Working it out

Helen Carasso argues that employer contributions should feature in any rethink of higher education finance

It is more than 25 years since the Dearing report made explicit the principle that all beneficiaries of higher education should share responsibility for funding the system and its students.

This argument is one that is frequently used by politicians to justify the debts of around £50,000 with which many first-degree students graduate; the state, they say, bears its share of the cost through its underwriting of the loan system. But somehow, the same politicians ignore the third beneficiary that Dearing highlighted—the employer.