Fees will lead to quality teaching, says Smithers

Universities should be allowed to charge realistic tuition fees to provide a high-quality education that is responsive to the demands of students. So argues Alan Smithers, professor of education and director of the centre for education and employment research at the University of Liverpool, in this month's edition of Living Marxism, now called LM. Professor Smithers blamed the expansion of higher education for a reduction in quality. Charging higher tuition fees would allow universities to reverse that decline and put more power into the hands of students, he argued. "At present universities are caught between the rock of the government's wish to occupy the time of as many people as possible to the age of 21 at the lowest cost, and the hard place of student representatives being unwilling to contemplate the advantages of fees," said Professor Smithers.