In these pages last week, Rahul Mansigani described the Browne Review as "flawed and unjust". He argued that the projected increase in tuition fees risked making Cambridge "a preserve of the privileged", and turning education as a whole into "a cold financial transaction".

One hesitates to contradict the CUSU president; however, when he is so manifestly wrong he forces our hand. Mansigani, like so many other opponents of the review, has fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of higher education, and the duty of students to take responsibility for their own choices and privileges.

Pace, Rahul. Increased fees need have no effect on access: students from poor families will be no less able to pay fees, as the government will continue to demand payment not from parents but from graduates. Lord Browne has recommended that student loan repayments do not start until the debtor is earning £21,000, a salary on which most twenty-somethings can live comfortably; the brunt of fees will be borne not by students’ families but by students themselves, and only when they can afford to pay.

Higher education remains free at the point of delivery, and there is no reason for even the poorest families to avoid it. The rise in tuition fees will not affect maintenance costs, so the day-to-day expense of student life will stay the same; indeed, the report recommends significant rises in grants to students from poorer families.

Not only will higher tuition fees not shut the disadvantaged out from university, they will correct a historical injustice which has long favoured the elite. It is a gross spectacle for public money to be spent on giving already well-educated young people the tools to boost their future earnings. By any measure, university students are far better-off than their contemporaries who skipped higher education; to subsidise their gilded lifestyles is unacceptable at any time, let alone in a period of acute stress on the Exchequer. Public money is being spent on entrenching the traditional supremacy of the well-educated elite.

A conservative mindset has convinced us that university education should be free; a rational look at the issue shows that this view is unfounded. Higher education is a way of acquiring highly specialised skills and knowledge, not a fundamental universal requirement: it cannot, therefore, be treated in the same way as the education of schoolchildren. Its costs are high, and the benefits to society are far less than the benefits to its participants.

There are two reasons people go to university. One is to deepen their knowledge of their chosen subject, under the tutelage of world-class experts in the field – surely anyone driven by passion in this way recognises that their education is worth paying for? The other, perhaps more common, reason is to enhance one’s employment prospects. Like it or not, this is education undertaken for financial reasons, and it is only fair that this boost to future salaries should be paid for with a part of those earnings.

Perhaps the most vicious gripe of anti-Browneites is that variable fees will create a ‘market’ in higher education. It is easy to see why this might sound unappealing, but its effects could become hugely beneficial to the university system. Students will have to think carefully about what they want to get out of higher education; and universities will have to strive to give it to them. If weak institutions are offering courses with little educational or practical value, students will not pay £20,000 to do them, and they will fold as they should. Students will be more vocal about demanding value for their money, and universities will increase efforts to advertise their assets and attract custom. A regulated market in higher education will help to lessen institutional complacency, and give students the ability to make realistic choices about their future.

It is ultimately futile to oppose a substantial rise in tuition fees; like it or not, it is inevitable. Fees – introduced by Labour, extended by the Conservatives and supported by the Lib Dems – are the only realistic answer to the shortfall in university funding caused by the fiscal crisis and the explosion in student numbers. Let students pay for the world-class education they get, and let universities prove themselves in a competitive education market. Finally, let us end the unfairness of having the public purse pay for our over-privileged educational experience.