Should UK students be charged university fees?

Charging students is the fairest way to fund universities.

Question: Should UK students be charged university fees?
Position‹2 of 2: Yes, the UK should charge for access to its higher education institutions.
Argument‹3 of 4›: Charging students is the fairest way to fund universities.

Charging students means that those who don't benefit from higher education don't have to pay for it.

The argument

The argument is about who should bear a cost, and it answers by looking at who receives the benefit. A university education delivers substantial advantages to the person who has it — the financial and social advantages that come with a degree — and those advantages are captured by the graduate rather than distributed. Under a system of fees, the people who gain are the people who pay, which is the ordinary principle applied to almost everything else. The alternative is what makes the point sharply. Funding universities from general taxation means that people who did not attend pay for those who did, and the group who did not attend is not randomly drawn. It includes those in manual and lesser-paid jobs, who will earn less across their working lives than the graduates they would be subsidising and who get no gain from the institutions they are funding. A tax-funded system therefore transfers money from people with lower lifetime earnings to people with higher ones, which is difficult to defend as the fairer arrangement. The research point extends the same logic inside the institution. Students benefit from the research done in their departments — it shapes what they are taught, who teaches them, and the standing of the qualification they leave with. That work has to be paid for by someone, and students are among its direct beneficiaries rather than bystanders to it, so asking them to help contribute to it is consistent rather than additional. Proponents of this position therefore present fees not as a burden placed on students but as the allocation that avoids placing one on everybody else. Because charging students is the fairest way to fund universities, the UK should charge for access to its higher education institutions.

Context

The average female graduate will earn, in her lifetime, £250,000 more than a peer who does not go to university. As a result, she should help fund higher education, rather than the lesser-paid peer.

Premises

[P1]Only the students who attend university reap its financial and social advantages. [P2] It would be unfair to make people in manual, lower-paid jobs fund through taxation a service from which they gain nothing. [P3] Since students also benefit from the research carried out in their departments, it is fair to ask them to help pay for it. [C] Therefore, because charging students is the fairest way to fund universities, the UK should charge for access to higher education.

Counter-arguments

The argument that not only the student benefits is countered by the 'public good' debate. Return to the main argument page to view this.

Rejecting the premises

Rejecting P1. It is not only the student that benefits.