The event was entitled From Lab Bench to Front Bench: Opportunities for scientists?. (For American readers unfamiliar with the British political system, the “front bench” in the House of Commons is where the government ministers sit.) The moderator was Imran Khan, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE). The three panelists were Mark Henderson, Head of Communications at the Wellcome Trust and former science editor of The Times of London; Dr Alice Jones, Lecturer (Assistant Professor in American-ese) in psychology at Goldsmiths University and a recent participant in the Royal Society’s program that pairs scientists and Members of Parliament (MPs); and Dr Chris Tyler, Executive Director of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. (Chris was a late substitute for Dr Julian Huppert, a former research biochemist who now serves in the House of Commons as Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge. He was absent so he could vote against his own coalition government’s NHS-destroying legislation. Kudos to him for that!)

One of the most striking things to me as an American about the discussion at the event was that we didn’t have to waste time talking about anti-science politicians. Yes, the UK has a handful of them, but nothing like the large faction of the Republican party in the US that seems to dominate discussion all too often. While British politicians and civil servants might not always understand what science is or how it’s done, they do seem to respect scientists as being the people who do understand. In the US, unfortunately, there are still too many politicians who can’t distinguish between the scientific use of the word “theory” and its use in everyday language. That said, there’s still significant work to be done here to ensure appropriate levels of funding for science and to ensure that policy decisions are made with good scientific advice.

In his closing remarks, Mark made an interesting suggestion about how the scientific community could work to increase the stature of science amongst politicians and civil servants. He pointed out how over the past couple of decades, gay rights organizations in the UK had made so much progress through grass-roots lobbying that now it’s nearly impossible to be elected to Parliament without having at least a minimally enlightened view on gay rights. As an example of how far things have come, the previous government implemented civil partnerships, which are directly equivalent to marriage for same-sex couples, without any real issues. The current coalition is moving forward with plans to authorize civil marriage for all couples in the near future, and other than a few back bench Tory MPs, there’s no real opposition amongst those who will vote on the legislation. That doesn’t mean that religious leaders aren’t making nonsensical statements (including trying to “call a halt to what you might call progress” on national radio and comparing authorizing marriage equality to legalizing slavery), but they’re clearly a fringe here in contrast to the US. Mark suggested that if scientists engage in grass-roots lobbying efforts by meeting with their MPs and building relationships with the civil servants who develop and implement policy, some years down the road science will have established a place in political discourse where politicians and civil servants see it as inappropriate to make decisions without consulting the evidence provided by science. Mark was very careful to say that he didn’t want to make too close of a connection between gay rights and science advocacy, since one comes down to fundamental human rights and the other is “only” good decision making. However, I think that the analogy is a lot closer than he wanted to let on, at least when thinking about the US. For Republicans, two key litmus tests are being neutral at best (and usually regressive) on gay rights and holding some rather anti-science views. For instance, Senator Lindsay Graham spoke at the LSE last year on US energy policy and climate change, and while it was very clear that while he is one of the most enlightened Republicans on the matter of climate change, he still spoke of things like “polar bear politics” and stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

One of the night’s recurring themes was how important it is for scientists to be engaged in the discussions early in the process, rather than reacting after a decision has been made. Here it’s important to draw a distinction between politics and policy, as civil servants are often willing to reverse course in light of new evidence. On the other hand, once a politician has taken a public stance, they fear being branded like John Kerry (Mark’s exact example) as a flip-flopper if they change their mind. This part of the panel discussion led me to a question, and fortunately I was able to ask it. There’s been a recent issue with mathematics funding in the UK, as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (the UK equivalent of the the part of the NSF that covers engineering and physical sciences including mathematics) decided to restrict funding for fellowships (postdoctoral and sabbatical) in mathematics to the areas of statistics and applied probability from July 2011 onward. (Burt Totaro in Cambridge has a great summary of everything related to this debacle.) This has been a spectacular failure for mathematics in the UK. A number of prominent mathematicians (including four Fields Medalists) and non-mathematician scientists, most Fellows of the Royal Society and several with letters like OBE after their names, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister expressing concern over this policy decision after it had been announced by EPSRC. It appears that this has only further entrenched those responsible for the policy decision. My question was rather simple: After this spectacular and very public failure to change government policy, how do we convince leading mathematicians (or other scientists) to continue to lobby and promote science to politicians and civil servants?

Mark’s response to my question might not have been as specific as I’d hoped, but I think the suggestion has a good amount of merit, at least for this side of the Atlantic. In recent years, there was a big debate in the UK over various forms of embryonic research, including research that would combine human and animal DNA in the same cell. (I certainly remember the hullabaloo in the US over banning human-animal hybrids and how it was unsurprisingly predominantly anti-science and poorly informed.) In the UK, leading scientists were involved in the policy making process from early stages, and they continued to be consulted and speak up as legislation progressed. (Even as the same Scottish cardinal mentioned earlier for comparing marriage equality to legalizing slavery was denouncing “Frankenstein scientists”.) The final product was legislation that respected ethical concerns but didn’t hinder scientific progress. Science had informed the political and policy process throughout, and the end product was positive. Mark’s suggestion was to take this as a case study of when things have worked and share it (and similar stories) with those who’ve only ever experienced failed efforts to lobby because of late involvement. I’m not sure that such examples will be enough for the rank and file mathematicians, but maybe they’ll be enough to get a few prominent people to engage earlier on. The American Mathematical Society recently tried a grass-roots effort to help maintain a certain funding level for the NSF, but it again seemed like it might have been too late in the process.

Another distinction that the panel drew is an area where I think the US has a lot of room for improvement. The panelists really wanted us to keep in mind that science and policy based on or informed by science are different things. In the UK, most politicians and civil servants understand that scientific evidence shows that the climate is changing and that this change is caused by human beings. However, they can still disagree over what the right policies are to combat climate change (Kyoto protocols, cap and trade, carbon taxes, etc.). In the US, unfortunately, politicians seem incapable of disentangling evidence and policy. Republican politicians, in particular, tend not to argue against climate change policies they dislike by explaining why they feel the policy is wrong but instead by attacking the scientific evidence (something they’re universally blatantly unqualified to do), thereby suggesting that no policy or legislation is required. On the other side, I have to say that I don’t think the Democrats do a great job of making an argument for why a policy proposal is the right thing to do. That might be a side effect of the other side attacking the science instead of the policy, of course. Unfortunately, since it’s not really an issue in the UK, there wasn’t really any discussion of how we might elevate the level of discourse to making arguments about policy instead of attacking science, and I haven’t come up with any great ideas in that regard either. (I should include here that in last year’s LSE event, Senator Graham was much more willing to accept scientific evidence on climate change than his colleagues and tried to put forward policies he felt could pass that might make a difference. Unfortunately, he’s quite exceptional in this regard.)

I’ve left my notes at home, so I’m sure I’ve omitted a few things. However, these were my key takeaway ideas. I know I left the event feeling more inspired to be engaged with the political process as a member of the mathematical community (at least once I return to the US in the summer). I definitely will want to know more about the AMS presence in Washington and hopefully can encourage my colleagues to be more engaged as well. Despite the differences in politics between the US and the UK, I left the event believing cultivating relationships with politicians and policy makers at the state and federal levels can make a difference. If we can make those in positions of power take the time to stop and reflect on what the evidence is saying, we’ve made a good step in the right direction.

I’m off to Girona (or Gerona), Spain, this afternoon for a quick holiday on Ryanair (I’ve measured, re-measured, weighed, and re-weighed my carry-on so many times I can’t believe it), so there will be a break of a couple days in these posts. However, I have a bit of time before I head to St. Pancras to catch my train to Luton, so let’s explore repayment of tuition fees in the new English higher education financing scheme.

The government is effectively creating a loan scheme to finance students’ tuition fees. Students have the option of paying some of the money up front, and one would anticipate that well-off parents will do this. However, it’s my understanding that they will be under no obligation to do so, as there doesn’t seem to be any means testing to qualify for the tuition fee repayment scheme. Thus, assuming no bursaries or scholarships (my reading is that “bursaries” are what would be termed “need-based scholarships” in the US and “scholarships” in England would be “merit-based scholarships” in the US), graduates will have accumulated £27,000 in tuition fee debt by the time they graduate. (Three years of satisfactory full-time study earns an undergraduate degree in England.) We’ll mention living costs later on. Graduates won’t start repaying anything until they’re earning at least £21,000/year, at which point they’ll pay back 9% of any income over £21,000 through withholding from their paycheck. If they lose their job or wind up moving into a job that pays less than £21,000/year, the repayment is paused until they get back to the magic threshold. For most graduates, this 9% rate will come on top of a 20% income tax and about 11%, from what I can tell, for national insurance. Of course, the 9% is only on income over £21,000/year, so the effective tax rate is not 40%. If we’re looking at overall taxation, though, we’d better mention VAT, which moves to 20% from 1 January, and council tax, which is effectively a property tax but is paid by tenants rather than landlords in the case of rental properties. My council tax bill as a single occupant is around £60/month.

Earlier I wrote this was effectively a loan from the government, so what about interest? The government will not charge interest until graduates are earning at least £21,000/year, at which point they will charge a rate of 0.15% for every £1,000 earned over £21,000 up to £41,000. For graduates earning over £41,000/year, the interest rate will be 3 percentage points over the retail price index (RPI), which is the standard inflation measure in the UK. Graduates will stop repaying when either (1) they pay off all of their tuition fees and interest or (2) they’ve paid in for 30 years. The £21,000 repayment threshold will be indexed to inflation and adjusted annually. Initially the government proposed only making adjustments every five years (one might see this as possibly a way to evade increasing it by appropriate amounts), but the backlash was so severe that they agreed to annual adjustments.

The astute reader will be wondering how this is supposed to be cutting the deficit if the government is just shifting direct payment to universities through tuition grants into loans to students. Pretty much everyone in the country is wondering the same thing, and it appears that all it is at this point is an accounting gimmick. In fact, some politicians have been touting how now the government will be putting more money into HE. It appears that may very well be the case, especially once they get around to having to write off the loans for those who don’t earn enough over 30 years to pay them off. The government has decided that it will take a couple billion pounds out of the annual budget, allowing it to reduce the deficit. However, it won’t be reducing borrowing, really, just borrowing in hopes that it’s got plans for an income stream that will eventually pay off that debt. Check out this great piece over at THE for more on the calculations. Depending on whose numbers you believe, this may wind up costing the government more in the long run. (The government’s average tuition fee of £7,500/year is almost surely too low, as I’ve already discussed.) Since it’s also costing graduates more than the present system, it’s unclear what the real benefit will be.

As the THE article points out, another area where the government decided to ignore the Browne report’s call for a more market-based HE sector is in terms of enrollment caps. Right now, the government limits the number of slots at each university. The Browne report called for scrapping this, as then the universities that could do a good job of serving more students could recruit them, collect tuition fees from them, and graduate them. As it stands now, universities won’t be able to use higher enrollments to offset for cuts in the teaching grant. Factor in that the Home Office is trying to restrict immigration, including student immigration, and make changes to student visas that will make coming to the UK to study less attractive by eliminating the post-study work option, and you may have a recipe for financial disaster on the hands of English universities. (PSW allows graduates to remain in the UK in employment for a fixed amount of time after graduation. One of the issues with PSW is that right now, a number of graduates aren’t actually working in jobs that require the education they received. Perhaps a restriction that stops foreign graduates from working in shops and pubs but allows them to work as mechanical engineers or research biologists, if that’s the course they read, would be a good idea. The US made some immigration changes after 11 September 2001 that hurt recruitment of international students (and their large tuition payments) to the US. It’s just now realizing that changes need to be made, but the UK seems intent on going the opposite direction instead of learning from others’ mistakes.)

I wrote in a comment to an earlier post that during the debate in the House of Lords, one of the Lords remarked how the movement here is toward adopting all the bad parts of the American system without introducing the features of the American system that offset those deficiencies. The Lord was really on point. So far, we’re looking at a shift toward debt for graduates. OK, that’s a huge part of the American system. However, I’ve already pointed out the enrollment issues for universities, which are (generally) not faced in the US. (A handful of states have official caps on enrollment at a few public universities, and a few cap the percentage of slots that can go to out-of-state students, but that’s about it.) The US also uses a credit-based educational scheme that allows for transfers between universities. There are also programs in place to ensure that students who are disadvantaged economically or educationally can start at a community college to save money or remedy academic deficiencies before moving on to a four-year institution. The UK has no such system, and establishing one could take a considerable amount of time. Although it’s not 100% clear to me, it appears that the government will keep cost-of-living allowances (“educational maintenance allowances”) for poorer students while they’re going to university. This is good, but probably really just compares to the Pell grant program in the US. Other students will be racking up even more debt (probably not subject to the fairly reasonable repayment scheme established for tuition fees) to pay for a place to live and food while at university.

Where the UK is really lacking compared to the US is in terms of institutional financial aid. Yes, the government claims that they’ll be requiring bursaries for the poorest students at universities wishing to charge £9,000/year in tuition fees, but the information to this date suggests the requirements will be very weak. In the US, there is a lot of need-based and merit-based financial aid awarded even at public universities. This aid comes through the generosity of alumni and foundations who see value in higher education (and maybe want a tax write-off, too). It’s often the case that the people giving this money back benefited from scholarships, and now they want to make sure those opportunities exist for future generations. There just isn’t a philanthropy culture in the UK, and it will take a long time to establish one. In the US, a bright student from a middle-income-ish family can attend a good number of public universities and graduate debt-free once all scholarships are factored in. (I’m a pretty good example of this, as my family income was such that I qualified for a Pell grant my first year at NDSU but I also earned enough merit-based aid to graduate with a nice pile of money in the bank. I worked only in jobs that (1) I enjoyed and (2) were relevant to my goals and aspirations while an undergrad.) Even those who can’t graduate debt-free have access to ways to reduce their debt. As best as I can tell, were I to be starting university in the UK in 2012, I’d be graduating with at least £27,000 of debt facing me. That will make you think long and hard about whether attending university is worth it, especially if the payoff in terms of future earnings of a university degree might not be that much higher than someone without one.

In the US, there’s also an expectation that families with incomes above a certain level will save funds to pay for university for their children. These savings are usually built up over the course of 18 years. Here in the UK, tuition fees will only have existed for 14 years when the new rates go into effect, and the handful of families who have been saving will not have had much notice of the drastic increase. I personally think that the funding model for English higher education that has been in place is not terribly sustainable. However, it’s unclear if the new system is any more sustainable, and it certainly isn’t without time to create a cultural shift. If parents have time to start saving for their children’s university education so that their children can graduate with a modest amount of debt and if universities have enough time to raise funds for bursaries and scholarships to help make university affordable, that culture shift might be possible. However, this is something that happens over the span of 20 or 30 years, not two years. That would really be an Americanization of the funding model for English HE. Of course, it would also be sending the message that higher education is not a public good, which is contrary to how most in Europe view higher education.

I do promise to get into why “Nick Clegg” is now a dirty word for most university students and to make some price comparisons between the US and the UK yet, but I’ll leave it here for today.

Photo by flickr user BinaryApe / CC Licensed

In Part I, I mentioned how the Browne report looked to remove the cap on tuition fees for English universities to allow market pressures to come to bear on universities. Well, the government has decided that they like that idea, except they don’t like the political downside to having no cap at all (going from just over £3,000/year in 2010 to no cap at all in 2012 would be a shock to the system), so instead they’ve decided to keep a cap but set it at £9,000/year! Nominally the cap is set at £6,000/year, but universities will be able to charge up to £9,000/year provided they can document that they are taking actions to provide access to their universities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds (read: scholarships for poor students). Of course, what the government has published to date about the review process for charging the higher tuition fees suggests that almost any English university will be able to charge their students £9,000/year from 2012. In Part I, I discussed the serious issue that having a cap creates. In short, universities will feel inferior if they charge less than the cap (Leeds Metropolitan spent one year at £2,000 when the cap was set at £3,000 but then matched everyone else), so every student desiring to go to university in England from 2012 is basically looking at paying back £27,000 in tuition fees after they graduate and begin earning at least £21,000/year. In my opinion, this completely fails to create the “market” that the Browne report envisioned. (Lord Browne’s uncomfortable endorsement of the government’s plans last night suggests that he likely shares this view to some extent.) Since no university will offer lower tuition fees, students won’t be able to vote with their wallets by choosing a university that meets their needs, thereby withdrawing funding from universities that don’t provide the education students are seeking.

Before addressing how the cost to students of a university degree in England is changing in more detail, we need to look at changes in government funding. At present, the government basically allocates a set amount of money to English universities each year based on the number of students enrolled in the various courses (majors in US HE speak). Medicine and dentistry (which are not taken as something one studies only after obtaining a traditional undergraduate degree here) are funded at the highest level, as they are the most expensive. The next price group consists of the laboratory sciences and engineering. The third group contains mathematics, computer science, modern languages, psychology, and several other areas. The final group is business, humanities, and social sciences. The Browne report suggested that because of the high cost and strategic importance to the nation of the first two price groups, the government continue to subsidize students studying those courses. As the cost of the other courses is lower and they have less strategic value, the report suggested significant reductions in the teaching grant for those subjects. (The report does suggest that some courses in the third group might continue to be funded. One would imagine this was meant to be computer science and mathematics, given the report’s emphasis on the importance of the STEM disciplines.) I haven’t read the report in its entirety, but I don’t see any indication that the report suggests “significant reductions” should mean “eliminate all government funding for”.

From what I understand of Georgia’s HE funding model, the existing English model isn’t too far off. Georgia Tech is supposed to get an increased amount of state funding because of the large number of credit hours taught in engineering and laboratory science, as these are very expensive areas to teach. Colleges and universities focusing on other disciplines receive less funding per credit hour. Well, the government has decided to take the Browne report’s recommendations for government HE financing to the extreme. They are eliminating the teaching grant to universities for all courses in the third and fourth price groups. From what I’ve seen, there’s not even been a move to save funding for some of the subjects (mathematics, anyone?) that the report hinted might deserve funding at existing levels. The result? The government is eliminating eighty percent (yes eight zero percent) of the overall teaching grant provided to English universities. (My institution, the London School of Economics and Political Science, will therefore lose its entire teaching grant, yet remain subject to government regulation as a public university.) In its place, will be the £9,000 per student per year tuition fees. My reading of the Browne report suggests that universities should consider basing tuition fees on the courses students are reading (majors they’re studying). Of course, that was based on there being no cap in place, so students could make choices based on many factors. (Sociology is less expensive to read than civil engineering, but I could expect a career with higher wages if I graduate in civil engineering. Let me run a cost-benefit analysis.) You can agree or disagree with the Browne report’s suggestion. (I have mixed feelings. I think at the graduate level, differential tuition to offset the costs of expensive programs makes sense. At the undergraduate level, it’s harder to support in the US model. However, in the UK model transferring between universities or even changing courses within a university is much harder than transferring or changing majors in the US, so the cost-benefit analysis is much easier to do here than in the US system.) Effectively, the government seems to have decided to adopt the parts of the Browne report that meshed with their primary goal (reducing the deficit) without actually paying attention to making overall reforms to HE financing in England.

As a mathematician, I find it offensive that teaching funding is being withdrawn from the third and fourth price groups. I don’t find this offensive because mathematics is in those groups. Honestly, mathematics is a pretty cheap subject to teach (we don’t need laboratories or field work, just chalkboards and maybe a computer lab equipped with Mathematica, Maple, or MATLAB), and I would still be upset even if mathematics were included in the protected price groups. I am offended because what modern society should send the message that there is no value in the arts, humanities, and social sciences? I don’t see any other way to interpret the government’s decision to totally eliminate the teaching grant for these subjects. Reducing is one thing, but eliminating is another entirely. The financial mess the UK is in might have been mitigated if it had more economists providing advice to the government (and fewer off trying to collect big bonuses). Is there no need for individuals trained as social workers to help the poor and disadvantaged? I guess England’s contributions to culture over the past centuries should be discounted, too, as the government doesn’t feel it’s worth supporting those who desire to make contributions in the future. Yes, the STEM disciplines have clear linkages to economic development, and I don’t know anyone who’s arguing that STEM degrees shouldn’t be more heavily subsidized. However, a truly great society (a phrase we keep hearing bandied about as the government implements austerity measures) needs arts, culture, humanists, and even mathematicians to reach its potential. The coalition government has taken a step that implies it disagrees with that principle, and unfortunately few outside the HE sector seem to be disagreeing publicly.

Future posts will explore the direct costs to students (including describing the repayment mechanism), the protests/riots and “occupations”, why students feel betrayed by the Liberal Democrats, more precise comparisons to the costs of HE in the US (including some currency conversions), and my opinions on the whole matter.

If you’re on top of things, you’ll notice that I’ve used both “the UK” and “England” or “English” in the previous paragraph. You might have been thinking “Wait a minute, if he lives there, shouldn’t he know that UK England?” Well, if you review the usage, you’ll see that the occurrences of England/English were very carefully placed for a reason. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is composed of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Over time, the UK Parliament in London (Westminster, if you want to get technical) has devolved a number of powers to governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast. Education is one of those devolved powers. There is no separate devolved government for England; instead, the UK government has responsibility. In light of devolution, the funding changes proposed by the government only apply to universities in England. Scotland has a markedly different funding model for higher education and appears intent on keeping it. The system in Wales currently resembles that in England, but the Welsh Assembly Government appears to not be following the lead from London. This post will be about the changes in England, but I’ll draw contrasts to the Scottish system as appropriate in the discussion.

For generations, a university education in England was provided to students free at the point of delivery. In other words, the British citizens paid taxes to the government, and the government provided funding to the universities to teach students. Students did not pay the universities for the cost of their education, although there were generally some costs of room and board, from what I understand. In the mid-1990′s, a review of HE financing took place near the end of the Conservatives’ last time in government. When New Labour arrived, they were faced with implementing that report’s recommendations and established tuition fees in the amount of £1,000/year. (An English university degree is earned after three years of full-time study, unlike the four+ in the US.) Over time, the level of that tuition fee has increased, eventually being indexed to inflation. It is currently capped at £3,290/year. Very soon after the Scottish Parliament was established, it abolished tuition fees for Scottish students attending Scottish universities. (Graduates were required to make a small extra tax contribution, but that was later abolished.) This has created an interesting situation in which English students attending Scottish universities must pay tuition fees, but students from inside the EU but outside the UK pay no tuition fees!

Across the board, the government has continued to provide significant funding for teaching at UK universities as tuition fees have been implemented. They also provide research funding through the UK’s equivalents of the NSF, NIH, NEH, etc. It should be noted that except the University of Buckingham, all universities in the UK are public. They also all charge the same tuition fees. They are not required to do so by the government. If a university felt that its teaching grant from the government was sufficient to offer education with a tuition fee of £1,000/year, they would legally be allowed to do so. However, the cap has had a peculiar effect. With the exception of one year, since universities have been allowed to fix their own tuition fees subject to a cap, every university in England has charged the maximum tuition fee. The fear, widely acknowledged, is that the less prestigious universities admit to being inferior if they charge less than Cambridge and Oxford and the other members of the Russell Group. Although UK universities do have varied missions, as in the US, but the diversity does not seem as strong. There are clear research universities and then there are what would be more comparable to smaller public universities focused on teaching, usually in particular areas, in the United States. There are not, however, private universities small and large, focused on science and engineering or broadly-based, or institutions comparable to small, private liberal arts colleges in the US. The quality of a university degree in mathematics is supposedly the same, regardless of whether one studied at Cambridge or the University of South Southwest England. (To avoid insulting institutions that I don’t know anything about, I’ve made up USSWE as the name for a younger, upstart public university where faculty focus almost exclusively on research.) In the US, an accredited degree is nominally the same, but no one will argue that an ABET-accredited degree from Southern Polytechnic State University is equivalent to an ABET-accredited degree from Georgia Tech or MIT. The caliber of the faculty is different, the caliber of the students admitted is different, and the expectations of the coursework are different. It’s little different here in the UK, but for some reason there’s a feeling that charging the same tuition helps convince students that the education they will receive at USSWE is comparable to that of the Russell Group members. Why the vice-chancellors (another oddity here: the chief executive of UK universities are titled Vice-chancellor, as the position of Chancellor is largely honorary) don’t decide to focus on why a university might be a better fit for certain types of students (smaller classes, faculty dedicated to teaching, faculty actively engaged in cutting edge research, the overall university experience, etc.) as in the US, I don’t know. A student entering university should be able to realize that just because a university’s tuition fees are lower doesn’t mean that the education there is inferior. It’s just different.

Now that the stage has been set, we’re about at the point where we can discuss the proposed changes. The recently-completed review of higher education financing actually began under the previous Labour government. They established a commission, headed by Lord Browne of Madingley, to review the financing of HE in England. (John Browne is former chief executive of BP, having stepped down in 2007. He’s a fellow and president of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Royal Society.) In October 2010, the Browne report was published. It contains several recommendations for how to ensure that students could afford to attend university while the government reduced direct funding to the institutions in light of a large budget deficit and mounting government debt. The most controversial recommendation was to completely eliminate the cap on tuition fees to create more of a market environment. Without a cap, the suggestion was, universities would set a tuition fee that was appropriate for the market. Cambridge could charge very high tuition fees, while USSWE would charge lower tuition fees and focus on attracting students through their focus on personal attention for students who don’t want to get lost in the crowd. He also proposed that students not pay their tuition fees to the universities up front. Instead, the government would effectively provide loans that students would start paying back through payroll withholding once they graduated and were earning £21,000/year.

I’ve run out of steam for today, but hopefully before long I’ll be back to explain what the coalition government has proposed (they did not just say “Let’s adopt the Browne report!”) and why it’s been so controversial. I’d love to get some questions from US readers in the comments so that I have an idea of how to focus.