Does more expensive university fees translate into a better quality university?

“Education is a long-term investment for the future of a nation”. This belief is starting to “lose some of it past meaning” for Spanish journalist Iñigo Sáenz de Ugarte. In his blog Guerra Eterna, funding his assertions in economic data, points out that the debt of North American students has grown a 511% since 1999. He also speaks about the new British belief of “higher fees should translate into a better teaching quality”. Also points out: “We live in a global market. The best universities must compete for the best students, and that is only achieved by raising the quality, costs and fees. ”

Ugarte analyzes the impact that this situation is having in the global economy. He says that a person with a high quality education in the British society will spend more time under the influence of this debt and will have less money to spend in consequence. Actually if his salary does not grow in the next years and it does not reach a certain amount, it’s the government who will deal with the rest of the payment.

For this Publico’s correspondent in London this “increase has already a worrying feature in the economic bubble”: “I do not think that it can justify that the university studies of north Americans is now five times better than it was 22 years ago”. He adds: “the invisible hand of the markets is not making prices go down, offering the students a good deal for education”. He considers that the nowadays system “tends to rise prices”.

After this he claims that there is a widespread belief in society –no matter their country- in which higher prices with directly translates into a better quality. Reducing this price of these fees will make people suspicious. They will believe that that teaching that takes places is of a lower quality due to the lower prices.

Was not the cost of all this only 3, 290 pounds? There are more interesting assertions in “Guerra Eterna”. In 1998, English and Welsh governments allow university to charge up to 1000 pounds per year and student. Twelve years later, that amount was risen up to 3, 290 pounds. That was the maximum. Not all the centers reached this level, only the best ones. Ugarte points out that this statement was false and asked his audience a question: What company refuses to get the biggest income possible?

By the way, that limit of 3, 290 pounds per year and student is now at 9, 000. To reach that amount “the universities need to fulfill certain requisites”. “There is a considerable skepticism about if all these requisites are going to be really fulfilled by the universities”, says Ugarte. For him all this is due to the following reasons: “the government has discovered that the bigger the competition, the higher fees will be.”