The cost of being a student

Today we had an open meeting on marketing at our university. It is slightly disheartening that all our very labour intensive work with schools, teachers, parents and careers advisors may all be rendered entirely pointless in the face of the removal of the cap on tuition fees in 2010. We know already that several universities are discussing raising fees to £15k, minimum. We know that we can't do this (and wouldn't want to price any potential student out of our courses). But it does make me incredibly uneasy. The picture of UK university education in three years' time is going to be unrecognisable to us Brits.