When students marched this week, I hope Cameron was embarrassed to see the faces of the generation he condemned

From April, Osborne’s National Living Wage comes in – but not for the under-25’s, which means that if you’re poor and about to leave school, you face either wage poverty or huge amounts of debt

Students shout slogans and hold banners during a demonstration to protest against cuts to grants, in London

A thousand-strong army of students has descended on central London today, and their message is clear: David Cameron screwed a pig and now he’s screwing them, too.

One again it’s low-income families in the crosshairs, particularly those with the gall of wanting their bright, young offspring the opportunity to go to university.

As it stands, more than half a million students are afforded a grant from the taxpayer to aid with their ever-increasing university costs. But the Government have now decided the poorest shouldn’t be helped in this way, and are axing it, bringing all prospective students in to a one-size-fits-all line.

Unfortunately for many of those youngsters, one size rarely does fit all, and the less affluent, debt-averse students will be increasingly put off from furthering their education.

It’s already commonly accepted that school-leavers from the richer parts of town are five times more likely to go to university than their poorer cousins, and policies like this will only continue the trend for campuses to be filled with the dull refrain of the middle class.

A study from the OECD also suggested the number of pupils in higher education from Sheffield and Nottingham was akin to that of Mexico and Turkey. Policies like this will go no way to redress that balance.

It’s fairly obvious that, whilst each student will now be afforded the same loans, only those from lower socio-economic backgrounds will need to call on every penny available to them.

I was a fairly typical student, leaving university with a 2:2 in a pointless subject, and starting a graduate job on £20k+. If I’d started university this year, and had taken the full £9,000 tuition loan, coupled with the full £3575 maintenance loan, I’d be facing debt repayments, after interest, of over £56,000. And, as an added insult, I could expect to be paying it back for nearly 23 years! I don’t see how I’d have justified that.

Imagine a kid from a poor neighbourhood looking at those figures; they’re surely anything but appealing. By taking the grant away, you’re only going to increase levels of elitism. But then maybe David Cameron just isn’t that concerned about that.

Last week we learned from the EHRC that the current generation of under-34’s face the worst economic prospects for several generations. The Conservatives bleat on about what they’re doing for the country’s prosperity, dragging us out of Labour’s failures, but they’re doing it at the expense of the generations that had nothing to do with those failures. We’re being punished, and the torture isn’t over yet.

From April, Osborne’s National Living Wage comes in – but not for the under-25’s, of course, which means that if you’re poor and about to leave school, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: wage poverty versus huge amounts of debt. Undoubtedly employers will seek out young, cheap recruits, and further limit the number of minds being drawn to higher education, before dispensing of them when they reach 25.

Another march was happening today, too. Junior doctors, threatening to strike for the first time ever, are standing up to swingeing cuts to their salaries.

Notice the ‘junior’ prefix to that. Because nobody’s asking the Tory-voting, high-earning senior doctors and hospital executives to take a pay cut. That wouldn’t make political sense. By assuring middle-income middle-class middle-England aren’t affected, the Tories are ensuring their own re-election by condemning an entire generation.

I can’t help but think it’s a case of false economy from the PM, and that this latest cut will only serve to negatively the impact the ‘long-term economic plan’ in the ‘long-term’. By pricing certain sections of society out of university, they’re limiting the diversity of creative minds coming together in the labs, lecture theatres and coffee shops of our great educational institutions. And it’s there that economy-saving ideas are born.