LNAT model essay: free university

It answers who should pay, not just whether university is good, and meets the fairness objection with a better account of fairness. 512 words.

1. The state should pay for most of the cost of university education. Graduates benefit from their degrees, but so does everyone else, and a system that treats a degree as a private purchase misunderstands who gains from it. Graduates should still contribute, but through the tax they pay later, in proportion to what they earn.

   NoteThe answer is given, then qualified with "most". The second sentence states the idea the essay will defend.

2. Society needs doctors, teachers, engineers and scientists, and all of them are trained at university. Graduates also pay more tax over their working lives, are less likely to need some public services and often create jobs for others. When a country educates its young people, it is investing in its own future, much as it does when it pays for schools. It would be odd to say that primary education is a public good but higher education is not, when the professions society depends on most are reached through it.

   NoteThe reason is broadened from the student to the whole society, and the comparison with schools tests the opponent's consistency.

3. Fees can also distort what students choose to study. If every student expects a large debt, courses that lead to well-paid jobs look like a safer investment than subjects such as nursing, teaching or the arts, whose graduates may earn less but whom society needs. Public funding lets a country decide which skills it wants and support the courses that provide them, instead of leaving that decision to individual students weighing their future repayments. Applications to nursing in England fell after its bursary was replaced by loans in 2017.

   NoteA second reason about the choices fees encourage, which adds a different kind of harm to the essay's case.

4. The strongest objection is about fairness. Graduates earn more on average than people who did not go to university. If university is paid for out of general taxation, a care worker who never studied helps pay for a lawyer's degree. That looks like a transfer from the less well off to the better off. If a degree mainly benefits the person who takes it, it seems reasonable that they should pay for it. This is the reasoning behind tuition fees in England, where most students borrow over £9,000 a year to pay them.

   NoteThe objection is concrete and uses a pair of people the reader can picture. It is the best version of the argument against.

5. But the unfairness depends on how the tax is raised. Under a progressive income tax, people who earn more already pay more, so high-earning graduates would repay the cost of their education many times over, while low earners would pay little. Fees, by contrast, charge every graduate the same price for the course, whatever they go on to earn, and the prospect of large debts may put off able students from poorer families. A tax system can do what the fee system claims to do, and do it more fairly. It also avoids sending eighteen-year-olds the message that education is a debt before it is an opportunity.

   NoteThe reply accepts the value behind the objection, fairness, and shows that the essay's position serves it better. That is a strong way to answer.

6. Paying for university out of public funds does have a cost, and a state may reasonably limit numbers or favour courses it needs most. The principle, though, is sound: because the whole society benefits, the whole society should pay, according to what each person earns. A graduate who goes on to earn a high salary will contribute far more through tax than any fee would have charged, and one who does not will not be punished for it.

   NoteThe conclusion concedes a practical limit and restates the answer as a principle.

What would make it stronger: Give one figure or example of the deterrent effect of debt, or say plainly that it is contested. The essay currently asserts it.