In terms of tuition fees, the Liberal Democrats have blown it. They have managed to make themselves look ridiculous. On Thursday, when the hurriedly thrown together Bill is voted on, some of them may vote yes, some of them may vote no, and some may abstain altogether. Why bother as in the end they will merely cancel themselves out. But this isn�t funny, it�s not some jolly jape. The university fees at the levels being considered will put many young people off higher education; they will blight lives, damage economic growth and quite possibly shrink the higher education sector as a whole. This really could be a defining moment for the coalition, something so bad it remains in voters' minds when the next election comes. Some people feel sympathy for the Liberal Democrats, we shouldn�t. Until the last election, they had always been an opposition party and their very public promises to abolish fees was meant as an opposition pose. They didn�t think for one moment that they might actually wield power and be called upon to take tough decisions about funding. But when they did get into office, with their eyes blinking in the headlights, the Liberal Democrats in reality only slightly watered down Tory thinking. So, even now, we are seeing yet another �fag-packet� special scheme � no doubt Liberal Democrat based - to help the very poorest students. Yet the whole policy is so bad, it is dangerous. Fees going up to �6,000 a year or tripled to �9,000 for some courses will stop people continuing their education. It's as simple as that though coalition ministers profess to doubt it. They say that because of the higher earnings-trigger for paybacks (�21,000) and special help for the poorest, everyone who has to repay the fees will be able to. Put to one side for the moment the somewhat perverse effect of this which may trap people into refusing promotions and actually consider the concept of personal debt. Ministers, from some of the wealthiest families in the UK, truly do not understand the deep-seated fear of debt in many households, particularly working class ones. Admitted, it's one thing to max out the credit card ahead of Christmas; entirely another to look ahead at many years of paying back huge sums of tuition money. If the argument is solely about the public deficit then why is it possible to obtain the same education in Scotland or Wales without the fear of sinking under massive personal debt? Yet what we really fear is that the timing and scale of the fees hike will have a far harsher effect on English universities than Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Cable, et al have so far admitted. Consider this as one route: cuts to university budgets start pretty much right away but in reality the higher fees take three years to kick in as subsequent intakes of unhappy fee-paying students arrive. Many will shun courses they would otherwise have taken, including the more liberal and humanities-based courses which will receive no government funding at all � courses which, though they may not have obvious jobs attached, would have helped Britain remain a cultural leader. Consequently, universities will face sharp, fast drops in their incomes. Meanwhile, and it is no secret that the pensions black holes faced by many universities are very serious indeed, many universities will show the other side of their financial fragility. Add it all together and we are looking at bankruptcies and closures � of courses, of departments, and, just possibly, of entire universities. Not surprisingly, the universities at risk will not be the ones which most ministers attended. The top-flight universities; Oxford, Cambridge and the larger provincial ones, will not only survive but may thrive. Upper-middle class parents will grumble, but dig into savings to buy their kids a proper start. A small number of the very poor, very gifted, will be given enough support, if they doth their caps, to keep them in the system. It is, of course, the struggling average to twice-average income families who will be most badly hit. What is truly needed is for the fees issue to be placed firmly in a general economic narrative away from the chatter of the �blame Gordon Brown and Tony Blair� brigade. Being entirely open, we have to accept that Britain is no longer earning it�s way in the world. We have relied on service and financial services sector growth that has been far too narrow; and on an unsustainable property and spending boom which has now partly deflated � with further to go. We need far more highly educated workers, not fewer. We need more people pushed towards university, not beckoned away from it. Clearly there is a funding problem but this should be addressed sensibly unlike these lashed up proposals which feel more like a short-term economic fix by a government desperate to be able to offer tax cuts by the next election. This is not a properly considered plan for the future of higher education and students are right to protest though some of them are going about it wrongly, not realising that for every vandalised police van or smashed window, tens of thousands of lower-income taxpayers are thinking �sod them!� However this very public back-tracking on a key election pledge is a disaster for the Liberal Democrats - but they deserve it. You cannot, for sake of a better comparison, run with the fox and chase with the hounds. They have taken a part in potentially the most desperate time for higher education in England. They may look ridiculous but what they are doing is not, it is unforgivable.