Government announces delay to higher education plans

Well, it sounds like they've made a complete mess of the whole thing.

They didn't have to treble the fees.

Of course universities are going to charge as much as they can - especially if it's their main source of income.

All the other stuff where Universities have to prove their encouraging students from poorer backgrounds - is a built-in admission that the whole system is inherently unfair.

The repayment plans are stupid. Why work harder to get a pay rise at a job if it's only going to be immediately taken off you again to pay back your student loan? Far better to get the largest loan you can for a course and afterwards spend the rest of your career working at a relatively lower wage - since it won't make any difference to you to earn more! That's what they call a perverse incentive.

With all that faffing and the extra costs involved in admission and trying to chase up repayments - they would have been easier and cheaper to have stuck or go back to the old maintenance grants system -which actually did encourage people from all walks of life to go to university. And the fact they almost inevitably got better jobs as a result meant they were already paying higher taxes -which served as it's own 'graduate tax'.

I don't think that anyone really thought any of this through at any time - they just wanted to copy whatever America does - because... because... eeerr...

D'oh.

BBC News - Government announces delay to higher education plans