ABSTRACT
This paper tells a story with three elements. First is the development of a set of coherent theoretical propositions, emanating in part from the Robbins Report (1963), which underpin the intellectual case for income-contingent student loans. Second is the story of how long it took and how much campaigning until their gradual implementation in the late 1980s. Third, and by way of a grace note (perhaps a disgrace note), is how the British government, in introducing an ill-conceived loan scheme in 1990, missed a golden opportunity to take the Robbins proposals a large step forward.
