Clegg must be tackled over education policy

Thirteen years ago Tony Blair's incoming Labour government decided to follow Conservative spending plans, bring in tuition fees and end free university education. The new fees were used to expand the university sector. New degree courses in all sorts of unusual subjects were created. Some are more questionable than others. I wonder, for example, the merit of having a media studies degree?

I wonder if we should recognise there is no merit in some of these degree courses? Should we have better regulation of the system?

If the sector was not so big, could we return to free university education across the whole of the UK? Or, as an alternative in England and Wales, could there be free university education in some subjects, such as medicine, and not in others?

The situation in Scotland is quite different. Scots have a free university education. This makes the situation in England and Wales look even more ridiculous. Up until October 2009, the Liberal Democrats' policy was that every-one in the UK should have free university education.

Suddenly, just after their UK party conference closed in October 2009, Nick Clegg announced we couldn't afford it at the moment. He didn't ask his party. The party conference is supposed to make policy. Why can we afford free university education one day and not afford it the next?

The Lib Dems had costed budget proposals all set out in their shadow budget. I hope Mr Clegg will be challenged by Lib Dems at their autumn conference about the high-handed unconstitutional way he behaved on the eve of the general election. Candidates for his party fighting seats in university towns lost their chance of going to Westminster because of this last-minute change of heart by Mr Clegg.

He had a free university education. I hope the Lib Dems reinforce their party's commitment to free university education across the UK. If your parents live in Tweedmouth you have to pay. If your parents live in Eyemouth, you don't. Can that be fair?

NIGEL BODDY

Fife Road

Darlington

The article by John McTernan (Opinion, 21 August), headed "Graduates earn 400,000 more in a lifetime - they must fork out", is a misrepresentation; graduates already do fork out - and in a substantial way.

As any taxpayer knows, more income earned means more tax paid.

Extra earnings of 400,000 would mean that, on average, at a conservatively estimated marginal income tax rate of 20 per cent, graduates will each pay 80,000 more in income tax than non-graduates over their careers. Does this not cover the cost of their education?

Making this difference greater by means of a graduate tax would be a perverse and unfair imposition.

ALAN HAMILTON

Gordon Crescent

Bridge of Allan, Stirling