Tuition fees of £9,250 and rising won’t survive. Nor do they deserve to. The only question is whether they are abolished entirely or whether cross-party support can be built to keep fees to between £1,000 and £3,000, as per their introduction 13 years ago.

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How did we get from the idea of a reasonable contribution to the cost of university tuition – the principle of the Blair reform of 2004, for which I was largely responsible – to today’s Frankenstein’s monster of £50,000-plus debts for graduates on modest salaries who can’t remotely afford to pay back these sums while starting families? And why did we give university vice-chancellors a licence to print money, and pay themselves £400,000 salaries, in a decade when austerity has dominated every other public service, including schools and hospitals?

It is a morality tale of opportunism and greed on the part of vice-chancellors, and one thing leading to another, in a typically unplanned British way, on the part of successive governments. It all began 30 years ago, with seriously underfunded universities trying to work out a survival strategy in the face of Margaret Thatcher’s dislike of all things public sector – particularly universities, after Oxford refused to grant her an honorary degree in 1985. In an act of semi-privatisation, the Thatcher government removed controls on fees for international students. There were campus demonstrations, but this sensible deregulation soon established a vibrant market for students from overseas, giving higher education a vital source of non-state income. It also converted the vice-chancellors to the cause of fees for home students.

Tony Blair followed, with his mantra “education, education, education”. But he really meant “schools, schools, schools”, which were the political priority of Middle England. When the vice-chancellors realised that they were not New Labour favourites, they agitated hard for fees higher than the modest £1,000 at which they were introduced in 1998. As Blair’s head of policy, I was on the receiving end, and persuaded him that he should forge a new settlement for university funding – copying the Australian scheme of part-payment by students on a sliding scale to reflect cost and benefit, with repayments made only after graduation through the tax system, with no interest. That way, concerns about access for poorer students could be met, while providing a vital new source of income for the universities.

A new cap was set at £3,000, but the intention was that fees would vary between £1,000 and £3,000, depending on the cost and benefit of the individual course. I expected that this would enhance student choice while making students more demanding and universities more responsive. Virtually none of this happened. The vice-chancellors formed a cartel and charged £3,000 for almost every course. Students continued to choose universities and courses mostly based on where they could get in with their A-level grades. The quality of university teaching remained patchy, and often got worse as lecturers focused on their research ratings – upon which research funding was based – while neglecting their students who had no choice but to pay. Many students never see a professor from one month to the next, and are required to produce far less work than they did at school.

Soon after “top-up fees” bedded down, with little apparent student opposition, the vice-chancellors pulled off what they thought was a brilliant coup, but which proved to be their undoing. They persuaded David Cameron and George Osborne that they were still cash-starved and needed even higher fees. In Osborne’s case it was a more Machiavellian calculation for fees to entirely replace direct grant funding, freeing up billions to cut taxes for higher earners.

This time student opposition was intense, directed particularly at Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, who had fought the 2010 election promising to abolish fees yet voted to treble them as their first major act in coalition with the Tories. There were protests in central London, and deep resentment as the vice-chancellors maintained their cartel and increased fees to £9,000 for virtually every course.

Similar opposition was growing in the US to ever-increasing university fees. Bernie Sanders tapped into it with his campaign pledge to abolish fees entirely. Jeremy Corbyn took note, and his pledge to abolish fees was a key part of the youth surge that cost Theresa May her majority – and maybe, ultimately her premiership – last month.

Some Tories publicly branded Corbyn’s move a “bribe”, a phrase they never use in public to describe the “triple lock” they offered pensioners. In politics, respect follows power, and they will soon change their tune: it is only a matter of time before they realise that tuition fees at their current level are politically dead. Damian Green – a sensible, centrist Tory – has admitted as much with his call for a “national debate” on fees, which can only end one way.

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The greed of the vice-chancellors sealed their fate. Congratulating themselves on their supposed entrepreneurial success, they increased their own pay and perks as fast as they increased tuition fees, and are now “earning” salaries of £275,000 on average and in some cases over £400,000. Not only students, but lecturers, look at this with disgust.

And three months ago the government made fees even more egregious by imposing a whopping 6.1% interest charge on student debt. Debt levels for new graduates are now so high that the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that three-quarters of graduates will never pay it all back.

What next? I have asked the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the fees cartel. I hope they break it up. It is important that this authority acts because the so-called Office for Students – the new regulator of the universities – has already been captured. Last week the government appointed Nicola Dandridge, the chief lobbyist for the vice-chancellors, as chief executive.

Within a few years – probably after the next election, maybe before – popular pressure will force a cut in the fee level. In my view, fees have now become so politically diseased that they should be abolished entirely. In return, the Home Office absurdity of including overseas students within the net migration figures should be ended, so that universities can compete on a level playing field with the US, Australia and other European countries for the expanding international market for higher education. As part of this bargain, universities will have to commit to providing a minimum number of places for British students.

This will be a genuine entrepreneurial challenge to the vice-chancellors. If they are as good as they say they are, there may be no need for additional government funding on top of the subsidies universities get already. The next generation of students and graduates will be spared crippling debts, and the cause of social mobility and fairness will prosper again.