It's a question of choice I think, or rather, lack of choice: You, Dark Vader, are in a position to choose to pay for your kids to go to school, still, if you choose not to pay your children would still go to school. I'm fine with this, this seems fair to me.
This choice now does not exist in higher education: it's either pay or don't go. Obviously, this gives an enormous<span> advantage to people with wealthy parents. I accept that the country cannot fund everyone who want's to go to university but I believe that university places should go to those who are most academically able, not most financially able.
I think it started to go wrong when the government decided a high percentage of school leavers should go on to university; this was never sustainable.
<span>Dark Vader, you say you went to University when it was all still free, I did too, as did my husband. We, like you, are now in a position to send our children to fee paying school (although we choose not to) and we will be able to fund their university education should they go down this route. We would not be in this financial position if we did not go to university and neither of us would have gone under the new fee arrangements. I'm sure there are many people, who think that the fees are not really an issue as they can afford to pay them, who would not be in that fortunate position had they not benefited from free higher education themselves.
