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Tuition fees: take some responsibility, students

Chris Patten’s argument for a sliding scale on tuition fees rather resembles the reasoning behind progressive taxation: the rich pay more to cover the poor, reducing inequalities in income and wealth and so on so forth. Sensible right?
Well, it would be if those that were coming to university were those with the money, but they’re not. A student entering university is usually at least 18, an adult, and supposedly embarking on a life of self sufficiency which should no longer require parental fiscal support.

Parents are at this point no longer required to fund their children, and some of course won’t. But the fact that some parents wouldn’t continue to support their children isn’t really the point, because by the time their child has progressed from child to adult they shouldn’t be encouraged to.

The tuition fees are taken on by the students themselves, paying them back according to their own futures, and rightly so. Encouraging the richer parents to pay more than others for university would be to reinforce the incorrect opinion that their success should continue to be funded by where they come from and not who they are.

University is one of society’s great levellers, because students are removed from their individual backgrounds and dropped into a place where their futures are decided upon their own decisions and abilities. Or to put it another way, their achievements are based upon merit, something Patten rightly thinks is rather important.Asking parents to fund the gap in a difference in tuition fees encourages division, apathy and an attitude which states that life will always be easy, because mummy and daddy can make it so.

 

Students graduating from university come out largely equally in debt, a debt which should be encouraged to be removed by themselves to support the notions that personal drive and hard work are the tools which will bring one’s one success, something that would benefit not just individuals, but the whole country.

Indeed what would stop the university admitting students on the basis of their parent’s wealth? If the financiers had a gap to fill and a way to do it, it would hardly be surprising to see them do it. Patten’s concept sounds great in principle, echoing a progressive ideal rightly enforced across society. But if a culture of meritocracy is most important, differences in tuition fees must be avoided.

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