Academic says Scottish graduate tax must follow

Published on Monday 20 June 2011 15:40

A LEADING education thinker has proposed Scotland follow England's example and introduce a graduate tax.

Frances Cairncross, rector of Exeter College, Cambridge and former economics journalist, says it would provide an answer to Scotland's funding gap.

She warns that both Scotland and England have made "unattainable promises" about the funding of higher education.

However, she proposed an English-style system of charging graduates while forming a two-tier higher education system with richer students going to universities such as Edinburgh and poorer students going to post-1992 institutions.

Writing in The Scotsman today, she says the plan would allow the SNP government to introduce charges without breaking their promise to not bring in tuition fees.

She writes: "Just as in England, no family in Scotland would pay a penny for tuition while their student was studying.

"And just as in England, the cost of tuition would be recouped from students once they had graduated and were earning more than a set threshold."

However, she goes on to say it would make more "sense" to introduce "real" up-front tuition fees.

She adds: "It is ludicrous that the cost to a student of going to one of the country's top universities - Edinburgh, Bristol, Oxford - should be the same as the cost of going to one of the post-1992 universities.

"The students at the former come from families which are, on average, much wealthier - and their employment prospects and lifetime earnings will also be much better.

"Broadly speaking, the higher the cost of providing the education, the higher the eventual returns in the job market."