How to cut tuition fees - Charlie Brooker

We should teach only the useful stuff: scavenging, strangling and how to operate a water cannon.

You can't put a price on a good education. Except, actually, you can – and it turns out that price is just over £9,000 a year.

Unsurprisingly many students are furious at the hike in tuition fees; but apart from shouting about it or trying to smash the Treasury to bits with sticks, what practical steps can we take to make education more affordable?

Nine thousand pounds a year sounds like a lot – but actually, it's shitloads. Yet it turns out that if you divide shitloads by 52, it comes out at around £173 a week, which sounds more achievable. Especially if your course only lasts seven days. So let's only provide week-long courses.

Obviously, to compress a three-year course into one week, the field of study will have to be streamlined a bit. Whittled down. Reduced to a series of bullet points. But in many cases, that's an advantage.

Take history. There's already far too much of it. In fact, mankind is generating a "past mountain", which grows 24 hours in size every single day. No one can be expected to keep all of that in...

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Lib Dem transport minister may quit over tuition fees

Liberal Democrat transport minister Norman Baker has hinted he could resign from the government in order to vote against plans for tuition fee rises.

The party's MPs signed a pre-election pledge to oppose any increase, but policy has changed since the formation of a coalition with the Conservatives.

Mr Baker told the BBC it was the "most difficult issue" he had faced.

He added that quitting his post to vote against the rises was one "option", but said he had not yet made up his mind.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and his colleagues have faced criticism for backing coalition plans to raise university tuition fees to as much as £9,000 a year, despite pledging to fight any increase before the election.

According to the agreement with the Conservatives, Lib Dem MPs are expected to back the change in...

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