Simon Hughes explains how he is agonising over how to vote on tuition fees

Comments

[robert]

David Willetts and the Coalition are badly wrong on student tuition fees which give a minimum debt of £38,000 to graduates.
Simon Hughes and the other Liberal Democrats should vote against the proposal in Parliament.
This is another Conservative poll tax and Willetts knows it.

[It doesn't add up...]

Hughes should admit that student numbers are far too high, and that educational standards need to increase. He should then vote against the tuition fee scheme. He shouldn't do one without the other.

[dorsetdumpling]

This not a Conservative poll tax. Student numbers are far too high and I agree with the post above...educational standards are poor and need to be raised. What sort of education brings forth postgraduate students who have to be "educated" again in the use of proper English and spelling? We have fallen in the international league table to 14th and we have seen young people encouraged into degree courses that are, quite frankly, a joke. No, we simply cannot go on like this. Young people are being shortchanged have been deceived over the past 10-12 years by raising expectations unrealistically - "get a degree, get a high paid career!"...the degrees dangled were never going to result in high paid careers....and particularly when they emerge without the required English Language and Math skills.

[john parkes]

I for one am losing patience at Hughes`s constant hawking about of his conscience on almost every issue. Why doesn`t he just shut up, decide what he wants to do and then get on with it. His frequent attempts to be the `saint incarnate` of the Liberal Democrat Party only reveal his self-regard as being so overwhelming as to have become unedifying.

[Jim in Devon]

I am a supporter of what the coalition is doing but on the subject of tuition fees they are wrong. Education is a right and not a privaledge but a right that needs to be earned.

The country does not students with poor quality school results to spend three years in a univeristy studying knitting or something similar with no job prospects at the end of it.

I would dramatically reduce the number of university positions and raise the entry standards and then make it free