Top-up fees must be introduced to ensure Britain's elite universities are able to maintain their position among the world's best, according to Tony Blair. The Prime Minister says the alternative is using an even greater slice of ordinary taxpayers' money to support the colleges. Our columnists discuss

GET TO WORK YOU LAYABOUTS

RUPERT SMYTHE SAYS: LAZY, whinging, drunken students always think they can get something for nothing well it was different in my day.

All these young pups have a wealth of opportunities open to them with their soft lifestyles but don't want to pay for the privilege.

Before they even start their university years of drinking and lazing about, they expect a year-long holiday, gawping at poverty-stricken people in India or Peru, moaning to them about how little money they have to spend.

Then they swan off to university to study soap operas, complete with TV, DVD player, mobile phone, hi-fi, designer togs and half of Ikea in the back of their Volkswagon Golf.

And they expect taxpayers, not to mention their overworked parents, to fund it!

When I was young, you learned a trade. If you were good with your hands, you became a craftsman. If maths was your thing, you worked in accounting. If you were tactical, you joined the armed forces.

And military service didn't do me any harm whatsoever.

All these soft university subjects, like media and cultural studies, won't bring us a workforce for the future but a nation overrun by hoards of over-analysing 20 somethings who can't change a plug and always have the flu.

Why don't they spend a few years working and saving to can take advantage of the privilege of a university education by paying their own way.

No wonder our industrial prestige in the world is diminishing. They want to buck up their ideas, put the books down and get a job that will strengthen our land.

KEEPING UP A PROUD TRADITION

RACHEL BRADMAD SAYS: THREE cheers for the students who barracked education secretary Charles Clarke and took a stand against proposals for crippling top-up fees.

Such a refreshing revival of the politically-active tradition of students is valuable and I, for one, wish them well in their fight.

If students are to be saddled with more than £20,000 debt when they leave university, how can they hope their degrees will improve their post-university life?

The burden of debt would prevent the next generation from getting on the property ladder, setting up a home or starting a family during their 20s when most people start to settle down.

No-one should be forced to go to university but anyone, from any background who wants to further themselves academically, should have the opportunity to do so.

These fees will deter students from families with no history of university education from making a break with that past the future would certainly not look rosy with a debt likely to be more than a year's wage.

They will also deter gifted, creative brains from following many arts courses, which are not specifically work-related, but provide a valuable contribution to the cultural life of this country.

No-one should know more about the vital role of university than the Government, most of whom became political figures for the first time in their student years. They should be pleased and proud to see today's students following their example and putting up a good fight.