[DanaC]

Not exactly. You have to fulfil the university's entrance requirements. Universities get a large part of their funding from central government. They also charge tuition fees; however there is a limit on what they can charge: so-called 'top-up fees'. They get a certain amount for the number of students they take (this is limited) and each student is charged top-up fees. At present the limit on how much can be charged to the student is somewhere around £4k a year. The student can choose to pay that themselves or take a low interest student loan which is not repayable until they are earning above 15k a year. On top of that they can choose to apply for a maintenance loan and grant: a combined figure of up to £5.5k a year depending on their level of household income. As my income was below the threshold I was able to apply for the full amount. approx £3k a year loan and £2.5k a year non-repayable grant.

I have come out with a debt of around £20k. But for that I got 3 years of tuition at a Russell Group university in a school of History ranked 31st in the world.

It is heavily subsidised through progressive taxation. Even without the non-repayable grant element, the cost of tuition is garnered mainly through government money and overseas students with the UK student themselves paying (either at the time or through repayment of loans) a fairly small portion. Who is likely to pay higher levels of taxes? Graduates who have benefitted from that subsidy.

This is a fairly recent development. Up until a few years ago, UK students were not expected to pay towards tuition fees at all. And they could apply for a maintenance grant of £5k a year (non repayable). The grant was abolished over a decade ago. Top-up fees were introduced a few years ago. One of the ideas put forward as a way of getting money into the system without making students pay at the time was the Graduate Tax. This wuold basically have meant the old system remained in place, but graduates would pay an extra bit of tax once they were earning above a certain amount. This would mean the people who had taken from the system would retrospectively pay for it. I would have preferred that option. But c'est la vie.