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Alas, this is true Ali.
It isn't just that they are tripling the fees: they are also reducing the state contribution by 80%. They have removed the state subsidy, currently paid to universities for each student they take on, from arts and humantities students. They will only now contribute to the teaching costs of scientific, engineering, medical and vocational type courses.
So: the average student will end up paying between two and three times the current cost of a degree, but will get significantly less for that money, than they currently do. They will also be much less likely to go for arts and humanties subjects as the universities which are able to maintain those courses despite the loss of the teaching grant, will be the ones able to command the highest rate of fees.
Not only will university access begin to split off along class/economic status lines, but within the university sector, there will be a classifying of subject type: with kids from working-class and poorer backgrounds tending towards the lower fee, technical and vocational specialisms, and the wealthy kids having access to a more expensive, but culturally more rounded degree choice.
It breaks my heart it really does.
The Conservatives have wanted to do this for a long time, and they've come into power (shared) at a time when the economy provides a politically defensible rationale for doing so. They are systematically dismantling the relationship between state and university education, and placing it in the hands of private and proprietorial providers. By slashing the state teaching subsidy, the 'market advantage' of the state supported universities (and that includes Oxford and Cambridge) is removed allowing the private sector to compete more effectively for students.
More and more education will be sold as a ticket into this career or that. Less and less frequently, do we hear a defence of learning in its own right.
Such learning has been simultaneously devalued in that it is not deemed important enough to fund, and made precious in that it is becoming once again the province of a few.
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