The number of people applying for university has this year topped the record set before tuition fees were introduced for the first time. If fees do not put young people off, do the arguments against them still stand? Liz Dodd put this question to leading figures from Catholic universities Cardinal John Henry Newman’s ideals in his volume of lectures, The Idea of a University, underpin the modern Catholic higher-education system. Newman believed that academic training was an objective good that formed citizens and was certainly not a route to a specific career. Yet the introduction of tuition fees, saddling students with debts for up to 30 years, has invariably concentrated the minds of students and those running universities. All Catholic universities are either already charging or