Government decided it doesn't want to pay for tertiary education. But, it does want UK students to get tertiary education, and they can't afford it. So, OK that circle can be kinda squared by "student loans" except of course the cost on these loans would sky-rocket. So, then government says ah, you can't charge more than this small fixed amount, and we'll never increase it because that's unpopular. For-profit lenders can charge as much as they can find an excuse for, but you educational charities too bad, you're not getting an extra penny.

So a good UK university cannot profitably offer education for UK students.

So for some of the best they'll focus on non UK students. These students aren't subject to a capped price we can't afford, so we can gouge them to make up for the lost revenue from home students.

But the usual "I'm not racist but..." people of course hate foreigners. How dare any of these people be different in any way. And so while some of them will pretend their hatred only extends to some foreigners it's always the same exact people who are aggrieved and want yet another excuse to hate foreigners.

This results in government efforts to make it harder to study here, and more expensive to teach students here. That way they slightly appease racists who weren't going to vote for them anyway and they feel justified.

I assume eventually this will collapse, and judging from Brexit nothing whatsoever will be learned by the supporter/victim class, the same gullible morons will keep falling for lies from the same people who feed off them. Certain that somehow it must be somebody else's fault their lives are shit while the leaders they're feeding are doing so well.

Just on a point of fact, fees went up by RPI-based inflation this year.

I find the rates high for what some (most?) students are getting.