Tuition fees: cheers from some but ambush planned?

Chris Patten will be cheering the government’s response to the Browne review on University funding.

He lobbied hard on behalf of Oxford University, where he is Chancellor, against unlimited fees. He thought that higher charging universities would be, under Lord Browne’s proposals, forced to go up to £13,000 a year fees just to get hold of £9,000 because they’d pay a claw-back levy for the privilege.

Fans of the Browne Review think Lord Patten would’ve done better to try to negotiate a change to the taper so universities like Oxford wouldn’t lose so much of the extra fees they charged.

Lord Browne thought he was doing universities like Oxford a favour removing the cap altogether because they’d only have to go through the whole saga all over again when they come back in a few years for more.

So it looks like there will be a £6,000 floor and something like a £9,000 ceiling on fees, not far off three times the current level.

Some backbench Lib Dems MPs and Labour’s front bench (which post election, has a free-floating policy) are checking on the opportunities for ambushing these measures.