On 15 November Business Secretary Vince Cable, whose departmental responsibilities include those related to higher education, delivered a speech to the Girls’ School Association at its annual meeting in Manchester. Much of his address was devoted to the plight of taxpayer-funded universities – specifically English taxpayer-funded universities, which currently include Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, University College London, and the London School of Economics. By any university league-table you care to choose, these institutions are amongst the very best in the world. By common agreement they – along with all English taxpayer-funded universities – are grossly underfunded. The coalition government of which Dr Cable is a member had, earlier in the month, signalled its intention to legislate so as to permit all these universities to raise the maximum undergraduate tuition fee they can currently charge from £3,290 to £6,000 or – if they agree to certain conditions – to £9,000 per annu...