It is an issue so divisive that British Prime Minister Tony Blair came dangerously close to losing his government over it this week: how to properly fund the UK’s impoverished universities, while maintaining a reasonable level of access for students of varying economic backgrounds. “Past governments have preferred to posture, expanding the universities while allowing them to decline.” But Blair proposed, and then eased through Parliament, a controversial plan calling for major tuition hikes, which are expected to generate £1 billion of new revenue for the system by 2009.