The justification for charging tuition fees, with reverse triple lock interest, and resulting 9% extra income tax, is the graduate premium. This, you are told, is the extra lifetime earnings from which you will benefit as a degree holder. And we believe that to be between £100,00 - £150,000 over the course of your career. But “believe” is the operative word. The thing is, we don’t know. But the government does. That’s because they have something called LEO data - Longitudinal Education Outcomes. And it tracks the university, course, and earnings of nearly 40 million people. Here’s the kicker: they won’t release the full data to the public, to you. Only to pre-approved researchers. And even then, they don’t get the whole dataset. That’s because pressure groups that represent universities have lobbied for it to remain private. They say you can’t measure the value of an education in a salary. That it’s about the soul and the mind and enrichment and growing up. And I agree with them, if only for the fact that they did have a really specific idea of the value of an education when they were taking my money. And indeed the government does too: +9% on my marginal tax rate. So the ask is simple. Release the records. Let graduates make an informed choice about the actual value of their degree. They just have to press publish. What have they got to hide?