Perhaps this is a naive argument, or stating the obvious, but I haven’t heard this argument anywhere recently.

In the news is Tony Blair’s big conversation (thematic link to Fridays post), and his determination variable tuition fees.

I used to feel that it was unfair that someone who was unemployed and sitting around being unproductive should get benefits, while someone who was unemployed because they were working hard to make themselves more employable and valuable to society should be entitled to nothing. Sure have loans to make the difference between a basic living in student accommodation, and comforts like PCs (shows how long ago I was a student) the odd night out, and visits home to parents. My perceptions haven’t shifted much.

People should be paying for education according to ability to pay, not according to what course or university they have chosen, when they did their degrees or whether they did their degrees at all. Someone who got where they are because they worked hard at university on reduced means should not be forced to be worse of by the state than someone on similar means because they inherited money from their parents, or a self made man who is rich from being in the right place at the right time.

But ah, you cry, why should the plumber pay for the education of the Doctor? That old and bogus chestnut. Everyone benefits from having well-educated graduates in society to run things, Doctors and teachers are one example, That is why everyone should pay according to their means, and the best way to do that is through income tax.

But surely paying for graduates to be well educated is rewarding those likely to earn more at the expense of people who earn less. No it’s rewarding the bright at the expense of the less bright, which is not the same thing and actually something that is not achieved elsewhere in government policy. We should value the intelligent in society and paying for their education is the fairest and easiest way of doing this from the public purse. Life does not do this it merely rewards the confident and the loud, not the intelligent.