Do think tanks ever think about the consequences?

Two news stories have bemused me this week and both have come from reports from think tanks.

The first was reported on Timesonline on Thursday. The think-tank Policy Exchange announced that middle class parents should be forced to put up their house as collateral against their children's student loans. In addition, they also suggested an interest charging private loans scheme for wealthy students which would be repaid when they left university, rather than when they reach the earnings threshold.

Two things come to mind when I read this story. Firstly, who are they to judge who is a middle class parent or wealthy student, and secondly, in this age of recession and record house repossessions, what if the so-called middle class parents are renting a house?

Not content with brandishing class tags on families, the think tank also said that tuition fees must rise to £5,000 a year "in order to protect the quality of universities", or rather, what I personally believe, to plug the gap in spending scaled back by the government.

Surely if this think tank's plans were taken seriously, it would just be an excuse for universities to attract more foreign students as they are 'lucrative buisness'. It is disgraceful that foreign students are charged so much anyway when they are just doing the same course and same work as the rest of the student body.

Here's an idea: instead of worrying about maintaining the quality of universities do something about it. There are numerous course and subjects at university which have a reputation of being the 'easy way out' while the student decides what they want to do with his or her life. A good portion of these students will go through three years of university with doing just enough work to get by and turning up to just enough lectures to avoid getting kicked off the course. Why not prevent these people from going to university in the first place and attract those who really want to?

The UK could even adopt systems like that of other countries. In Brazil only those who pass an entrance exam are admitted and receive free education. In Italy students pay low tuition fees and are based on the wealth of a family. they acitively encourage children from porr families to go with scholarships handed out in different regions. This is all, of course, based on working hard.

Excuse me for pointing this out, but the decision on whether children go to university or not should not be decided on a class or wealth system, but whether they are intelligent and wish to do a course that could benefit both them and the economy.

The second think tank story I came across was today on the BBC News website. A think tank has said that the working week should be cut to 21 hours to help boost the economy and improve quality of life. it is claimed that the reduction in hours of work would help to ease unemployment and overwork.

Now, I'm not saying for a second that the people at the New Economics Foundation are a bunch of work shy so and so's, but how an earth do they envisage working less will help heal the economy?

The average working week is 37.5 hours so if this is cut down to 21 hours a week, people will on average, not be working for about a third of the year, which means a hefty chunk out of the pay packet. What do people do when they realise they don't have enough to live? That's right, they find an additional job. This will take you back to square one with unemployment figures. In addition, if people are out of work will they all necessarily have the skill set to fill the new vacancies by those working 21 hours a week?

The recession in this country hit the manufacturing and construction industries the hardest with over 115,000 jobs lost in the first three quarters of 2009 alone. I can't imagine someone with manual skills wanting to sit at a desk in a suit all day attempting to sell somebody life insurance.

It strikes me that this think tank were under pressure at 4.30pm on a Friday to come up with some sort of suggestion to ease unemployment in the UK. They came up with a few half baked suggestions, fell upon this gem and exclaimed "yeah, that'll do," before sodding off to the latest trendy wine bar and complaining that their jobs make them too tired.