FREE education was the last bastion of the welfare state, where even the poorest kid can go to university.

But now we are seeing that this is eroding into a three tier system where degrees from the red brick universities are seen as second class degrees, and by increasing university fees, price is buying places, and the rich are guranteed debt free education while the poor are burdened with thousands of pounds worth of debt, and in scotland English taxpayers subsidise Scottish students, s t vaughan, Birmingham.