Stanley Fish (him of interpretive communities) has opined in the NY Times that:

the days when a working-class Brit or (in my case) an immigrant’s son can wander into the groves of academe and emerge a political theorist or a Miltonist will recede into history and legend.

(h/t Maggi Dawn)

This is apparently going to happen because tuition fees are on the up.  And evidently this requires that everyone who opposes the increase must now, like Fish, shout from the rooftops: NO MORE POOR PEOPLE AT UNIVERSITY

Michael Shilliday has a post in response to this refrain over at Slugger O'Toole.  He asks:

Is it really that the policy is regressive, discriminatory and inherently unfair? Or are we having an uninformed debate, lead by party political combatants seeking an easy poll pleaser playing on the fears of people they aren’t giving the whole story to?

The thing is, as Shilliday points out, fees are on the up but they're not upfront.  They will be imposed after graduation.  I'm not saying this is perfect.  I'm not even saying that it's necessarily a good idea.  But I'm absolutely with Shilliday that the least helpful thing to be doing right now is going around announcing doom.  Higher fees may certainly put people off, but this effect can only be magnified by making it a media 'truth' that poor people won't go to university anymore. 

There is a rather reductive political tendency (ahem cough cough Labour party) to assume that lack of money is the sole factor in influencing what marginalised people are able to do.  Putting all the focus here misses out the mass of invisible barriers that serve to lock down things like access to university.  These are things like access to childcare, lack of assistance for mature students, and bureaucratic barriers like who can provide a reference.  There are fears of not fitting in, of not having the 'right' academic habits.  It isn't plain sailing once enrolled either: one of the biggest issues the equity advisers I knew battled was how to help students get their study done when their families neither understand nor sympathise. 

To give credit where it is due, many universities do acknowledge these issues and work to address them.  There are, for example, some fantastic learning support programmes out there.  And this is one reason why Fish's comment jars with me: elitism has decreased.  Rose-tinted glasses for the 'working-class Brit ... wander[ing] in the groves of academe' filter out a previous incarnation of the university system that was far more class-biased than it is now. 

Fees have probably trebled.  It's nothing to applaud.  It is something that now needs to be lived with and the agenda of those who supposedly care about disadvantaged students must turn towards supporting their participation rather than reiterating that they simply can't go.  Being poor in Britain is a constant process of being told that you can't.  Change doesn't happen by having more voices say it.