While the Government aims to encourage half the youngsters in Britain to go to university, finance has become a problem.

Naturally, students are opposed to ideas for ever-increasing fees, which would leave them in debt, or a graduate tax.

The alternative is to place most of these costs on a dwindling working population already groaning under the burden of tax.

People wishing to go to university will have to accept they pay some of the costs, although the best way of doing this is still not certain. The one point of agreement by students, universities and ministers should be that people from poor families should not be debarred from being students for financial reasons.