Government must loosen reins on universities, says policy wonk

The government must remove the cap on tuition fees if it is to bring about an open, market-based and affordable system, the director of King’s College London’s Policy Institute has said.

In a comment piece for The Conversation, Jonathan Grant—who has worked on an analysis of the impact case studies submitted for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework—said that the government’s plans for a Teaching Excellence Framework contradicted its stance on the cap on tuition fees.

“If the government believes that higher education should be ‘market-based’ then the logical place to start is by removing the cap on student fees,” Grant says. If the government didn’t believe the market would adjust to uncapped fees—with low-quality providers charging less and high-quality providers charging more—then it ought to lower tuition fees and take on the cost of higher education itself, he says.