There can be little doubt in anyone’s mind that education is necessary, and that providing free education to age sixteen or eighteen benefits the nation as well as the individual.  But then we abandon the principle and expect school-leavers to finance their own university education or take low wages as apprentices.  We shouldn’t be surprised when large numbers choose neither option, but the cost to society in terms of social unrest, crime, drugs, and welfare benefits cannot be measured. 

The first job of government (with regard to further education) is to provide the infrastructure that encourages school leavers to want to improve themselves.  The cost of this infrastructure is a fair charge on taxpayers, providing it produces the number of graduates and technicians that the nation needs.  Fine-tuning can be provided by government deciding from year to year how many school leavers to encourage in each direction. 

There is no need to set up complicated loans, top-up fees, or degree taxes.  If the nation produces the right numbers of graduates, electricians, plumbers, accountants, mechanics and so on the system will pay for itself.  Degrees and technical qualifications will result in higher earning potential, which will generate more tax. Only if we invest in degrees for people who don’t need them are we suffering an uneconomic cost, for then the graduate will not earn a higher salary and pay more taxes.

Much thought has gone into assessing what rates of loans or special tax to make the graduate pay.  For the overall picture a basic assumption has been made that 40% of the working population will have degrees, but surely the starting point should be how many graduates do we need to run the country?  If it is less than 40% we can reduce the number of third-rate universities. And if we reduce the number of third-rate universities there will be fewer teaching posts for people with third-rate degrees, releasing more money to subsidise job-related training.  We can then afford to provide free university places and attractive apprenticeship wages for our school leavers.

The wealth of a nation is generated by a workforce possessing education and skills in the proportions necessary to run and maintain the whole production and service cycle. We might turn out enough rocket scientists to blow up the world, but whether it will end with a bang or a whimper is more likely to depend on whether we first run out of electricians or plumbers.