I know , I was using hyperbole for effect . We don ' t even have to a black and white cutoff of who pays tuition or not . A sliding scale could implement this just fine . I am not saying middle class people should pay the entirety of their education , because , despite viewing tuition as currently very high , it is much , much lower than the true cost of delivering a tertiary education to a student . If half of britons don ' t play income tax h a l f o f b r i t o n s p a y n o i n c o m e taxasburdenonrichincreYou can bet this half finds it very hard to attend a university at all . If we want to increase social mobility we need to make equally easy for every student to be able to attend if they have earned it . While this might sound threatening and the very fact you are here debating education policy suggests it might be then it is likely that you and your family would not benefit from such a policy and since more affluent people tend to vote more and know more about this sort of policy in the first place this whole thing is very politically unpalatable at the moment so you shouldn ' t have to worry about it .