Regressive student fees from Ed Miliband...

Centre Forum, having run the slide rule over Ed Miliband's new student fee proposals which cap them at £6000, now reckon that over half of the gain to former students goes to the richest 20% of graduates: those with lifetime earnings of over £2m in today’s money. The winners are also disproportionately old. Less than 1% of graduates will gain from this proposal within 10 years of graduation. The typical winner will have graduated 28 years earlier, and will earn £72,500 at the point at which they benefit from this proposal.

In addition, there is a significant gain to students with well-off parents who pay their fees upfront, rather than borrowing from the government. European students also benefit, as they must make repayments under the loan system but would not be liable for UK tax.

The proposal is therefore clearly regressive, being aimed to benefit the richest 20%, those with the wealthiest parents or foreign students paying no tax at all.

Back to the drawing board Mr Miliband.

The politics of selfishness

Really sad scenes in Whitehall today as students - whose intelligence would suggest that they should know better - protesting at increased tuition fees in a package that is not only far more progressive than present arrangements, but nearer to NUS demands than anything Labour enacted in thirteen years of government. Moreover, the 1997 manifesto had promised not to introduce tuition fees.

Students really need to convince the country through reason and argument exactly why people on modest incomes - dinner ladies on ten or twelve thousand say - should pay for the education of students whose degrees will enable them to earn vastly greater sums. This is the politics of selfishness that intelligent students should feel ashamed of. How sad.

Students & the rainbow coalition

Great Tweet on student riots this afternoon. Somone just pointed out they've torched the Tory HQ because the LibDems changed their minds after a report commissioned by Labour.

You really couldn't make this up.

Progressive fees

I didn't quite see who the questioner was at PMQ's (Paul Uppal? according to my Twitter feed) but a graduate earning £25,000 would pay just £30 per month in repaying student fees under the Coalition's proposals. That really is extraordinarily progressive, putting enormous emphasis on higher earning graduates to repay the most substantial rates.

I had not realised just how progressive these measures were designed to be.