> The article on education pointed out that Thatcher started the trend
>toward
>greater inclusiveness in UK universities and also introduced fees. By the
time
>Blair came in universities were expected to include more and more students
but
>were receiving half the former amount of money per student. The author is,
>like
>Nathan, a reformist. Believing that it is not possible to get much more
money
>out of the government, the only way the mass of new students are going to
>get a
>decent education is through more money coming from them. The author
advocates
>scholarships, grants, and loans with payback tied to earnings after
>graduation.
------------------ The author I believe of this particular article was Alan Smithers. Just as a point of info, LM is (was?) not a party magazine, so you can't assume what is written in it is neccessarily LM editorial policy - it regularly gave a platform to other people with something to say. This from the bottom of the article about the author:
"Alan Smithers is the Sydney Jones professor of education and director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Liverpool
For more articles and links on higher education, go to http://www.informinc.co.uk/HigherEducation "
A link to the article if I'm right about the one you mean would be: http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM124/LM124_Smithers.html
The point about explicit tuition fees is an interesting one I think. You could argue that one problematic feature of fees would be to tie students into the idea that education, is merely another commodity for which they are a passive consumer, thus degrading it.
A bigger problem than fees however (students have been paying fees in one way or another for some time, either as official student loans, or before that, overdrafts), is the official degradation of higher education. It is now not seen to be worth anything more than a chance of some sort of job, and is no longer seen to have a value of its own in creating a more educated independant thinking individual.
cheers, Paul