Originally Posted by BDunnell
On everything else you say here, I agree, with this one exception. I actually think Bolton Midnight has a point when he mentions the notion of 50 per cent of the British population in effect being told that they will go to university. This, after all, was the Labour government's misguided target. That's fine if 50 per cent of the population were genuinely of, shall we say, university quality, but they aren't — in any sense other than getting the grades they need. I don't think 50 per cent of Britons are at that level, no matter what the rising A-level results might say. This used to just be accepted. Now my view is generally regarded as snobbish. If so, I'm fine with that.
In defending the tuition fees rise, the Government has gone on and on about the notion of 'social mobility', and how the university system has, in the past, 'failed' students from poorer backgrounds. What we now see are efforts to even out educational inequalities when students reach 18. This is simply wrong.