The FT - generously - published another letter from another critic of their suggestion to raise the cap on tuition fees.  The author Tim Curtin tries to invoke JS Mill, who argued for state-financed schooling in 1848,  in favour of the idea that education should be free for all students all the way up the educational hierarchy. He goes on to suggest that since graduates pay higher taxes as a result of higher earnings then they have already paid their way under the existing system. 

This is clearly stretching a comparison too far.  We tried to get an answer published, but have not as yet succeeded:

Neither Tim Curtin (letters 8 May) nor Peter Johnson (6 May) present a balanced view of the FT's proposal to raise the cap on tuition fees.

Their claims that tertiary education should be funded on an equal basis to primary and secondary education is frankly bizarre. Going to school is a legal requirement. Going to university is a choice.Why shouldn't those who are making this choice contribute towards the cost? The question then is not whether those who benefit should pay, but how much should they pay, and how should the system of private payment be designed? Peter Johnson suggests that fees should be paid through Paye coding, but this is essentially what happens now. Students don't pay fees - graduates do, at a rate of 9 per cent on earnings above £15,000. Fee repayments are therefore just an income tax supplement that is switched off once a graduate's debt has been repaid.  Consequently, the system is highly progressive, not "regressive" as Mr Johnson claims. Indeed, our research finds that 66% of the benefit of abolishing fees would accrue to students from the richest 40% of families.

People are right to worry that too few children from low income families end up at university. But they are absolutely wrong to believe that fees are main reason. The real reason is that too few poor children end up getting the GCSE and 'A' Level results they need to apply. Raising the cap on fees would free up scarce resources to tackle the far more urgent problem of low attainment in school.

It is a bad argument that higher graduate earnings, because they produce high taxes, constitute compensation for the high costs of university education that the whole taxpayer base is paying.  It still leaves people who did not attend university - who also pay high taxes, right the way up and down the income-scale - supporting those who did. The commonsense view that the direct beneficiary of a service is best-placed to judge whether the cost of the service is worthwhile, and most appropriately charged for it, remains the case here, no matter how many externalities people find to justify wider taxation. 

On page 308 of his memoirs, former TORY Chancellor Nigel Lawson - whose Budgets produced a huge rise in inequality - nevertheless recognised that easing the financial burden of tertiary education (i.e. shifting it onto everyone, graduate or no) is regressive.  Discussing Keith Joseph's attempts to cut the support given to richer parents of students, he said:

"Not only was he [Joseph] diverting funds from student support to university support.  He was also remedying an injustice, since the existing system was in effect taxing the parents of non-students, whose children's earnings in later life would be less, in order to subsidise the parents of students, whose children's earnings in later life would be greater". 

It is,  well, interesting that a Tory Chancellor could with justice criticise the regressive nature of a supposedly 'progressive' Liberal Democrat policy. 

Note also that it is not just 'right wing' to want to extend choice and introduce market-style incentives into educational provision.  American attempts to reform education (like the Voucher schemes that Arne Duncan reputedly favours) are apparently most popular with the poor who feel trapped when denied choice by monolithic state provision.