Sir Peter Lampl argues for means-tested fees in The Times.

As the country basks in Olympic success, a few voices have raised concerns about the entry barriers faced by the non-privileged to participate in the elite Olympic sports the country has excelled in.

But the spectre of an even more ominous barrier to opportunity is upon us: the decision to allow English universities to treble tuition fees to £9,000 from next month. The Independent Commission on Fees, chaired by Will Hutton, on which I sit, was established to monitor the impact of increased fees on applicants, offers and admissions. It releases its first report today.

The initial findings are ominous. Total applicant numbers have dropped 8.8 per cent this year — 37,000 down on 2010-11. Crucially, this decline in England is not seen in other parts of the UK where fees have not increased. And the fall is from students who were already in the university pipeline.

There are two main problems with the new fees. The first is that they are simply too high. Allowing universities to charge as much as £9,000 a year to students, with only 10 per cent of university teaching budgets funded by the State, makes Britain a complete outlier by international standards..

Vice-chancellors have toed the party line, arguing that extra fees will boost academic coffers and not alienate students. But actions speak louder than words. Oxford recently announced a £300 million fund that builds on an exceptional gift of £75 million by Michael Moritz, an alumnus based in California, that will result in no increase in tuition fees for low-income students. If proof was ever needed that high fees are a big deterrent, this is surely it — and from one of our most prestigious universities.

The second issue is that fees are not means-tested. We treat children as if they are financially independent at 18, which is plainly ridiculous. Why should a boarding-school student pay the same as a kid from a council estate? Before the era of tuition fees the student maintenance grant was means-tested, so there is no logic in treating fees differently.

A better vision of university funding was apparent last week when the Sutton Trust ran its first US summer school for low and middle-income British students at Yale. If those students went to a top US university, those from families with an income below £40,000 would get their higher education free.

Trying to improve social mobility feels like swimming upstream, or cycling uphill. My fear is that we are creating extra barriers that will make it a truly Olympian task.

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