An urgent crash course at the university of (political) life

Nine minus three is six. Six is a smaller number than nine. This matters. Here are some more numbers: 64/20. That is, 64% of those who expressed a view told YouGov on Friday that they supported Labour’s proposal to cut students’ annual tuition fees by £3000 to £6000, while 20% opposed it.

George Osborne apparently likes to say that being able to count is an important skill in a politician. So presumably he would recognise the significance of the numbers quoted above. At first sight the plan to cut fees is popular.

A few weeks ago I visited a school in the north west of England. The headteacher told me of the worrying conversations he had had with many of his sixth-formers, who were daunted at the thought of taking on large amounts of debt to study. As we know, applications for university places are up, including from poorer sections of the community. It is good news if more young people are embracing the idea of continuing with their education. But what if the aggregate data on applications hide another story: of all those other young people who still feel that taking on debt is a risk too far? Nine minus three is six. You don’t need a degree in maths to work out what that means.

Other objections have been raised to Labour’s policy. Universities fear losing revenue. Labour has said that the £2.7bn of fee income that the new government plans to cut would be replaced by an increase in the teaching grant. It is also said that only better off students will benefit from the cut. But better off students, earning over £41,000, will pay a higher rate of interest repaying their loan, while students from lower and middle income families – more than 50% of students – will receive an extra £400 a year towards their living costs.

Some say the current system is working, and that changes to it cannot make any positive difference. It depends what you mean by “work”. Low graduate incomes mean that many billions of pounds of loaned student fees will never be repaid, adding to the government’s debt problems. And to argue that the £9,000 annual charge is in effect meaningless as so many will never pay it back suggests that the intellectual foundations of the current system are not quite as solid as all that. But to ask young people if they’d rather borrow £18,000 instead of £27,000 does not strike me as being a ridiculous question.

Of course this is a pre-election move. With two months to go to polling day we are in a pre-election period. Some former LibDem voters were appalled by their party’s betrayal on tuition fees after the last election. It is hardly disgraceful to make an offer which appeals to them. Helpfully, Ed Davey yesterday insisted no LibDem should support a cut in tuition fees, just in case anyone had forgotten about events earlier in this parliament.

This is not just about appealing to younger voters. Parents and grandparents worry – worry rather more than students, at times – about the levels of debt their offspring may be taking on. This is an intergenerational issue. Which is why raising revenue from the richest pensioners, removing the tax relief anomaly for those earning over £150,000, is a reasonable choice. And those lucky future “bankers and hedgies” that Labour’s policy allegedly favours? They will pay their fair share in the future.

The expansion of higher education is a good thing that has to be paid for, somehow. At the same time, at least as much attention should be paid to the other options at 18 – training, apprenticeships and non-vocational qualifications. It is right that Labour is worrying about the young, rather than offering ever more guarantees to well-off older people.

There is one final question which is of more than academic interest: how many of these young people will actually turn out to vote?