valuable to society.
@RussCheshire
Agreed; until we have a clear & defensible position that university education is of extensive social good for the UK, we will be stuck with a logic that sees the student paying for all or most of the university costs..... which I've explored at length here for @NWBylines
https://northwestbylines.co.uk/news/education/who-should-pay-for-students-to-go-to-university/
@ChrisMayLA6 we have that reform. It’s called free tuition 
Yes, but I don't think Scottish universities are not entirely avoiding the funding crisis.....
@ChrisMayLA6 I don’t think they are. But I think the focus becomes more concentrated if all the funding comes from the government.
And having established it is a social (and democratic) good it should be a no-brainer
Yes, fair enough.... but I still think we need a social switch in attitudes to the funding of HE
@ChrisMayLA6 it has to be seen as an investment in society, the economy, and democracy. There is a tendency at the moment to see it as a cost, which is not the case. Ironically countries like Costa Rica realise this and provide free higher education from a much lower economic base than our own.
Yes, I agree; indeed the problem of seeing things as a cost rather than an investment bedevils so much of the UK political economy for it to essentially be a national trait....
@ChrisMayLA6 absolutely. Health, welfare, education, justice. The pillars of civilised society.
Take them away and what have you got left?
@ChrisMayLA6 This just raises a question in my mind that goes beyond student fees. In my life time (67) I've seen round of cuts after round of cuts. Student grants, street repairs, police numbers, military spending, school repairs, libraries and other LA services, benefits, pensions etc etc. Unending reductions. So where has all the saved money gone? Where are the Sunny Uplands
?
Tax cuts for the wealthy?