These here students

[Borin' Baggie]

This is so dumb I'm pretty sure a load of my brain cells died reading it

Thousands of Open University graduates would beg to differ.

Did you go to uni and did you pay?

Fortunately I went before the Labour Party introduced tuition fees. However I did pay back a maintenance loan.

In pre Covid years Tuition Fees were tremendous value  considering that very few people would ever pay them back - particulalrly girls. Economically imbecilic for the nation, but great value for students.

In her third year, my daughter had less than 8 hours per week face to face time with lecturers, 2 lectures and 1 tutorial. (If the professor wasn’t busy with his extra uni work / research that is) not what I would call value for money for £9,000 quid plus accommodation and living expenses.

The £9,000 (actually more now) is due to making up the shortfall in cuts to the block university grants and making funding in line with the number of students accepted (that's why there were limits placed on the number of admissions per year, to limit funding). It's not a random number plucked out of thin air. The repayment terms for the loan are more than fair as they replicate a graduate tax (though in my opinion it should be a proper graduate tax that rich people can't opt out of) but the real scandal was the post-2015 government removing maintenance grants.

Ultimately, the money is paid by the Treasury to the university regardless as it was pre-2010 and pre-fees with the funding recouped by general taxation and a tax in all but name but the main purpose of the fees is an accounting tricks to manipulate the size of the deficit in the short term.