The new rector of St Andrews University has launched a scathing attack on the Scottish Executive's move to drop up-front tuition fees.

Publisher and broadcaster Andrew Neil said the revised tuition fees package would create "a new Hadrian's Wall" between Scottish and English students.

Mr Neil, editor-in-chief of The Scotsman newspaper, made the criticism during the installation ceremony.

He said the proposals meant British Universities were "in danger of being ethnically-cleansed along anglo-Scottish lines".

The governing Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition last month announced a revised package for scrapping up-front tuition fees for Scottish students attending Scottish universities.

Scots attending English universities, or English students attending Scottish universities will still be liable under the new proposals.

'Aacdemic ghettos'

Opposition politicians and student leaders have condemned the deal.

Mr Neil said: "Scotland is now lumbered with a system of student finance whose impetus was not the desire to improve higher education but the imperative to keep Donald Dewar and Jim Wallace in government together.

"Higher education has a new Hadrian's Wall which will deprive English universities of bright Scottish students and risks turning Scottish universities into single-culture academic ghettos.

"British universities are in danger of being ethnically-cleansed along anglo-Scottish lines, with Scottish universities for the Scots, English universities for the English.

"A 'little Scotland' mentality has produced a disgrace over tuition fees which will inevitably produce a 'little England response'.

"Both are bad for the future wellbeing of British universities."

Mr Neil said that a graduate tax, under which students would pay for their studies depending on their income in later life, would be a better system to adopt.

'Variety of fees'

"Students should pay fees - but not while they are students," he said.

"There should be a variety of fees reflecting the cost of courses and future worth to students.

"But it would not force students to seek highly-paid jobs after graduation to pay off their debts.

"For some graduates on low incomes, there need be no payback at all, by their vocations, they would be paying back society in a non-monetary way.

"A graduate tax would spur equality of opportunity in higher education, give universities a fresh source of revenue and ensure that those who benefited most from a university education made a contribution to it when they were able to do so."