By Mike Baker BBC education correspondent

When the legislation is introduced, probably in November, it will be the start of a huge parliamentary battle which will run right through into next summer.

That, in turn, will be a foretaste of the battle of the manifestos in the next general election.

Student fees will be one of the big issues on which the voters will have a real set of choices.

Assuming the legislation is passed, universities will set their new fee levels - up to �3,000 a year - in the prospectuses they put out in 2005 for students starting courses in September 2006.

The Conservatives have raised the stakes with their new policy

So the costs of universities will be very much on voters' minds for an election that will probably come some time in the spring of 2005.

The Conservatives have raised the stakes with their new policy which, although still lacking some detail, would mean abolition of fees and a halt to the expansion in university places.

Middle-class voters

The Liberal Democrats, of course, have long campaigned against tuition fees and, no doubt, feel a little aggrieved the Tories have blurred their distinctive position.

Tuition fees will probably play strongly with middle-class "swing" voters who will have to balance their horror at rising fee levels against the risks of their children failing to win a place if there is a halt to university expansion.

The issue of how to pay for higher education is a growing problem for education systems around the world

The talk at Westminster is that some 200 Labour MPs could be ready to rebel over top-up fees. Many of them represent marginal constituencies where anxiety over university costs could prove a decisive factor.

Most of the debate over tuition fees has been within a British context. Many thought the government took an unnecessary risk when they ended the principle of free higher education soon after their first election win in 1997.

Yet the issue of how to pay for higher education is a growing problem for education systems around the world.

It is no coincidence that the one country where universities are well-funded is the USA, where high tuition fees have long been a feature of student life.

Other countries have moved more reluctantly to charging students fees.

In Australia, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was hugely controversial when it began in 1989.

End of the wedge

Now, though, fees have become a fact of life. However - as many predicted - the introduction of fees were the thin end of the wedge.

Higher fees are not exactly popular with students

Fee levels have risen subsequently and now a top-up or differential fee system is under discussion.

In most parts of Europe university tuition remains free. However funding problems, especially in the "transition" countries of central and eastern Europe, are pushing policy-makers to consider charging students.

A recent education conference hosted by the Prague Society, which brought together education ministers and parliamentarians from across central and eastern Europe, found much of the discussion turned to university fees as a way of ending the funding problems of universities.

Many former eastern bloc countries have prestigious universities but most are suffering from the fact that almost all their funding is from the state.

One result of this under-funding is that many of the best academics and PhD students are being lost in a "brain drain" to the USA.

Most, like the Czech Republic, remain wedded to the principle of free higher education. But its neighbour, the Slovak Republic, is now preparing to charge fees.

The Slovak Minister of Education, Martin Fronc, told the Prague conference that his government was proposing student fees amounting to 10 -20% of university costs.

However the Czech Education Minister, Petra Buzkova, firmly squashed any suggestion that she might consider charging fees.

Yet Czech universities are finding it hard. Academic pay has not kept pace with other jobs.

Transition

One speaker at the conference said the pay of a tenured professor at Prague's Charles University was lower than the salary of a bilingual telephone receptionist.

These are difficult times for education systems in the former eastern bloc countries. The old state monolithic structures are in transition but finding new directions is not easy.

In that sense, the British higher education system is in a similar transitional stage.

Here there is a growing acceptance that the state either will not, or can not, meet the funding needs of a university system which is both expanding and trying to compete globally.

This is the reason why most university vice-chancellors have reluctantly accepted the case for top-up fees; like their Australian counterparts they do not want to be left behind by much wealthier American universities.

But the tradition of state-funded, free university education is still a principle many hold dear and there remains the unknown element - will students from poorer home be put off going to university by the fear of future debt?