A Kings College graduate will be cycling 480km across the North Indian state of Rajasthan this November to raise more than £2,500 for The Institute of Cancer Research.

Rosanna Moseley, 23, who witnessed both her grandmothers die from breast cancer at a young age, joined the Charity Challenge team to help other cancer patients.

Moseley said: “According to the Office of National Statistics and Cancer Research UK, more than one in three people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime.

“This being so, I’m prepared to cycle any distance, endure hellish amounts of pain and jeopardise my ability to walk normally again for the slight chance that the money I raise will help advance research in the prevention and treatment of cancer.”

Charities like the ICR have a particular significance for Rosanna and her family. Her mother survived breast cancer ten years ago thanks to medical advances facilitated their research.

So far Rosanna has raised around 30% of her target sponsorship. She needs an additional £1500 by mid-September to qualify her for this impressive challenge. To sponsor, please visit www.justgiving.com/Rosanna-moseley.

Rosanna graduated from King’s this summer with a Human and Political Geography degree and will be starting her new job at Steelhenge Consulting in September.

Secondary education is most certainly a right, but university is a privilege. Those who continue to stress that higher education ought to be free at the point of use like a visit to the doctor are engaging in magical thinking. Three years spent at some of the world’s great academic institutions in the company of prestigious minds is something that must be paid for.

But the notion of a ‘graduate tax’ – as was recently proposed by Vince Cable in his first major speech on higher education – is not a fair or sensible means to footing the bill. A 2.5pc tariff on students post-graduation is but a levy on success, ambition and self-improvement. It is a form of misguided reparation and another state-led attempt at societal engineering. Moreover on the part of Cable at least, it is a cynical and poorly-plotted attempt to navigate around the ludicrous manifesto pledge to abolish tuition fees outright.

So long as loans continue to be provided, the tuition fee – capped or otherwise – remains the most just and meritocratic method of paying for a university education that places a tangible value on a degree. Regardless of background, those who possess the required academic nous to obtain a place can get a loan to pay the fees. Moreover, those who cannot afford to maintain themselves without aid receive grants based on parental income.

The graduate tax only serves the satisfy the more socialistic aims of the social democratic arm of the Liberal Democratic Party, whose who opposed the current coalition in favour of a ‘progressive’ government of all the losers. It reeks of Marxism. More than this, such a levy does not solve in any regard the most pressing problem facing our universities – the funding shortfall.

This can only be alleviated by raising the cap on tuition fees and granting academic centres greater freedom to set their own levels of charge within certain parameters. Wendy Platt of the Russell Group – which contains UCL, LSE and King’s College – has argued that ‘the fairest and most effective way to protect the quality of UK higher education is higher fees’.

Certainly, the great Yankee colleges demonstrate all that is possible with a model of privatisation and unregulated fees: no British establishment has the financial wherewithal to attract Tony Blair to teach seminar on faith in the world, as Yale did last year.

Yet our government ought not to be too hasty as to lift the lid on Pandora’s Box and allow the corporatisation of our universities through the escalation of charges to untenable and unsustainable levels. We must remember all that is good about the British educational system: its fairness and space for opportunity and social mobility. The tuition fee not only remains just and practical, but a slight increase in rates can accommodate the scope to address budgetary deficits.

The graduate tax is not the answer.

It is often difficult to convince people to attend amateur dramatics. The prospect of stumbled lines and monosyllabic delivery is not a big draw. However, every now and again there is an anomaly that becomes a reminder for why one does attend. Waiting For Lefty is this anomaly, and despite being performed entirely by students, is a truly captivating and enthralling production.

The play follows the social dynamics of a workers association in the face of low wages and potential job cuts, attempting to analyse the circumstances and emotions that lead workers to strike. While the play is too short to fully achieve this, the audience are presented with some beautifully acted scenes that continue to resonate after the final curtain has been drawn.

Sid’s (Folarin Akinmade) relationship with Florrie (Lucie Walker-Davies) is on the edge, as is Joe’s (Martin Leonard) marriage to Edna (Faye Merralls). The interactions within each of these relationships are impressive in their ability to draw in the audience.

While the cast is without a weak link, the performance of Akinmade stands out as exemplary. His portrayal of Sid is dynamic in its ability to capture both the light-hearted front of his character and the painful, angry emotion that lies beneath.

Such strong performances from the whole cast serve to overpower the more dubious aspects of the production. An originally American play, the students from Kings College London have made a slightly muddled attempt to fit the script into a British setting. Set in the 1930’s it is difficult to accurately ally the script to history and much of what is presented is more reminiscent of Britain in the 1980’s. Well, it would be if it wasn’t for the emphasis being on taxi drivers threatening to strike.

However, as previously mentioned, these details are subsidiary to the quality of the performance and do not stop Waiting For Lefty from being well worth seeing, even when lined up against professional competition.

Waiting For Lefty is produced and performed by The King’s Players, a Drama Society at Kings College London.