Hello, and welcome to the new style editorial system on politics.PhilipStobbart.co.uk.
Every so often, I will be inspired to write on one of the issues of our time and put it in here. Old editorials will be moved to other parts of the website or archived in the who are we section as evidence of convictions. New issues will be given new numbers. I have chosen three digits to represent each new issue as I expect to write on more than ten but less than a thousand of these things in the lifetime of the website. Since this entire thing started out as a webpage of a University Conservative society, I thought it would be fitting to speak firstly on the premiere issue as seen on the campus floor - Tuition Fees.

Tuition fees are seen by many as a progressive step towards involving the free market in education whilst improving the lot of the average student. They bring in more money to fund expansion and investment and allow students to get to grips with managing their accounts and taking on responsibility earlier in their liefes. Many say they are even the natural policy of that famous free market group the Conservative party. I am not one of those people. Nor do I, with a bit of thought, agree on either their basic assumptions on the Conservative outlook or the basic assumptions on tuition fees themselves. Let us look further into this issue.

Tuition fees are a progressive step? Upfront fees to education are most certainly not a progressive step. They have been around for some time, in independent schools, in universities in times past, and they, like the common tax and spend monotone of the Labour party, are an imbecilic answer to a straight forward question - how do we raise money? In business when you are covering a new niche in a large market, the answer should always be charge more. In university, when the state holds a monopoly on the skills of its labour force and are attempting to increase access to the product, charge more is simply not the answer. Education is not the commodity that this government obviously thinks it is. It is a mixture of aspiration from the student and inspiration from the lecturer. It enriches society by being of higher quality rather than quantity. From looking at recent developments in education; the shutting down of access to Modern Apprenticeships through school careers services and the lack of coherence in employment services, Labour's education policy, far from being progressive, is to herd as many people as possible into state controlled factories of education. Stalinism of the worst kind.

There are progressive ideas out there that can help the student and involve the free market. John Major's voucher system, allowing state money that would otherwise be used to educate children in state schools to be given to private schools to cut off that much from the fees and allow less well off than previously was the case people to access them showed one way. Recently, Labour announced they planned to give a maintenance grant to sixth formers. If the money is there to allow this, why can't maintainance be given to those that have chosen to study well beyond the average? There are fewer university students than sixth formers after all. Then there are scholarship ideas. Already, other countries have scholarships set up for people willing to study here - America and the Rhodes Scholarships for example. Why can't we begin a system here. It doesn't have to be incredible, it can be a trial with a few businesses passporting people they feel would be best for them through university, with summer internships and a short period of employment afterward if terms are met as the payoff. The armed forces do it. Why not let business in? I know few people know what they want to do as a career before university. At least this would give exposure to some who aren't sure what a certain job entails, and allows those who do know what they want to do to act on their aspirations.

And it also raises another point. Modern Apprenticeships - remember those, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. There is a substantial difference between training for a trade and learning. One teaches a set of skills that will be used repetitavely. The other instills a mindset that is desireable to problem solving and effective creative thinking. One can best be taught on the job, the other can only be taught in a place of learning. This is why university and other trades are kept poles apart. We have a basic standard of education to maintain - which we do through GCSEs, then a further standard for those who want a more indepth job - A-Levels, then a final level where the learning becomes searching. Where the boundaries of knowledge are reached and you are invited to take the next step yourself - a university education, broken down into the undergraduate degrees that equip you with the frontiers of knowledge, the postgraduate degrees that take you to the edge and invite you to explore it and the PhD's et al that enable you to push that edge out a little. Degrees that do not do this have no place in universities, the exception being medical studies, where the learning and the trade coincide and cannot be seperated. Here, the state has two obligations. To train as best it can the new generation of medical peoples, and to do so without charge. The second is a foundation of the National Health Service, part of the agreement that stops every doctor quitting general practise and heading for the private sector. If we allow our doctors to be charged for every year they spend on their seven year degrees, god knows what will happen. 2004 is the year that the 1997 intake of doctors to be finally graduates. It will be at least 2013 before the first doctors trained with top up fees are seen to stay the course. Some people may say doctors wont be charged for the full seven years - the seven represents the three for first degree, the one for a masters and the three for doctoral work that normally make up other degree streams, only the first two incur top up charges. At present. The government is already looking at postgraduate research as a possible new avenue for revenue.

But back to the point. Trades like plumbing can be taught in situ, they usually are, infact. Modern Apprenticeships. Things like accounting courses that teach basic skills, are universal in the business they can be fitted into are a sort of advanced trade. They may seem more cerebral with their equations etc, but it is still teaching a method to be fitted to any books. Accountants, however good they are, are accountants. Those that study the methodology of accountancy are something altogether different . These people should go to university, the ones before should not. Those that are training to be accountants should be trained using modular A Level style systems or accredited courses at colleges. The various societies that support the various accountancy styles should put money towards the bill, as should businesses willing to take on the output.

To summarise, skills for trades should be taught at trade level. Educational skills applicable to educated trades should be taught at college level, preferably using a more indepth syllabus than at present. Only those courses that encourage learning and the discovery of knowledge should continue on in university form and be funded for it. The results are tremendous and have ramifications for us all. I remember during the original fees debate the idea of "Why should a plumber fund the university system if he has no intention of going himself and if his kids are simply following in his trade?" Answer - to fund his medicine, the people that create new alloys and systems for him to plumb, the people who design his highways, his town, run his country and write his newspapers (another thing that should really be inhouse of college based, but there we are). Not to mention those such as Stephen Fry, Ali G, Ricky Gervaise (UCL, just like me...) who entertain him. To ask that question is to ridicule and belittle both education and the proceeds of academia. It is important to have a streamlined system that will educate those at a stage (pretaught by college and sixth form) ready to be admitted. I have heard of courses where remedial study is flunked. These need to be preened off. Unpopular as it may be, college courses need to be completed at that level. This will both increase the availability of such courses - there are more colleges than universities, many of the latter also run the former - and will remove excess burden from the university itself - pay for the lecturers, accomodation for the students, space and facilities for the lectures. Labour is inadequate at this type of thinking. They desire all of us pass through a certain level of education, to be "the same". They wish, by tuition and top up fees to redistribute wealth at any time, for any reason, at any cost to society. I look at my letter from the Inland Revenue asking me to explain myself to them - I am currently unemployed and living off my parents, choosing not to take money off the state whilst I look for work. Because I am not working, I am not paying taxes, and as I have not signed on, no record of me exists anywhere, therefore the IR has to chase me up the best it can. Wasting money looking for people who should not be sought after in the first place. Every student, it seems, has to be registered with the state from the moment they leave university. They are told they have both a financial and moral debt to it. This is what Labour wants. They know their previous interpretation of Socialism has failed, rejected as the politics of envy has no place in a world of increasing equality of opportunity, where meritocratic methods pull down those who are too high and up those who deserve better, and where the welfare state is built to help those who have fallen far enough or for whom opportunity is still denied. New Labour, famed for its Iron Chancellor, is far more an economic piece of work. Hiding its values it swoops in for everything it can get, reducing take home pay - something that has fallen for the first time in a generation - increasing burden on business - our trade deficit, the money we make on exports minus that we spend on imports is in the red - and using every devious, cynical method for getting what it has not worked to strive for. People now work harder for less. That is New Labour and they want us to be thankful for it.

So do tuition fees bring in more money and bring responsibilty to students? The government thinks so. It told students they should grow up and take a bit of debt. The words were if you're old enough to vote, drive and have sex, you should be able to grasp such a thing. Since when did voting, driving or having sex involve the legal exchange of money? Perhaps Bernie Eccleston has had too much influence over Tony Blair... I can remeber looking down at my annual report on my debt to the government after three years and with another year to go - it stood at twelve grand then, and I had just taken out another four grand of debt. I had never been so much as a penny in debt before, yet here I was with the reality of sixteen thousand pounds - an amount the likes of which I had never seen - thrust onto me. I should have stopped at my A Levels. Then I could have gone out to earn and never been 'overqualified' for a job. The government says those who earn more through university education should contribute back more. They do - through tax. They do, through the regenesis of knowledge. They do, through everyb new invention, novel or method that comes along to save and enhance lives. Plumbers stop leaks. Put a plumbing GCSE in every school, you could probably stop all leaks. Try the same thing with the treament of cancer or the creation of rockets.

People can only take responsibility for what they have done. Commit a crime, pay the price. Do a good deed, reap the rewards. Study for three or more years in bleak surroundings on a miserly pay, expect more money as a reward afterward. Students learn the value of money on a maintainence grant (I extrapolate from my own experiences with a loan, but hey ho). They should not take responsibility for what a Government has done. The responsibility comes from living off the grant and giving your all to the studies you complete in full, and contribute as a qualified member of the economy for the rest of your life. That is responsibility. It is a life long process, but one that is entered into gradually. I have a friend who was forced out of his university course because he could no longer pay. He is in the lower income bracket. Who should take responsibility in that when he had only a term and a half of learning to go?

And as for the more money - I am among a growing number of people not yet able to pay back my money. Add to us those who have failed to complete their course and therefore had the total debt annulled. Add to that those that will not pay, or those who have gone to a foreign country and elected not to pay, safe and sound in the knowledge of how expensive it must be to retrieve the cash from them. Add to that the cost of the IR keeping records for people who aren't in a position to pay tax. Sending them letters, etc. The cost of the call centre in Glasgow, the mailing of the cheques (especially when one gets lost in the post and I... erm... a student is left for months without any money at all). Add to this the logistics of handing out the cheques and enrolling everyone. It seems ever increasing top up fees will be necessary just to pay for the fees that have gone before.

The added irony is of course that the call centre is very noticeably in Scotland. A place where upfront fees no longer exist and a far more sinister policy has evolved. Here, people, including a certain William Windsor (to the delight of every Labour MP, I have no doubt) are scarred for life with a graduate tax that will continue to charge them for their university education for the rest of their life. The only promise they have that this unlimited debt they have to pay wont suddenly go up at anytime is the trust they have in the very same group of people who said in nineteen ninety seven they would not be introducing upfront fees, and in the same year did, speaking in a language that suggested people who didn't support this "common sense" policy were either stupid, ignorant or simply elitist. And of course, the promise of the Liberal Democrats who say they have abolished fees in Scotland, ignoring the infinite debt problem they have left behind and intend to replicate here.

When a university educated accountant scarred by a graduate tax works alongside a college educated accountant and they both look at the other's pay packet, it will not take a degree in accountancy to work out the words that will be exchanged. Helpful though this may be in causing some migration of would be accountants to college, it will hardly represent a humane or even credible method of achieving these necessary means.

So should the Conservative party agree to more mixed finance? More private sector involvement in this public sector of education? When there is so much red tape in university, the observatory at UCL can be fined for having too high a student visitor ratio - and too low one, and too high or low a student lecturer ratio, and too high or low a postgraduate lecturer ratio - effectively meaning they can be fined for having too high or low a ratio of undergrads to postgrads...and many other rules, why bother to charge? The private sector isn't properly involved. It's just cough up this extra tax and away you go. Business can be involved through proper passporting, and charging commercial rates for percieved better teaching of courses available for free or lower priced in the colleges. The Conservative party has a long history of making changes that truly effect people - Thatcher's shakeup of the economy, Major's voucher system, the state pension. These are all public service things that used mechanisms required to enrich the private sector and set it free. With a sound knowledge base using high quality rather than high quantity students, the economy and education itself will be lifted. The party began its restructuring of education at the primary level, it is time to reform secondary, higher and further education.

Not tax it.