The price isn't right

Currently in her third year studying English Literature at Brighton University, Daisy Phillipson has got the travel bug. She wants to spend a year teaching English in China and hopes to live in Japan one day.

Daisy wants to know why fees for top universities like Oxford are the same as for the lowest-ranking institutes. Is it time fees better reflected the standards and status of different universities?

I generally regard myself as a person who strongly agrees with equal opportunities for all people, but I've realised there are some instances when this rule shouldn't apply. I am talking about university tuition fees.

Have a think about it. The current tuition fee for the top universities in the UK is £3,225 per year - the same as the price for Middlesex University in East London - currently the lowest ranking university in the UK. As Nicholas Barr, professor of public economics at the London School of Economics, recently said in an interview with the Times Educational Supplement: "Why should fees at a local institution be the same as those at an internationally renowned university?"

"It's like buying cheapest value chocolate and the finest Belgium, but discovering at the check-out they both cost the same"

It seems to me that people are paying the same price for a massive difference in employability and status at the end of their degree. I am currently studying at Brighton University and everyday my bus route takes me past Sussex University, a more highly-rated institution. And I realise that even though I'm paying the same amount of money for my education, if I was up against a graduate from Sussex University for a job, the applicant who went to that better-ranked university would probably win. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly ways to boost your employability, such as work experience and personal interests. But you can't say this will change the way a University of East London graduate is viewed in comparison to, say, to an Oxford graduate.

So why are all students forced to pay the same? It's like buying cheapest value chocolate and the finest Belgium, but discovering at the check-out they both cost the same. Aaron Porter, the vice-president for higher education at the National Union of Students, agrees, arguing: "The amount paid by a graduate should be directly linked to the financial benefit they have obtained from their degree".

This may sound as If I am trying to differentiate between university students, but it seems like a fair compromise for people attending different standards of university to pay different rates of fees. After all, it will be easier for a graduate of a higher status university to pay off a larger loan because their salary is likely to be correspondingly higher. You do the maths.

By Daisy Philipson

Photo by volunteer photographer Amy Nolan

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