Stop the Cuts - National Demonstration

That depends on whether demand is likely to outstrip supply. Free market forces will have a hand in this after all.

The mechanism that pushes prices upwards artificially as a function of uncertainty over quality is predicated on there being an imbalance in knowledge*- the seller knows more about the quality of the product than the buyer, and is incentivised to keep the price high as an indicator of the quality.

However, the quality of a degree course is transparent(ish), and comparable to competing degree courses.

• i.e. The Market for Lemons
  
  

That's well argued, but there are plenty of other reasons why this new market might not work too well. The guardian picks out a few. I'll also note that you'll have some very weird incentives operating on students: if they are planning a relatively high earning career then they'll have an incentive to pick a cheaper degree so they finish paying their loan off earlier *, but if they are aiming for a low paid public service life they might as well get onto the most expensive course they can...

In the right circumstances markets can be excellent systems for efficiently organising cooperative effort, but they can also be played like fruit-machines or twisted in into engines of chaos and destruction.

• students might have the information judge degree quality at the time they pick, but they'll struggle to judge what message having picked a cheap degree will send to employers years later.
  
  

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I hate the way it's been packaged up - the fee-paying mechanism and amount, bundled with a change in principle in how HE is funded. So any and every discussion can be derailed.

And (extent of) youth services and FE cuts are just plain wrong.

This. Too much effort and credibility has been wasted opposing straw-men misinterpretations of the financial impact on students, when we should have been focusing on the university-side impacts. It may be complex to the point of incomprehensibility*, possibly by design, but even the confusion is a good reason to oppose and fear the change.

*well, the more i look into it, the less i understand.