I am a huge fan of Danny Dorling. He has brought geography alive for those of us who suffered it at school. So I am sorry to see the respect is not mutual (Let’s say Auf Wiedersehen to our rip-off tuition fees, 19 December).
In his attack on a report I wrote back in 2015, he says it is “not true” that Germany sends a lower proportion of young people to university and spends less on each one. When we published our report, the figures were 493,000 first-year enrolments in Germany and 670,000 in the UK. The amount spent educating each student was €13,665 in Germany and €16,500 in the UK.
More recent figures show increases in higher education participation in Germany, but the UK continues to do better. On key measures like the number of people under 30 obtaining a “tertiary” qualification, the UK hovers around the OECD average while Germany is some way below it.
Moreover, the growth of student numbers in Germany has brought financial pressures. Andreas Schleicher, the German-born director of education and skills at the OECD, says “rising participation has far outstripped the increase in public funding. The German funding model is simply not sustainable.”
Danny Dorling’s goal is ideological, to prove tuition fees are unnecessary. It is possible to run a good higher education system without regular fees, as Scotland and Germany do. But it is wrong to say there are no consequences for student numbers or educational resources.
Nick Hillman
Director, Higher Education Policy Institute
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