Vince Cable is to be credited with coming up with new and more radical solutions for resolving the two key dilemmas in higher education – the growing elitism in Britain’s top universities and the unfairness of tuition fees especially if they were to be significantly raised (as the top universities are clamouring for).   But his proposals don’t go far enough to break through the class barrier and also contain some notable downsides. Access to the 20 Russell Group elite universities/colleges mirrors what has been happening to the distribution of income over the last two decades.   Just as the wages of the less well-off have flatlined over this period whilst the rewards and wealth of the super-elite have soared, so the dividing line between poor and rich in access to the top universities has hardened further.   Last year only 2.6% of the 2,800 intake to Oxford came from disadvantaged areas, 3.5% in the case of Cambridge, and 5% in the case of Bristol, LSE, UCL, King’s College, London, and Imperial College.    15 years ago bright children from the richest homes were 6 times more likely to get a place in the top third of universities; now they are 7 times more likely to do so.

Measured against that index of discrimination, Cable’s proposal of quotas for State school pupils to break the private school stranglehold on Oxbridge is a welcome and brave one.   It would also have the merit of spreading pupils from richer households more widely across the State sector, thus diminishing the class exclusiveness of the private schools, since fee-paying would then no longer semi-monopolise access to the top universities.   But the quotas need to be spelt out and wide-ranging if they are not to be merely token concessions.   The aim, with a timetable to match, has to be real equality of opportunity irrespective of class or background.

Cable’s other main initiative – a progressive as opposed to a flat-rate graduate tax to replace the extremely contentious rise in tuition fees – is also worthwhile.   Again the progressivity needs to be made plain, not merely proportionately more being contributed by the higher-paid according to earnings, but a higher rate for each main higher band of earnings.

That does however leave several practicalities unanswered.   How will universities be funded in the next two transitional decades before the graduate tax is fully functional?   One suggestion might be that previous recipients of a degree should make some small regular contribution over this period to pay back some of the benefits they have received.   Then there is the real risk that the insertion into an otherwise quite radical speech of encouraging private university provision – no doubt under Tory pressure – may open up a US-style higher education market in which the rich can once again buy privilege and exclusivity.