Support tuition fees, Lib Dems told

Support tuition fees, Lib Dems told

The Liberal Democrats should drop their "regressive and ineffective" opposition to tuition fees because the policy has no bearing on whether poor students go to university, a thinktank has suggested.

The Lib Dems are the only party promising to abolish fees in the hope that it would draw more students from low-income households into higher education.

But research by CentreForum suggests that taxpayers would have to pay for 'free tuition' which would effectively mean redistributing money from poor to rich people.

The estimated cost of abolishing tuition fees is £2.3bn, which is expected to rise to £3bn by 2010.

"The Liberal Democrats must therefore decide whether their fees policy, formulated in the middle of a sixteen-year period of economic growth, remains a priority in a recession.

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"After all, every £1 of the £2bn it would cost to abolish fees, is a pound that cannot be spent enhancing services, or reducing the tax burden, for families further down the income scale," the report states.

Tuition fees do not deter poor students, the report found, rather they fail to go to university in greater numbers because too few achieve the exam results they need, the study found.

Julian Astle, CentreForum's director and the report's author, said: "It would be one thing if this deeply regressive policy were likely to achieve its stated objective: getting more children from low income families into the higher education system. But all the evidence suggests it will not.

"If the party is serious about widening participation in higher education, it should take most of the £2bn it would cost to abolish fees at the time of the next election, and use it to raise the attainment levels of deprived school pupils instead."

The Liberal Democrat universities spokesman, Stephen Williams, said he hoped the report would spark a much-needed debate on the future of higher education funding ahead of next year's fees review.

"Although I agree that a key barrier to participation in higher education is attainment at school, the debt burden is a real worry for many students and something we will continue to address," he said.

A Lib Dem working group is looking at the party's higher and further education policy that will be debated at its spring conference in Harrogate next year, he added.

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