Re: The Truth of the Matter is this...
This is why our children no longer have free University Education
No it isn't. There's two reasons why our kids no longer have fully funded higher education. The first is that a certain grinning war criminal decided that 50% of school leavers should go into further education. Unfortunately, instead of useful subjects and apprenticeships, this meant a vast increase in the number of people studying, and unfortunately most of these additional places were for Medicated Izal degrees - sociology, journalism, hair dressing, sports science, media studies and the rest. It was this same Labour government that introduced tuition fees, because this massive increase in tertiary education couldn't be funded despite Blind Gordo's enthusiasm for shovelling billions of pounds of debt onto future generations (like the PFI that you mention).
The second reason why we don't have free further education is because that puffy faced lightweight we've endured as prime minister for the past five+ years decided that handing £12bn a year out as foreign aid was a better way of spending what limited resources we do have, and that despite a range of tax increases to try and reduce an unsustainable budget deficit, it was better to further increase tuition fees. I select foreign aid because it was a decision taken at the same time as increasing tuition fees, and because it has a similar quantum as a fully funded tertiary education system would have.
This has nothing to do with corporations, and everything to do with a political elite who for fifty years have been busy drawing up the ladder they themselves climbed, whilst pissing money away on crap. So the grammar schools were largely abolished by Labour party tossers who'd benefited from them. Maggie (IIRC) started the abolition of student grants (having enjoyed a scholarship at Oxford). Labour came back with tuition fees, with Blunkett loading debt onto graduates, unlike his own fully funded degree at Sheffield Uni. The current shower of piss have made things worse still (with the support of the now-extinct Liberal Democrats), despite all enjoying state support for their education.
So, make no difference which party you thing represents you, they all think the same, and they've all shat upon our higher education system, and in particular on the poor buggers going through it. Bastards the lot of them.