After all the spin, here’s the truth. In his letter to the Office for Fair Access today, Vince Cable admits there is absolutely nothing OFFA can do to stop every university in the country jumping straight to tuition fees of £9,000 a year.
“It is, of course, not within your legal powers to impose any quota for how many institutions charge what level of graduate contribution…”
Mind you, if universities do “cluster at the upper end”, the letter goes on to threaten new legislation.
*Note: BIS version of the letter is a photographic PDF. If you want to copy text rather than re-type, use the OCR version provided by http://twitter.com/#!/wonkhe.