December's tuition-fee legislation is a turning point in UK higher education, but it has diverted attention from the coalition government’s intention to encourage private providers to to generate competition for state-run HE. Should the ‘traditional’ university sector fear the private providers or, as Paul Marshall suggests here, embrace the opportunities they offer? Future generations will mark the passage of new tuition-fee legislation in December 2010 as a turning point in the history of UK higher education. The merits of the withdrawal of the state from the blanket subsidy of undergraduate degree programmes and the transfer of the costs to the student, to be repaid through a generous graduate contribution scheme with repayment contingent upon earnings, has been much discussed, debated, argued and, indeed, rioted about. These debates, however, have created a foggy cloud under which other changes have developed and... Continue reading