IF countries as disparate as Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Finland and Germany can turn their backs on tuition fees for university students, what stands in the way of this country doing so?

That is the question that thousands of students taking part in yesterday’s march organised by the Student Assembly Against Austerity want answering.

Parliamentary supporters of the fees system that weighs down graduates with tens of thousands of pounds in debt claim that it would be too expensive.

They should see the abolition of fees as an investment in the economic and intellectual life of the country rather than a personal subsidy to students.

Most MPs grew up studying for degrees without the burden of tuition fees and also benefited from student grants extended by their local authorities.

Having enjoyed the generosity of the state education system, they pretend that the conditions under which they studied are now unaffordable.

This subjective position betrays a mindset conditioned by the neoliberal orthodoxy that has taken root over the past couple of decades, with the goal of cutting government spending while reducing taxation on big business and the rich.

Taking an alternative position to this requires a different attitude towards the state’s responsibilities to its citizens and fresh thinking on people’s attitudes to each other.

The mass media, owned by a narrow section of extremely rich individuals, seeks to inculcate views that are essentially selfish.

Their daily output excoriates those they deem scroungers — invariably poor people and often from non-British backgrounds — and tries to whip up hostility against “taxpayers’ money” being frittered away on non-essentials.

Such penny-pinching does not extend to the tens of billions of pounds wasted on an unusable Trident “independent nuclear deterrent,” the legal but inexcusable tax avoidance of £25bn a year or the tens of millions of pounds spent on a parasitic, hereditary royal family.

It is restricted to issues that emphasise the importance of social solidarity, from the welfare payments necessary to help people survive to the services such as education that benefit not only individuals but society as a whole.

The Morning Star rejects this dog-eat-dog individualist approach and pledges to maintain its traditional stance in favour of free education for all.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett’s presence on the march will have been noted positively by many of the students taking part.

Her readiness to nail her colours, and that of her party, to the mast of opposition to tuition fees and education cuts stands in stark contrast to the abject betrayal of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats who took tens of thousands of student votes in the last general election on the basis of opposing any increase in fees.

They and their Tory partners in crime have engineered a situation where England now has the highest tuition fees in the European Union.

It is shameful in this situation that NUS England pulled out of supporting the march at virtually the last minute, citing “an unacceptable level of risk.”

No demonstration is ever totally risk-free, but the vast majority of those taking part did what they had come to do — march, protest and attend the final rally — without coming to harm.

Refusing to endorse the march was an abdication of responsibility, which weakens the struggle to end a system that discourages applicants from less well-off backgrounds and faces students with unmanageable debts at the end of their studies.