If Clegg wants to keep tuition fees he needs to rename them

The Lib Dems (and students) would immediately feel better if tuition fees were renamed as a 'capped graduate tax'.

Unlike the Independent, I’ve not been privy to the ‘Learning and Life’ paper that is apparently being presented to Lib Dem conference in September, which suggests we should go into the next election without making any, um, pledges, on how tertiary education should be funded. Just a bit of a vague promise to take a look at it when we’re in government – by all accounts:

…we have thoroughly examined the current system and the alternatives – a graduate tax and lowering fees – and concluded that we should stick with the current system and review it once it has been given a proper chance to bed in

Now, I know us foot soldiers are all meant to be on our best behaviour and act like grown ups right now , so I will be considered and patient and wait until I read the paper before throwing all my toys out of the pram and shouting ‘this is madness isn’t it?’; but can I make one small suggestion to the good folk in the working group? We could just rename ‘tuition fees’ as a ‘capped graduate tax’ and everyone would immediately feel a whole lot better.

I’ve suggested this before and I willingly admit that there’s more than a tad of the snake oil salesman about it. But there’s no doubt that while the phrase ‘tuition fees’ is like a red rag to a student bull, a capped graduate tax is not.

Renaming an unpopular fee as a more acceptable ‘tax’ is effectively just behavioural economics, beloved by the No 10 Nudge Unit and, indeed, popular with the PM himself. It would have been a neat solution to avoiding a lot a lot of unpleasantness for the Lib Dems right from the start.

I’ve never been able to understand why we didn’t go down this road. When I originally asked the question, I was told it was because ministers had been advised by civil servants that they couldn’t do it. So I put in a freedom of information request to see this advice; this revealed that not only were ministers not advised that they couldn’t just call tuition fees a ‘graduate tax’ – in fact they were given the opposite advice:

in some respects, the loan repayment is equivalent to a capped graduate tax (and presentationally there is an advantage in describing it as such).

So why don’t we do it?

Now, is this what I want to happen? No. I’d like a full on debate on tertiary education funding at conference and actual implementation of our current policy. But apparently the leadership isn’t so keen on that. Not good for the cameras. And not very grown up.

So this seems a fairly good compromise, delivering what the Lib Dem working party want (the status quo), the grassroots would buy (no more tuition fees), and be better for tertiary education to boot (because more people would buy into it).

Any takers?