What is Labour planning on tuition fees? We’ve already been told…

The front page of the Sunday Times(£) reports this morning that Labour are planning to slash tuition fees down to £6,000 – and possibly further. Douglas Alexander confirmed that such a pledge would be in a “credible and radical” Labour manifesto on Marr this morning. However, we’ve been here before – so I’m not entirely sure why this is front page news.

This isn’t the first time that such a change has been mooted. Only four days ago, The Times(£) reported that Miliband was planning a tuition fees cut. And many of you might remember that a proposal from Miliband to cut tuition fees to £6,000 was part of the briefing around Labour 2011 conference in Liverpool. Or you might remember that Ed Miliband was pushing a graduate tax as his preferred position during the leadership contest in 2010.

And Labour’s position was set out clearly in December by Shadow HE Minister Liam Byrne:

“The policy we’ve set out is what we would do if we were in government today. Ed Miliband also said in his leadership campaign, our long-term goal must be to move towards a graduate tax.”

“What we’ll have to do in our manifesto is take our starting point of £6K fees, explain how we see the situation for 2015 to 2020, and how we’ll see a long-term shift to a graduate tax.”

My concern back in 2011 with cutting fees to £6,000 was that is still involved relatively high levels of debt for students, and when you’re getting into a debate about how indebted you want young people to be – when they are increasingly struggling to find work – you’re probably having the wrong debate.

An acceptance of basics of the current, failing system – and tuition fees that are still double what they were in 2010 – seems unlikely to wow students or their parents. And what happens to those students who are paying £9,000 a year fees? Are they an anomaly in the system? In the past ten years students have paid £1k, £3k, £9k and now potentially £6k per year for the same education. That’s farcical – and deeply unfair to those who have paid the highest fees.

However, of course, a cut to tuition fees is a better offer than maintaining the current – failing – system. Charging £9,000 a year in tuition fees looks set to cost more than charging £3,000 a year as so few students will be able to pay off their student loans (part of the cost of painfully high youth unemployment). To maintain the current system would be self-defeating and is the worst of all worlds.

Byrne’s explanation – an immediate cut followed by a graduate tax – could be the best of both worlds. An immediate retail offer followed by a complete overhaul of Higher Education funding, funded by a graduate tax.  It’s very much of Miliband’s style to pursue such an approach. Such an approach might be called “credible but radical”. Of course, handled badly it could also risk looking muddled.

The risk of a graduate tax is that unlike tuition fees, it might never come to an end. Young people may end up paying for their education for the rest of their lives – I’m not sure that’s on message for Miliband either. The only sure fire thing is that the current system has got to go – I’d expect Labour’s alternative to be clarified further in the coming weeks.