Maybe the levy just moves money to where it’s needed most

I’ve seen less on the extent to which it might save universities money.

Those with long memories might recall the days when it was pretty much mandated that a specific proportion of “additional fee income” – additional, that is, to the previous fee regime – was to be spent on student financial support.

The problem with that system persists even if the blunt mandation is long gone. Those doing the heavy lifting on WP have less to spend per student that needs it than those who are rather less successful on widening access.

The other problem with the system is that since the advent of 9k fees, the system has been saying “you’ll need to pay X, some of which will subsidise someone else”. Over time we’ve increasingly privatised the contribution while expecting the “public good” of redistribution, which is usually what progressive taxation is for.

So let’s imagine for a minute that the 600 or so £million is precisely what universities last year spent on bursaries, and that once there’s a maintenance grant in place, let’s also imagine that the cost will be circa 600 or so £million.

That could relieve universities from having to stump up the bursaries from fee income. The difference is that this time, we’ll be redistributing the money around the sector, rather than around an individual institution.

Even though the institutional contribution will be based on the number of international students at their provider and the value of fees charged, it still results in quite a significant transfer – from those universities who tend to do worse on access to those who tend to do better.

There’s a tension between the targeting and flexibility that APP bursary schemes offer and the standardisation and simplicity of entitlement that having national rules around student maintenance support offers.

But when I looked earlier this year at outcomes, in the Russell Group the £ per head in cash help to students getting some was £2,362. Across Million+ providers, that figure was £726.

If, in aggregate, what the levy does is help to shift those numbers much closer together, or at least much closer to need, it’s not hard to argue that that’s a jolly good thing.

You might argue that there are fairer ways to do national redistribution. You could look at the way in which 2022 loan repayment rules relieved richer graduates from paying their graduate tax in later years while soaking lower earners for 40 rather than 30 years.

You might also argue that a levy only on international student fee income would not quite be as fair as a levy on all student fees income.

But in aggregate, as long as it doesn’t result in price hikes that depress demand, it’s not quite the cut many have made it out to be.

And from a student’s point of view, some of your fee contribution going to a needy student in a neighbouring university really isn’t that much different to some of your fee contribution going to a needy student in a neighbouring faculty.

The only real difference between the way a government redistributes a cut of fees rather than the way a university does it is that we can vote out the government at the next election.