The latest round of YouGov polling, alongside the more usual “horse race” questions on voting intention, includes a set of questions on UK universities.

A sample size of 1739 broadly representative UK adults gives us a margin of error of around three percent.

On funding and fees it doesn’t look as if there is any public interest in reforming the current English system. Around half of the sample felt this was a fair way of funding university education, with just a third able to say it was “unfair”. What’s interesting here is that there is no real variation by age or social class (younger people and the less well off are marginally less likely to describe the system as fair) – previous polls like this have shown that the current system is substantially more older people than younger are happy with things as they stand.

Though there is satisfaction with funding mechanisms, a similar proportion of the sample feel that the current level of fees does not represent value for money. Here we do see an age effect – 62 per cent of 18-24s do not feel there is value for money, compared with 40 per cent of those aged 65 and above.

Fifty-four per cent felt that British universities provide as good or better quality education than systems in other European countries, and fifty-two per cent feel that university study should be paid for by people who go to university rather than from general taxation. A reminder, if one was needed, that you should never expect a consistent position from public polling – my reading is that people are broadly happy with university education, but feel like £9,535 a year is a lot of money.

Forty per cent of the sample felt that too many children go to university, whereas 45 per cent opposed the idea of contextual admissions (explained here as “universities giving applicants from underperforming state schools lower entry requirements than applicants from higher performing private schools”) with opposition higher among older people and better off people.

It’s all pretty bleak if you are a fan of the sector, but do bear in mind the low salience of higher education in the popular imagination – just 11 per cent of the sample felt that education was one of the most important issues facing the UK when asked to select up to three issues: compare 54 per cent choosing the economy, 44 per cent choosing immigration and asylum, or 22 per cent choosing defence.