The issue is an emotive one for Labour, as several of the party's leading lights benefited from free university education.
They are entitled to subsidies, state jobs, land grants, and free university education, the latter part of an effort to reinvest gas wealth in human capital, not just in shiny buildings.
More damaging is the fact that the devolved Scots now enjoy important perks, such as some paid-for medicines and (soon) free university education, that the English don't preferential treatment that violates a deep if illogical English expectation that government should treat everyone everywhere the same.
The provost of University College, London, Malcolm Grant, said better-off students who did not need public loans would be able simply to bypass the funding system - so they would get a free university education and universities would get no financial benefit from their participation.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | Universities ponder Tory fee plan
Germany has the added attraction of dispensing university education free to foreigners as well as to domestic students.
On 12 March SNP leader Alex Salmond vowed to keep university education free for Scottish students, if his party wins the Holyrood election in May.
The key ingredients for economic success, he thinks, are boosting skills (which is why he wants university education to be free) and concentrating on Scotland's competitive advantages.
Their food is subsidised through the Mercal mission, and their children's education is free up to university level.
His University of the People offers free higher education (not counting the few hundred dollars it costs to process applications and mark exams), pitching itself to poor people in America and the rest of the world.
The key was mandatory, free public education, says Norma Basallo, of the University of Havana.
Or how about the experiment suggested by Sir Peter Newsam, a former head of London University's Institute of Education, for initiative-free zones, where head teachers are left to run schools without constant meddling from local authorities and ministers?
Stanford University has been active in online education, giving away many courses for free on iTunes.
As Professor Lindsay Paterson of Edinburgh University pointed out in Monday's programme, education has never been free.
It has spent lavishly on transport, health care and education: Scottish university students pay less than English ones, and oldsters are cared for free of charge.
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