This comment was posted to the BBC website regarding funding for British education in general:
Even the private American universities are much more accustomed to thinking of the student as a "customer" that needs to be served.
I am an American/British student at Oxford University reading for my undergraduate degree in modern languages and so have one foot on either side of the fence, so to speak.
I think one thing that is missing from all of the debates about top-up fees and the comparisons with US colleges and universities is that the US system profoundly differs from the British or continental European. For one thing, American colleges offer a much greater degree of freedom to their students in terms of the different types of classes they may take and earn credit toward their degrees.
I think that if UK universities wish to introduce the sort of fees that US colleges charge, they need to seriously consider changing the structure of their courses so that they serve the student, offer a "commodity" in the sense that US colleges do.
TP Thompson
