Why tuition fees haven't improved university teaching

The introduction of tuition fees is not enough to restore the standard of university teaching – we need to encourage academics to take it seriously, argues Gervas Huxley.
Last year’s furious student protests reminded us that few political debates are as divisive as the battle over tuition fees.
But if the warring parties can agree on anything – optimistic as that sounds – it’s surely that tuition fees should at least benefit the students who pay them. In other words, funding provided by undergraduates should mean better-quality teaching.
Unfortunately, that simply hasn't happened. Why? Because the lack of resources which tuition fees were designed to solve was only ever one part of the problem. So long as higher education does not provide incentives for academics to prioritise teaching, standards will continue to suffer.
Tuition fees were introduced in 1998 in response to a fall in revenue per student from around 1980, itself driven by the desire of successive governments to increase participation in higher education without bothering to actually pay for it. Read more...