Following on from all the recent discussion by the government on how to cut costs, and save the country money, a plan has been developed, which, if it gets put in place, will mean that more students will get free tuition when they’re studying, but afterwards instead of a fixed amount of loan to pay back, they’ll pay a higher percentage of income tax for a fixed period of time.

The concept is one which could work really well and mean that more youngsters can afford to go to university and study because they won’t have to fork out for the fees as they do now. At the moment, the system means that youngsters either have to fund their studies themselves or have help from family, and/or take out student loans which they then manage themselves. The new method would mean that tuition fees would be paid for by the government directly to the university in exchange for the student agreeing to pay a higher rate of income tax for a fixed period of years after they graduate.

Overall, for students, it would mean that if you study and end up in a highly paid career you will pay more for your degree than someone who finds themselves in a lower paid job. So doctors & lawyers for example could end up paying much higher amounts back than say teachers and care workers would. However, as the system would be percentage based, no one would lose more than that fixed percentage of their income.

Although some people feel that this system is unfair because some people would pay more than others, there are other people who feel that the new system would actually be much fairer as it would mean that people would pay the same ‘extra’ percentage of what they earn, but of course the figure would vary depending on their actual income, and anyone not earning much wouldn’t have as much to pay back, while those earning a lot, would still pay the same percentage, but their actual contribution would be greater. Students wouldn’t start paying the higher income tax rate until they were earning £15,000 or more, and wouldn’t keep paying it for ever, just for a fixed period of time.

For the universities, the system would mean that the funding for universities would actually come at least in part from the students who had already studied there, and as the number of students increased, so would the amount of funding that they would provide for future generations.

One of the biggest worries being voiced at the moment is that it would be a number of years from the start of a scheme of this nature, to the point when any revenue from a graduate tax would become available. So until this point there would be a need for major upfront investment in the universities by the government, and the problem is that we’re at a point when the government needs to make cuts to their spending, not spending greater amounts.