Can't see the woods for the fees

The tripling of university course fees to £9,000 per year at many institutions has been the subject of much debate recently. The mainstream media has questioned whether such apparently punitive increases will discourage large numbers of young people from low-to-middle-income households from going to university. Guardian readers like myself have decried this example of cut-back Britain which has, through the creation of an economic and political time warp, returned university education to its pre-war function as the private intellectual fiefdom of the country's elite.

So, have the Tories left the sacrificial lamb of universal access to higher education before their Thatcherian alter? Though it pains me to admit, the answer is an unconvincing "not quite" - but the situation is a mess. Recent YouGov research has found that interest in higher education remains high, with 80% of 16-18 year olds still declaring an intention to go to university. The report goes on to state that although a quarter of the young people surveyed (27%) felt excluded from a university education by the high cost of a degree, a much larger number still see the benefit of university, and feel that high course fees are justified by prospects of a better-paid job at the end of it.

There are also arguments to suggest that the expensive course fees are not as prohibitive as they first appear. With the rules as they stand, a graduate only starts to pay back his/her student loan in earnest when comfortably ensconced in a job paying at least £21,000, while those graduates earning less will pay at a lower rate. This will result in many graduates never having to pay back their loans in full, which would seem to lessen the fee increases' impact on accessibility to higher education by rendering the high costs less daunting. Aspiring lawyers will be less personally concerned with this, no doubt hoping for salaries well in excess of £21,000 - your high fees will eventually be balanced with the reward of a high salary, so everything's fine, right?

If only. As well as the increasingly audible sounds of hair being torn out at the Student Loans Company, which according to some is set to go bankrupt within the next few years, it appears that the Tories have dropped a clanger with regards to the attempted economic and educational rebalancing we need to stop Britain falling into The Abyss. Working on that quaint old assumption that we wouldn't be in such a mess if we still had a country that made things, rather than our present land of phone sanitizers, HR analysts and lawyers (I kid), does not initially seem to be a bad idea. However, this would overlook the human propensity for incompetence. Under Labour, we definitely got too carried away with the  "everyone must go to uni" Blair'n'Brown extravaganza - it left lucrative skilled jobs with shortages in new talent and created too many graduates with degrees in TV appreciation that would never help them find a job worthy of the investment represented by their course fees. University should of course be a choice, and the culture of schools being encouraged to selfishly pressgang people into unwanted, unsuitable or misleading degrees had the knock-on effect of neglecting the equally valid alternatives to university. Now the situation looks even messier - as an example, an engineering diploma is now the equivalent of one GCSE qualification when under Labour it was worth five. This clearly isn't a great way of encouraging more people into engineering during a time of such uncertainty.

On an admittedly more airy fairy note, should a British citizen not have access to the study of TV appreciation, fine art or Nordic literature if this is what they are interested in, without having to shoulder an almost life-long burden of debt? It's not all facts and figures; culture and academia are important to the continued progress and occasional beauty of civilisation. Most of us need to graft away in a vocation to keep the wheels of society turning - ourselves and our families fed, the economy ticking over, and the hospitals open and lit. But this would all be rather empty without being able to appreciate the man-made beauty which society's grafting supports and sustains - from going to the cinema to choosing to study 1990s Scandinavian avant garde films at university. It is your right to engage with culture and, in doing so, enhance your experience of life or even better yourself.

If you're sure none of this affects you, it might be worth taking another look - unless you're very rich or truly outstanding, then you could be more susceptible than you think. With such fierce competition for legal jobs it's by no means guaranteed that all of you will achieve your aim to become lawyers, so you should take an interest in the wider world in case some of you emerge from your courses with no training contract and a mountain of course fees to pay off. So, are the fees a manageable expedience or is the balance of British education banjaxed?