To be fair, this is what I expected, and realistically it's what we need. People may disagree, but to ensure an international level of standard, university funding needs to increase. We're currently on the route of tuition fees, and there's no turning back, and people need to realise this.
The issue, however, is finding a solution to ensuring students are able to attend university without being excluded due to costs. This, however, does not mean removing the debt students will leave university with. There is nothing wrong with leaving with debt, and personally I'm beyond puzzlement as to why so many are fearful of leaving with debt. The repayments that students will make are meagre at most and will have no real impact on their day to day lives when in employment.
The most obvious way forward is through student loans, but of course with universities all charging the top end £9,000 amount, the government will have a shortfall of funds. That said, it's had a shortfall of funds since before tuition fees were introduced, and part of the reason why tuition fees were introduced was due to lack of funding for higher education. Additionally, it's not feasible to foster a 'saving' concept where parents save and invest for their children's university education as is the case in the US.
What is additionally wrong is how the government is trying to put caps on the number of international students coming into the UK for higher education. Those students pay far more than home students and thus cross-subsidise higher education. Many courses cost more than £3000 or even £9000. I read a recent report that tuition in Oxford/Cambridge can cost up to £15000 per student per year due to the one-on-one tuition. In other universities where one-on-one isn't present, the cost of scientific courses or resource-intensive courses is still more costly than £9000 per year per student.
Also, let's not forget that all this funding isn't just for teaching. It's also for the extra resources available to students on campus. It's for the libraries, it's for the subsidised on-campus gyms, it's for the maintenance of the buildings and everything else we take for granted on campus.
Many people may feel their course isn't worth £3000 per year, let alone £9000 a year, but it's important to realise that due to the current 'mess' we have gotten ourselves into, no one is just paying for their course, we're all in some ways paying for each other's courses and the whole package we receive on campus. It's not free to have a library, to have 24/7 security, or a careers office with extensive industry links. It's easy to say that I'm not getting a lot in terms of teaching for what I'm paying, but I am getting so much more than just that, and it's the whole package which does make the cost very much worth it.