Just received an email from The Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP, deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, about the tuition fees debacle.
In it, he says

Most of you will agree that the existing system of the funding of higher education is unsustainable

I do agree with him that the existing system of funding higher education is unsustainable, but might we not look at the underlying reasons for this. There are way too many students in the country, studying for far too many degrees. Some students, like perhaps Andrew Croskery, a recent graduate of QUB seem to see a degree as a commodity that they buy. This is not the case.

The education at university is what is important, not the actual degree that the university admits you to at the end. We need to reform university funding, yes. But we also need to look at what we expect from people attending university. In the past, fewer people took Honours degrees, yet now it seems almost impossible to find a degree that is not ‘(Hons)’.

Some of my best teachers did not have Honours degrees – and were quite proud of that fact. Bring back ordinary degrees/pass degrees, and let the really talented students move on to Honours courses.

By doing this, we might actually start to be able to rebalance the books in Higher Education.

A final thought, as an illustration: can someone please explain to me why a nurse or midwife training now gets a degree, yet in the past they would not? Has the treatment in our hospitals really improved because our nurses and midwives are now graduates?