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It seems slightly odd to me that I have only ever written once about Higher Education policy, given that I am a governor of my university, and hear about it all the time in meetings. But it has become a big issue at the moment in the Lib Dems, and seems to have been one of the major discussion areas at the Liberal Youth conference over the weekend, so I thought it might be time for me to jot down a few thoughts.

One thing that seems clear, and I believe this is common currency in university board-rooms across the country, is that the current muddled system cannot go on. 98% I believe it is of courses are charging the full top-up fees, and even they do not make up for the real terms fall of over 60% in funding per student over the past decade and a half or so.

On top of that, it fails to create any kind of price mechanism where people might be able to see what value a university or rather its applicants put on a particular course at a particular institution. It is a nonsense to think that three grand at The New University of Bloggshire is as good value as three grand at one of our world leading institutions like Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial. Instead we rely on very subjective analyses of the National Student Satisfaction Survey and even that is difficult as the organizers may put a good course in a subject area in which an institution is not so excellent and devalue that one course.

What also seems clear is that the value of a first degree is, shall we say, not as high as perhaps it was when all those who say "I got university free, so I'm damned if I'm going to see the next generation up to their necks in debt" went to university. It is a very generous sentiment, and, whilst I didn't in fact go to university I do recognize the hypocrisy - had I taken my school teachers' advice I would have had free higher education and a living grant too. That may not of course be the fault of the Higher Education Institutions so much as primary and secondary education - I don't suppose many students in my day would have had to be taught remedial English and maths at university as we are told some are today in order to get the most out of the Higher Education experience. Additionally, many more students than previously feel the pressure to do second and subsequent degrees in order to stand out in the job market as perhaps a first degree would have done for them in previous generations.

I think the majority feeling in those university board-rooms is that they would prefer to see the fees cap lifted completely when the opportunity arises sometime after 2010, even though by that time many may not want to charge too much so as to be in competition for a smaller number of students when the 18 year old cohort dips significantly in around 2012. We are also on tenter-hooks waiting to see how economic troubles in the wider world will affect student numbers - in previous recessions there has been a boost to Higher Education as people out of work re-train, but faced with fees and debts and an even more uncertain economic outlook, we wonder whether this will be the same this time round.

So, regardless of how our policy affects students themselves, the universities are in an ever more uncertain position. Whatever option we choose, we must see to it also that universities get sufficient funding. There will be no merit in having free Higher Education if the universities themselves cannot deliver that within the budgets allowed.

Anyway, I wanted to suggest an idea with this post. It's somewhat half formulated, and I certainly have not tried to run any figures on it yet, but I hope you might get the idea and maybe be willing to help develop it in the comments.

I have always regarded universities as social enterprises, mutual institutions of a sort. Indeed I once tried to persuade Brookes to adopt a more overt mutualism in its management structure. During the Great Depression in North America, when students were still having to pay fees but had very little money left for anything else, many embraced mutualism as a way to get through. This was the era in which the co-op meal plan, the co-op houses and halls of residence, and the university credit unions burgeoned. Partly as a result of this they have a much stronger alumni culture than we have here.

A credit union type system could be used to enable universities to charge a full market rate for their courses whilst financing all students "needs blind" so that they do not have to pay anything until they are earning. These credit unions would enable alumni (and possibly applicants before they are at university) to save, with interest, in less toxic investments than they have been in the banking system of late while funding current students through university and who would then be expected, as part of their "pay back", to join and save, investing in the next cohort of students, when they graduate.

On top of this we need a package of measures perhaps to encourage the development of low cost co-operative halls of residence and mutual housing societies to prevent the basic accommodation needs of students becoming the £5-7,000 per year drain that the big corporate halls providers expect to charge and the private rented sector delivering second class housing for students.

There was a flutter of interest in the Guardian and Times today (interesting to see the difference in emphasis) about some ideas being put forward to the Tories' Tax Commission by the Bow Group. The report in PDF format is available alongside this discussion on ConservativeHome. Not surprisingly, since the press release promoted this aspect in particular, discussion has focussed on what the author describes as "land value tax". But the report as a whole has a whole load in it, from raising income tax thresholds to £11,000 and imposing a flat rate tax of 38% on all earnings above that, to restricting pensions contributions relief to 38% but on just £4,400 worth of pensions contributions a year, from what I can work out. Go read it - it's interesting, considering we Lib Dems are also in the process of making tax policy.

However, despite all the furore over the "land value tax" proposal, it should be noted that it is not, in fact, a Land Value Tax, and it is certainly not intended to be a step towards Henry George's "Single Tax". A hard-core Georgist like myself of course could simplify even Mr Wadworth's attempt to simplify the gargantuan tax system into just one point - replace all other taxes with taxes on land and resource use! You pay for what you take, not what you make.

But in particular the Bow Group proposals are for a straightforward flat property tax, as Tim Worstall points out. That is fundamentally different from a Land Value Tax, in which only the value of a site is taxed, and not the value of any buildings or any other improvements built on that site.

The arguments Mark Wadsworth makes for efficient use of land are far less evident in a straightforward property tax on the whole combined value of land and buildings. It does nothing to actually encourage efficient development - improving a property will result in a higher tax bill as the whole value is taxed. With a Land Value Tax you can make the most efficient permitted use of land without affecting the tax liability of the whole site. One house might pay £20,000 a year on the same site as ten flats each paying £1,000 a year for example.

But the document covers a whole lot more than this that would have been eminently worth reporting - the flat tax of 38%, the raising of thresholds to £11,000, changes to child benefit, pensions provision and many others. I welcome the fact that the Bow Group chose to promote the discussion on property taxes, I think, and if they want a proper LVT will help in whatever way I can, but it's not currently based on Henry George's/David Ricardo's ideas on economic rent and cannot properly be called a Land Value Tax.

Technorati Tags: conservatives, land value tax, politics, property tax, tax shifting, taxation, tories

I had to roll one up just to steel myself to read this: University announces smoking ban

Newcastle University is banning smoking anywhere on its campus from next year.

Staff and students are being warned if they want to smoke after 1 January 2007, they will have to leave the university site - not just buildings.

Now, I don't know Newcastle University at all. I presume it's a city centre type affair where it won't be too much of an inconvenience to step onto the public highway (until smoking is also banned there of course). Though I know they have an agriculture department and the policy applies on the university's farms which probably will mean a long walk to the roadside.

But no doubt this will come to us all eventually. Here at Brookes we have a policy that says not only is there no smoking in the university buildings, but also, in theory, not within five meters of outside doors or windows.

I am a good smoker. I always stub my cigarettes out and put the butts in a bin, if there isn't an ashtray. I can't stand the habit of just chucking it on the floor as you get to the door - often not even stamping it out - that seems to go on a lot around here.

And I always stand the requisite five meters from buildings if at all possible. The nearest spot to my office has a huge plane tree that provides as good cover as any umbrella or bike shed for most of the year, but elsewhere you can usually find some eaves or something to stand under that don't infringe the five meter rule. But I have to say that from watching other smokers I am if not the only one, in a tiny minority that give more than one hoot about people coming and going at entrances or working in offices with not terribly well fitting windows that always let in a little unpleasant whiff if someone's smoking outside.

So, fellow smokers, especially those here at Brookes, the only way in my opinion to delay this fascist onslaught is to abide by the quite reasonable rules we already have. Mind you, the university could take greater steps to ensure people know what those rules are. At the moment it is up to occupants of offices for example to print off a little petulant looking poster and stick it in their window. It doesn't look terribly official and it looks like the occupants are being a bit petty if you don't already know the rule.

But maybe the attitude is "why spend any money publicising the rule when we could spend the same simply banning smoking on site altogether".

Let's hope they don't want to extend it to one's own space in halls of residence.

There was a table in The Times on Wednesday showing "Israel's Tally" in the latest bout of middle east warfare. Bearing in mind we are told incessantly by the pro-Israel lobby that they are merely responding to being fired on and so on it's quite a shock really:

ISRAEL’S TALLY
In 14 days:

4 villages captured by Israel
40,000 shells have been fired
2,750 rockets and mortar fired into Israel
17 civilians killed
24 soldiers killed
381 Lebanese killed
75 soldiers injured

I did some searching about these "Katyusha" rockets. They can apparently manage a warhead of about 20 kg compared with motorized artillery (175mm/8in) whose projectiles are more usually 60kg.

Now, I would not want to live under either sort of fire, but if I had to choose I would take my chances facing 55 tonnes of projectile (assuming that most of that 2,750 projectiles are forty pound rockets and not ten pound mortars) spread across northern Israel than 2400 tonnes of missile fired into Lebanon.

So, even if you don't regard the human rights abuse of terrorising a whole nation as disproportionate, just on tonnage of weaponry fired, they are two orders of magnitude "disproportionate".

A fight ostensibly over two kidnapped soldiers has already resulted in three dozen or so Israeli families grieving for loved ones and an order of magnitude more than that Lebanese families grieving.

Stop defending this humanitarian disgrace!

...but will the politicians listen? Somehow, I doubt it!

Since I wrote my piece on gangs and drugs on Saturday I've seen a steady trickle of hits from Google searches about Rhys Jones and I've kept an eye on the search terms and found I was pretty well alone in voicing the opinion that drugs policy plays the biggest part in the gang gun deaths that stalk some of our estates. So it is with some relief that I find Johann Hari is another voice of sanity in today's Independent:

Johann Hari: Tragic victims of a self-defeating policy:

This is the story of two victims of a war that cannot be won and should not be fought. You have heard of the first: Rhys Jones, the 11-year-old in Liverpool who was shot in the neck as he played on his bike. You have not heard of the second: Andres Sauzo, a 24-year-old Mexican man who had his arms, legs and head chain-sawed from his body, and was found rotting in five bin bags scattered across his home town of Zihyatanejo. They are casualties - either direct or indirect - in a war that kills tens of thousands of people a year, and could end tomorrow, if we chose to.

Rhys and Andres were killed because of a political decision by the US government to wage a global "war on drugs", and demand other governments fall into line. When you criminalise a massive and growing industry – some 5 per cent of the world's entire economic activity – it does not go away. It is handed to armed criminal gangs, who flood the streets with guns to secure a slice of the riches.

Aside from also citing Milton Friedman, he goes on rightly to criticize the British political reaction to the events of the past week. I hope some of them are listening, and can hear over the noise of their knees jerking and their bandwagons' creaking...

The scattered proposals tossed out this week to deal with drug gangs are elaborate evasions of the real issue. Banning gang videos on YouTube is barely even a sticking plaster, while the Cameroonian idea that gangs are the rancid afterbirth squeezed out by single parents simply doesn't match with the facts. Denmark has the highest rate of single parenthood in Europe – but it has virtually no gangs, except among recent immigrant communities, who overwhelmingly consist of stable two-parent families.

No: if we want to stop gang culture, we need to take back the industry that makes gangs rich, and give it once again to doctors, pharmacists and off-licenses. Legalizing drugs rips the spine out of gangs. Of course they will try to move into other industries – protection rackets, cigarette smuggling and so on – but these have far lower profit margins. In a legalised economy, the gangs would no longer be the richest kids on the estate, and could barely afford firepower, so the core of their glamour would melt away.

We should be outraged. In my opinion our governments, acting in our name, are knowingly complicit in the suffering and the deaths that all this causes, for little benefit and certainly with no liberal philosophical justification. We should be demanding action now, not only to save future Rhys Joneses, but to save what is estimated at £18bn a year in domestic policing and criminal justice costs alone.