Cribsheet daily 04.11.10

And so the reaction to the tuition fees announcement starts flooding in. Not surprisingly, the Russell Group is delighted, the National Union of Students is apoplectic and the Lib Dems are scared witless. The key thing now, of course, is which of them will vote against fees of £6,000 to £9,000. Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell will, Lynn Featherstone (my MP) hasn't made her mind up yet , Simon Hughes is not telling. An editorial in the Guardian says the principle of students sharing the cost of their degrees is correct: "The problem with Mr Willetts's policy is not that co-payment is wrong in itself; it is not. Nor is his system uniformly unfair to the poor; there is a lot of progressive support for the least well-off, both pre- and post-university, in his scheme. Nor are significantly higher fee levels out of the question in the right context. The problem is that the treasury has taken advantage of co-payment in university funding and has used it as a weapon to inflict insane levels of cuts on higher education teaching which graduates will now be asked to make good." The Telegraph calls the policy "a sensible compromise" : The arguments put forward by David Willetts in the Commons yesterday in favour of the reforms were persuasive, and while there are misgivings among some Tory MPs, they should be manageable. So if Labour maintains its opportunistic position, and seeks to vote down the new arrangements, all eyes will turn to the Lib Dems." But the Telegraph is concerned that "the middle class will pay six times more for degrees ". Malcolm McVicar, vice-chancellor at the University of Central Lancashire, attacks the Browne review , on which the government has based its new policy: "David Willetts has said that the Browne review will rank alongside the Dearing report and the Robbins report as one of the landmark policy reviews in British higher education. By comparison with Robbins and Dearing, Browne is puny. It is fundamentally flawed in at least four respects: the values upon which it is based; its outdated elitism; its antiquated instrumentality and its lack of understanding of how the modern English higher education system operates." Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, says it will "chase down" any Lib Dems voting for the tuition fees proposals announced by the coalition government, pointing out that all of them signed pre-election pledges not to do so. Here's the scary video . And on Twitter, rachel_wenstone says: "It's a disgrace that students in the current year 11 have no time to save for their higher education" Other stories from around the web Scottish university cuts could mean thousands of student places are lost Times Higher Education says private universities are eager to cash in on the student loan reforms SecEd considers the future of teachers' pensions And the Daily Mail reports on research that identifies a mean gene which makes some people stingy Blogs of the day "My son is gay" by NerdyAppleBottom is a great response to the pressure other parents put you under to force your child to conform. And Mike Baker has written about the axing of School Sport Partnerships . Competition Do you have a clever way of using technology to teach children at your school? Enter the Classroom Innovation awards by sending us a short video of what you can do. There is a primary and secondary category and each winner will get £7,500 of Asus computing kit. Find us on the Guardian website EducationGuardian.co.uk All today's EducationGuardian stories Follow us on Twitter and Facebook EducationGuardian on Twitter Judy Friedberg on Twitter Jeevan Vasagar on Twitter Jessica Shepherd on Twitter Claire Phipps on Twitter EducationGuardian on Facebook EducationGuardian resources The Guardian University Guide 2011 School league tables Postgrad tables The world's top 100 universities More education links on the Guardian Online learning and teaching resources from Learn Job vacancies in education More about Crib sheet Sign up to get Crib sheet as an email on Tuesdays To advertise in the Crib sheet email, contact Sunita Gordon on 0203 353 2447 or email [email protected]