> Personally, this feels fair enough - it's not clear why this sort of education should be subsidized. The core aim of the OU is to help build the economy & pr

> Personally, this feels fair enough - it's not clear why this sort of education should be subsidized. The core aim of the OU is to help build the economy & promote social mobility. One of the ways this can occur is via easy access to retraining as job sectors die (either locally or nationally). If a degree-level education is required, OU is one of the few realistic ways of acquiring that education. Substantially increasing the price of degrees closed this path off for many. Whether a person has a previous degree shouldn't really factor into an ability to retrain if necessary (and yes, successive governments since the 80s have given lip service to the need to provide for this and done nothing, allowing this was just more of the same)