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I think Stewart Lee gets it bang on (no matter how miserable he is). As soon as you start engaging in an economic debate you've lost.
Organised education isn't about economic prosperity. There are economic benefits, but it would be a sad conclusion to say that it become an organised practice to acheive economic goals, which is where we are heading. The orginal universities were about theology and organisation, about the organisation of moral life and social order. Workers educational assocations wanted to teach the powerless how to protect themeslves and understand their newly won rights and also to get on at work, and more markedly economic reasons dictated public school education for merchants and lesser nobilities sons, versus (literally) private edcuation power and estate management for the highest nobilities sons etc. People want education becuase it gives them access to society, in all the many forms this can take. This can be through learning specific skills for a job, or accessing a societies culture, or whatever. If you accept that the logic of mass education is about many things, so it's organising principle has to be universalist and effectively free because it provides access to the common life, however young people wish to achieve this. It doesn't matter what paper you read, how cultured you become, where you live or whether you end up reliving your parents life in a suburb, even after a degree. The point is that the society thatwill govern your life provided the support for you to find your place in it, whether you messed it up or not.
That said.....
The most up to date returns to qualifications data suggests that the graduate premium continues. However, degrees in politics now have a negative wage return i.e. someone doing A-levels will earn an average of 1.8% less at the age of 34 if they do a politics degree rather than simply going into work (History is next lowest at 0 - i.e. it has no wage impact). (as far as i can remember)
A contrast with this is the best off - the average Cambridge Economics graduates earns £38,000 just 6 months after graduation.
If you really believe in universal education, are you happy to pay for this kids £10k p/y education, given that his/her parents are more than likely already very well off and could pay for it. I am. It's probably a brilliant course that we should be proud to offer (as a society) to anyone who can handle it.
@andy / @sincers
If you start to discuss public versus private goods, we should think about paying people to study politics at a lower tier university, where they are unlikely to end up earning well as a result. And we should be charging economists at Cambridge far more than £9k a year, we should be thinking more about £30k+ a year, and i'm sure they could still get substantial numbers at £50k a year. Anybody interested in culture should be forced to sell themslves on ebay to raise money for their degree in ancient norse literature... a market is a market and recognises no value except that exchanged.
It's only inevitable because people believe it's inevitable and there is no challenge to this view. The Browne review didn't even consider a fully funded system because they believed cuts were inevitable.
@arkady
Ideology, pure, unadulterated 'I'm not paying for your media studies course you dosser' ideology from New Labour and Tories - both iz evil ADGS. Nick Clegg is a massive charlatan. The LibDems are irrelevant.
I was a fellow late 90s dosser on a sort of wrong course, but that's a failure of the careers advice in schools, but also my parents and my own lazy, clueless, innured to advice teenage self... Remember the enter what you like software where you get out job recommendations? Alarm bells were ringing even at age 17
lolz.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/nov/12/being-a-dickheads-cool-viral-video
Mikecabic: interesting reminder that the universities were originally all about training people for the priesthood. I suppose in a sense we're reverting to that after centuries of deviation, except now they're training acolytes for Mammon.
But as regards the terms in which the argument is conducted - personally, there's something my sense of humour finds irresistible in taking on people who are arguing from a base and mistaken perspective on their own terms, <i>and still winning</i>. There are dozens of reasons to study old Norse - but the fact that you can ultimately make enough money out of doing so to sway the policy of a First World government (cf recent Hobbit controversies) is the only one the accountants will understand, so use that one, then be smug in the knowledge that you had all those other reasons you didn't even need to deploy. Use whichever weapon hurts the enemy worst, rather than worrying about the moral minutiae of the most artistically perfect victory.
And as regards the graduate premium...well, even with an Oxbridge degree, my bank balance has never seen any sign of it. So the simplest and fairest way to pay for education would seem to be that crazy old idea of more tax on people who are making more money.
No, I have friends from Oxbridge who earn every little, and a friend with a media studies degree from a poly who is 28 and already employs 10 people. The averages don't lie, but it makes a bit of a mockery of the idea of being able to calculate a price for a course.
The graduate tax might have worked in an imperfect way, but the universities killed it. The sad thing in all this is that it is the university management (and even some academics) themsleves who want these fees. If it were comprehensive headteachers arguing for charging fees the whole debate would probably generate outrage.