¡°I guess it¡¯s fair to say that I¡¯m a bit of nerd for higher education policy and that I have a more than normal level of interest in politics,¡± Derfel Owen, director of academic services at University College London, .

He is not kidding. The blog goes on, in three separate posts, to ask what each of the three parties with the most MPs in the last Parliament ¨C the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats ¨C would do for the university sector. Mr Owen scores each party based on four policy areas: tuition fees, research funding, immigration and membership of the European Union. Marks are out of 10 for tuition fees and immigration, and out of five for the others.

The , and given the infamy of the party¡¯s U-turn on its pledge not to increase tuition fees, you might expect it to perform poorly on this category. ¡°The Liberal Democrats have gone for that old trick of not [having] a policy as such,¡± surmises Mr Owen, meaning they ¡°lose points for not having the courage to stick up for the fees regime they put in place¡±. Thanks to a strong performance on the other three areas, however, the party scores an impressive 23 out of 30.

The Labour Party, despite having a clear and costed tuition fees policy of reducing annual fees to ?6,000, also in this category. It is, Mr Owen declares, ¡°a cynical policy that rewards the wrong people¡±. Although leader Ed Miliband¡¯s pro-Europe stance earns maximum points on the immigration measure, it is not enough to save the party from slumping to a disappointing 16 out of 30.

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The , and its policy of having an in/out referendum on Europe does not play so well for higher education, Mr Owen believes. ¡°A prolonged renegotiation and a divisive referendum would limit the UK¡¯s access to EU research funding,¡± he writes.

The continuation of the Tories¡¯ ?9,000 fees policy is a positive, the blog says, and the party earns full marks in this category. Immigration, however, is a different matter.

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¡°There was some vague hope that the Conservatives might see the light and be persuaded by the Lib Dems to remove international students from the net immigration figures,¡± Mr Owen writes. ¡°No such luck!¡± Final score ¨C 17 out of 30.

A separate blog by Gill Wyness, lecturer in the economics of education at the UCL Institute of Education and a research economist at the London School of Economics¡¯ Centre for Economic Performance, took a slightly different view of the ?9,000 tuition fees policy.

¡°The idea was to transfer the burden of the cost of higher education from the taxpayer to graduates and to make the system more competitive: it was expected that only the top universities would charge the full ?9,000 per year, while the others could compete on price as well as quality,¡± on the LSE¡¯s British Politics and Policy blog.

¡°The reforms¡­failed to deliver a more market based sector: there is almost no variation in tuition fees, with the average fee standing at ?8,735 per year,¡± she concludes.

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Chris Parr

Send links to topical, insightful and quirky online comment by and about academics to chris.parr@tesglobal.com