Such a move would damage the levelling-up agenda, dampen economic growth locally and nationally, and weaken the UK’s soft power abroad.
The measures would signal that we are a national community, membership of which brings particular rights and also obligations. It sounds pretty Conservative to me.
Risk and income sharing agreements allow institutions and students to become partners and shift losses on poor-value courses away from taxpayers.
The number of young people into higher education keeps on rising and has gone over 50 per cent. It is nothing to do with any target.
But unless the Party offers them a genuine shot at prosperity, it risks sliding into decline.
Never mind that such a person would never pay off what they owe: the eye-watering fact is that interest itself becomes 68 per cent of the total debt.
He’s proof that your boat can be swept along by the same tide as others, but how you steer it is a matter of individual style.
Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is: it’s all about economic credibility, stupid. Because come 2024, it certainly will be.
These institutions play a vital role – despite what commentators, and sometimes politicians, say.
Judging by its social media activity, the National Union of Students’ main current focus is ‘decolonising the curriculum’.
The present social contract was written when the number of taxpayers well outstripped the number of retirees. But times have changed.
If if the higher education sector must take some further pain in the spending review, then the last option is the least bad.
White British boys face steep challenges to access – but some institutions seem too focused on ‘white privilege’ to notice.
Many still assume that going to college and leaving home are bound up together. But it ain’t necessarily so.
We need to give more time and resource to those bringing up children. Such parents need a much better package from the state to look after a baby in the first year of its life.