Tertiary education will be no more or less available than it is now.
You pay for it after you have finished your degree and when you are earning over 21k and can afford it.

The difference between now and the future is that you will be paying more over a longer period of time. You will be paying it back with the money you will have earnt from the well paid job you will have got because of the degree you will have studied for.

Hopefully it will act as a deterrant to people, like me, who went to university for want of anything better to do, studied very little for a degree of no value (business studies 2:2) and now find myself teaching English in Spain and not paying back any of my student loan because I don't earn enough money.

It is equally available to everyone and everyone will have to pay it back. What I am worried about is that market forces will dictate that the cost of good, popular degrees will be more than for shitty joke degrees. Thus people will be tempted to study something crap like Business Studies because it is cheaper than say Medicine.
(Little Animal Disaster isn't finishing what he started, Thu 23 Dec 2010, 19:29, Reply)