Far from reducing the quality of university private universities would increase it. Private Universities would go where most money is, and this is most likely to be at the top where a lot of money can be charged for the degrees. This is what Grayling's proposed New College of the Humanities is doing. The New College of the Humanities will charge fees of £18,0001. With the extra money they will be able to hire the best professors and have a very good student teacher ratio, better than 1:10, with the result that there will be a lot of one to one tuition and student-staff interaction to increase the quality of teaching2.  1 BBC News, “Academics launch £18,000 college in London.” 5 June 2011.  2 New College of the Humanities