Quite often in Westminster circles people discuss the question of how many people should go to university. Should it be 5% of the population, 20%, 50% or 100%? There is a tendency among conservatives to say that too many people go to university.

I find the discussion pretty academic because it seems to me that governments should not set a target for university attendance. Instead, we should leave the percentage going to university up to the market. Let's leave individuals to make rational choices about whether to go or not, based on whether they think the cost is worth it. The Labour government is quite right to have introduced tuition fees, and the Tories have been frankly shameful in opposing the government's Thatcherist policies on this. If students have to pay the full economic cost of university tuition - in the form of loans they pay off when affluent - they make better choices than if the state just signs blank cheques. Instead, the Tories think they know better than the market how many people should go to uni. They don't.