Quintin Jardine's blog

When I was in the PR business, my colleagues and I had as a client a whisky brand, so I learned a little about that business. I’ve forgotten most of it, but one thing that sticks in my mind is that there were two market-leading ten-year-old malts. The one that saw itself as the outright leader had a fixed policy of always being a little more expensive than its rival, so, whenever Brand B announced a price increase, Brand A would top it. (To hell with the customers.)

I couldn’t help thinking of that when I read this morning that Oxford and Cambridge are fighting to be first to raise their tuition fees to the upper annual limit of £9000, the thinking behind it being that if they don’t charge the max, they might not be seen as the best. Higher education being sold like whisky: isn’t that sad.