Two vice-chancellors and a recent graduate give their views on Cable's proposals for universities
Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire
"We already have a graduate contribution system: if people get a premium in their wages for being a graduate, the current tax system makes them pay more. These plans would mean we might be asking graduates to pay twice for their education. We need to look carefully at how a graduate tax might work, and a key point is whether the money will flow back to universities.
"Introducing quotas for state school pupils is a strange notion when many universities recruit over 90% of their students from the state sector. The reality is that this is all a smokescreen, to take away from the real question: will everyone who's qualified and would benefit from it get a place at Vince Cable's universities?
"I'm really worried that there's no guarantee they will and that it will be those from disadvantaged backgrounds who will miss out."
Abbie Clark, recent graduate from Keele University in politics and sociology and currently looking for a job
"I went to a good university, but someone who did my degree at Oxford will have better job prospects, and is likely to end up being paid more - so a graduate tax does seem fairer than paying a set amount of tuition fees no matter what job you get. It almost makes your degree worth more - you get what you pay for. But if they're going to introduce a graduate tax then people who went to university before tuition fees should have to pay the tax as well. Reserving places for state school students also sounds like a good idea. I went to a comprehensive and knew lots of people with really good grades who were incredibly active outside school but still didn't get into Oxford, and I just couldn't understand why. Then at university I've met people from schools like Charterhouse who said most of their friends went to Oxford. You should have the same chance whatever your school background and reserved places might help that."
Nigel Thrift, vice-chancellor of Warwick university
"Graduates benefit significantly from their university education and so should make a greater contribution to the costs of their degrees, but I cannot see how a pure graduate tax would be a better or a fairer system. The current system is very similar to a graduate tax, with no upfront payment and graduates only paying back a small fraction of their income when it reaches £15,000. In fact, it has all the positive features of a graduate tax without the downsides. Potential problems with a pure graduate tax include the fact that it can be problematic to even define what is meant by a 'graduate'. And there would also be no way of recouping a tax from EU students or British students who live abroad - so a significant amount of revenue would be lost and incentives introduced for our brightest students to leave the country. Schemes which guarantee admission to a specified percentage of the highest achievers in school classes to the public university of their choice are now considered not only to have failed in meeting their objectives, but even to have been counter-productive. Any schemes based on this model risk diverting resources from other more successful programmes which our universities have introduced to help and support bright students from non-traditional backgrounds. The real issue is to ensure that we support less well off students from every type of school who wish to study at our universities and that is best addressed by bursaries."