Britain's University Muddle

...They fear that the new law's discount structure will result in a two-tier university system, with the more celebrated institutions able to offer better opportunities to a privileged minority...

...Those with decent scores on their high school final exams are being offered free tuition at several leading German institutions, including Heidelberg University and Berlin's Humboldt University...

...They are grateful for any boost in income, but stress that it is hardly a cure-all...

...As for maintenance grants, they will be given to students from the poorest families, but others will have to take out loans available at favorable rates and also repayable after they start working...

...Sharp increases in the number of undergraduates, however, made the program difficult for the government to sustain...

...Forty-two per cent of undergraduates at the esteemed London School of Economics (LSE) are overseas students billed $ 18,000 a year...

...Educational opportunities are slim in those lands and funding is even more problematic...

...And the council's reference is not even to Europeans...

...One-onone tutoring, once standard at Britain's elite schools, has dwindled, and where tutorials continue they tend to be conducted by postgraduate students rather than dons...

...Some of the reactions border on arrogance...

...Those schools need the money to keep up with the world's other top universities in reputation, respected faculty, endowments, and research grants...

...Sir Richard Sykes, rector of London's Imperial College, Britain's answer to MIT, says the push for expansion of the undergraduate population is causing significant damage...

...Frustrated by entry-level salaries that are often lower than those of street cleaners, not to mention inadequate teaching and research facilities, many young academics have quit...

...Yet because most colleges have only modest endowments to fall back on, essential structural repairs and upgrading of school facilities have been neglected...

...Ambitious parents of bright teenagers are in a quandary...

...It is further pointed out that the per capita cost for students will be inflated by the growing number of young people being encouraged to seek university admission...

...Pressure to dumb down admissions standards has angered Professor Malcolm Grant, Provost of University College London...

...British faculties have not had a substantial pay hike in over a decade...

...Asked about taxpayers' anger at being forced to fund young people who become rich doctors, a London medical student told a television interviewer that after a low-income taxpayer suffers a heart attack he will be glad he paid for her education...

...It is unfair for their future debt to be determined by their parents' present incomes, they argue, when all graduates will have an equal opportunity to pursue lucrative jobs...

...There is no indication yet how many British students will be lured to the Continent...

...Blair prevailed in Parliament only by making concessions to the rebels...

...Lecturers at Oxford address classes twice as large as those at Harvard, with a fraction of the support in teaching assistants enjoyed on the Charles River...

...the United States, India, the United Arab Emirates—anything the traffic will bear...

...Even Oxford and Cambridge—or "Oxbridge," as the twin lights of British scholarly excellence are informally called— will be affected...

...Seminars at Cambridge, previously limited to 10 undergraduates, are now attended by as many as 25...

...They don't know whether sending their kids to better high schools rather than the neighborhood catch-alls will jeopardize thenchances of being accepted at a leading university...

...Who had to pay, and how much, became a function of parental incomes...

...In a blatantly opportunistic challenge, the opposition Conservative Party, now under the aggressive leadership of Michael Howard, is acting counter to its free enterprise principles by insisting that all undergraduate charges be dropped...

...If that objective is achieved, the British economy will not be the only one to benefit...

...Universities are free to charge undergraduates from nations outside the European Union—e.g...

...From a mere 2 per cent 50 years ago, the portion of the college-age population attending universities has ballooned to 43 per cent today—without a corresponding increase in resources...

...To have excelled at a selective high school can now often prove a drawback for a student applying to Britain's elite universities...

...Starting in 2006, that will be raised to $5,400 per year...

...Under its provisions, instead of "the dustman funding the doctor," a cry that has resonated with the general public, undergraduates will shoulder more responsibility for the cost of their future...

...The boom in students and the flight of qualified instructors have adversely affected class sizes, too...

...In the unlikely event that the Conservatives and the maverick Labor parliamentarians joined forces, they could subvert the government's program...

...Non-EU foreign enrollees at Oxford currently pay between $15,000 and $36,000 a year, depending on their courses of study...

...Meanwhile, prominent professors have been succumbing to tempting offers from the United States, Canada and Australia...

...Not until after graduation—when they take jobs and start earning salaries—will students be required to pay up...

...The number is expected to grow substantially once applications mount from newly inducted EU nations, notably Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states...

...In his recent book, University to Uni: The Politics of Higher Education in England Since 1944, Robert Stevens, a senior academic administrator who has held positions in both Britain and the U.S., maintains that those pressing an egalitarian approach are, in effect, "dumb[ing] down the colleges" instead of trying "to fund serious international universities...

...One of the plan's crucial elements is that British undergraduates will owe nothing up front, and British parents will be relieved of financing their offspring's college educations...

...Administrators have been grumbling over details of the plan...

...Prime Minister Tony Blair's scheme to shift more of the financial responsibility for their education to the students has drawn mixed reviews, for example, and the potential arrival of students from the expanded European Union (EU) promises to further complicate what many leading educators consider a nationwide academic crisis...

...Reforms newly passed by Parliament are expected to alter the character of higher education here...

...Under European Union rules, students from member nations may apply to any university within the EU and in each country must be accorded the same rights and privileges as natives...

...Legislative groundwork laid in the last months of the War enabled colleges to eliminate tuition and provide students with maintenance allowances...

...By 1962, to help counter growing deficits, schools started requiring some students to cover part or all of their maintenance costs, and in 1998 this was extended to tuition...

...He perceives an "increasing insistence" in Britain "that the primary purpose of universities is not to transmit cultural values but to ensure the success of the economy...

...DEBATE PERSISTS about the new system's virtues...

...The government also agreed to a freeze on the maximum annual charge of $5,400 until 2010...

...Those who never achieve that level will have their debt wiped off the books after 25 years...

...It was essentially designed to lighten the higher education burden on the Treasury, in response to complaints that ordinary taxpayers have for too long been financing those who become Britain's best-paid professionals...

...The governing council of Oxford predicts another peril for British students: In the near future foreigners will have a monopoly on academic distinction...

...Despite his large Labor Party majority in Parliament, Blair barely wrangled approval for the reform in the House of Commons...

...Blair's declared desire to raise the figure to 5 0 per cent by 2010 has provoked howls of outrage from administrators demanding greater attention to the qualitative problems they already face...

...Interestingly, an alternative has appeared on the horizon for young Britons worried about admissions or the fees they will have to repay...

...At present a British undergraduate pays an annual fee of, at most, $2,000...

...The Left prefers a national level playing field imposed and monitored by an eagleeyed government department...

...Since World War II, British universities have primarily been funded by the taxpayers...

...Suggestions that Britain adopt an exam modeled on the SAT in the United States, have met with little official enthusiasm...

...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...To the astonishment of Americans accustomed to exorbitant college costs, they are furious about the prospect of pursuing professional careers while shackled with debts that seem to them enormous...

...A tentatively outlined variable scale encourages students to attend the less well-known universities, or to sign up for less popular courses, and reduce their obligation by $900 annually...

...Rebellion was stirred by Left-wing parliamentarians who harbor a residual class war conviction that the most highly regarded universities—especially Oxbridge—are bastions of unprincipled elitism...

...The issue has become highly politicized...

...Students from poor families continued to receive both free tuition and complete maintenance allowances...

...Thus their anticipated increase looms as yet another drain on resources...

...Some 50,000 undergraduates from France, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in the EU are attending school on this side of the English Channel...

...Though some of these new EU undergraduates come from families considered well offlocally, by British standards they qualify for tuition-free matriculation...

...Middle-class students, rather justifiably, resent the free ride allowed their poorer peers...

...It is notable that the number of Nobel Prize winners at British universities has fallen in the past 20 years from 20 per cent of the international total to 6 per cent...

...Luton University, an hour north of London, is already touting itself as "the university of choice" for students from Estonia...

...The shift wasperhaps inevitable...

...Each student currently costs a university about $ 14,300 a year, almost three times the maximum a graduate will be billed, and the government has not budgeted funds to take up the shortfall...

...Political pressures tend to restrict the intake of non-EU students, but less so at brand name institutions like the LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial College, where they are a source of cash...

...The letters columns of London newspapers have been flooded by complaints from parents whose children boast the highest high school grades possible but are denied interviews at the better colleges, while others receive serious consideration because they come from impoverished inner city districts or high schools of lesser academic repute...

...The courses offer internationally recognized degrees, and Germany's lower cost of living sweetens the deal...

...Money is at the core of current strained conditions, but government policies and globalization are significant contributing factors...

...Student organizations oppose the whole scheme...

...He is appalled by the government's decision to make additional contributions to universities that take students from poor backgrounds or from high schools of relatively low academic standings: "We are diverting resources to universities that are having to bring these kids up to speed with what they should have learned in primary and secondary education...

...He bemoans the fact that universities can incur large fines if they do not do enough to "widen access" to students with subpar academic qualifications...

...The rate of repayment will reflect the level of their earnings...

...His internationally ranked school already competes for government funds with institutions equivalent to American community colleges...

...The estimated 30 per cent of students whose families have incomes under $27,000 will still not be required to pay anything, and the 20 per cent from families with incomes under $59,000 will be subject to charges on a reduced scale...

...Teaching will be in English, but may switch to German once students have had a chance to pick up the language...

...Graduates required to repay their tuition will not have to begin doing so until they are making enough to support themselves, and even then low earners can start at a minimum weekly rate of about $9...

...How conditions will be improved by the government's new funding plan is somewhat unclear...

...Recently I interviewed an internationally renowned professor who was doing pioneering fiber optics research in a thinly equipped cell-like laboratory in an attic of his London university...