Why tuition fees are a con

I don't believe in tuition fees. My suspicion – and I concede it may well be wrong – is that it won't save the Government anywhere near the money it claims, whilst at the same time condemning the vast majority of young graduates to a life of poverty through till at least their forties.
This is why.
When a University charges a student £9000 for a year's worth of tuition, it will get that money up front. Students sign up to pay back these loans out of their post-graduation salaries at source, through PAYE once they earn above a £20,000/pa threshold (making the loans much more like an additional tax than a real loan as has been most people's fear).
The Government, in these dire financial times, won't have the money in the bank to fund these loans up front, so I suspect it will be packaging them up and selling them on as soon as they can to get some cash in the kitty.
The problem is putting a value on that debt.
Although apparently worth £9000, plus interest, the repayment method, and the threshold at which repayments start to take place, mean that anyone who buys that debt is taking a huge risk that it might never get repaid, or in many cases, only partially repaid or repaid over an infinite period – 40, 50 or 60 years perhaps.
So what's that debt worth on the open market? £500? £5000? Who knows, but chances are they're not worth anything like £9000 plus a number of years interest. In fact, it's my suspicion the Government is simply saddling itself with a load of toxic debt that will never be worth what it paid out, much in the same way as the US banks saddled themselves with sub-prime loans prior to 2008.
As a result, I predict higher tuition fees will actually cost the tax payer more in the short and long term than the current system, will ruin any chance that our current A-Level students will be drivers of growth over the coming decade, and will create a huge delay in those young people being able to afford to have children of their own. They simply won't have the financial stability in their lives while they save for a huge housing deposit whilst repaying these loans, creating a recipe for social unrest in the future when my generation comes to retire. There just won't be the young taxpayers there to fund any kind of welfare state.
The only positive to come out of this massive hike in tuition fees is that Universities will have some money to spend, and students will hold them to account – that is their money they are spending. The days of the four hours contact time Philosophy degree are sadly numbered.

I look forward to being proved wrong!