If policy success were measured in good intentions, then the vast majority of governments in developed countries would be able to tubthumpingly laud a near-universal record of success.

Very few, perhaps none, attempt to do wrong. But good intentions are not enough, and that is why policy often fails. The test of all governments, at or near that point of failure, is how they respond. Do they double down, or do they hold their hands up?

The Scottish Government is rapidly nearing such a moment in the area of university tuition. University tuition, for the governing SNP and for all of its opponents, has become an intractable issue. It is one of those policy areas which has been permanently hot for a quarter of a century, since the limited introduction of fees by the first Blair government in 1998.

The level of debate on tuition fees has been, to put it charitably, primitive. Less charitably, hysterical. I know, from my time helping to create party policy a couple of decades ago, that the Conservatives were petrified of taking what they believed to be a sensible and sustainable position on tuition fees, and as an outsider looking at that party’s policy today, it seems little has changed. Labour and the Liberal Democrats both have their own tuition fees scar tissue from their times in government.

The SNP, learning a political lesson if not an economic or social one, treats tuition fees as a semi-religious shibboleth. Alex Salmond’s boulder may have been removed from the grounds of Heriot-Watt University, but its words - “The rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scotland’s students” - remain etched in metaphorical stone.

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It is a challenge, in that political environment, to make sensible decisions, and even more of a challenge to change course when a populist policy fails. And, yet, there are clear signs that Scotland’s "free" tuition policy (otherwise known as funded by taxpayers) is failing.

The starting point to our debate is based on a misunderstanding - sometimes witless and sometimes wilful - of how tuition fees work at universities south of the Border. Contrary to the received wisdom, universities in England do not man the gates when freshers arrive, wielding card machines and demanding that they empty their pockets and pawn their watches before they enter a lecture theatre. In fact, university in England is, to coin a phrase from another public service, "free at the point of use".

Students at English universities pay absolutely nothing for their tuition until they earn over £25,000, and only nine per cent on all earnings above that level. So, a graduate earning, say, £35,000 will pay nine per cent of £10,000 every year, or around £75 per month. They will probably pay more for their Sky subscription.

The more they earn the more they pay, and those who earn the most as a result of the opportunities their university degree has created will probably repay their whole loan before the 40-year expiry date at which it is wiped out without consequence. At least half, according to government projections, will never repay the loan, because they will never earn enough to do so.

Tuition fees in England are, therefore, the dictionary definition of a win-win. Logic would dictate that, in Scotland, students and graduates are even better off, since they enjoy all the gain with none of the pain.

Alas, no. The consequences of the Scottish Government’s "free" tuition policy have been highlighted again by its decision to make cost savings by reducing the number of first-year university places it chooses to fund.

The Herald: Alex Salmond was determined Scottish students would never have to pay tuition feesAlex Salmond was determined Scottish students would never have to pay tuition fees (Image: PA)

There is a perfect storm afoot. Governments, for decades, have had a strategic priority of pushing more school-leavers towards university rather than college or the job market. Augmenting that, substantial grade inflation at Higher exam level has expanded the number of students meeting the entry criteria. And yet, the available spaces are limited by politics (governments are in control of how many "free" places they will fund) and economics (universities, to stay afloat, are forced to expand the number of non-Scottish, and therefore fee-paying, students).

For Scottish children who attend independent school or whose postcode does not meet social deprivation criteria, the Government’s attempts to engineer preferential treatment for those historically excluded makes the path even more challenging. Crowds of aspirational students are trying to cram through the door marked "Scottish kids’" only to find it closed before they reach the front of the queue.

There is an obvious consequence, which is already evident particularly amongst the best and brightest students who wish to study the most sought-after degrees; they go south. They go south, and they stay south. They settle south, they marry south, they have children south, they live south and they pay taxes south. Scotland loses them in what can be thought of as an accidental brain drain at exactly the time we cannot afford it, with an expanding non-working population being subsidised by a contracting working population.

What to do? Well, we could do nothing, stick with the current policy, and cross our fingers, and in truth that is precisely what the Government is likely to do. Or we could have a sensible conversation amongst the politicians and the electorate.

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Perhaps we might fund some tuition through our taxes, and ask graduates to pay the rest, even if that were a stepping stone to full funding. Perhaps we would be prepared to fund some high-value degrees but not others, if we deemed them economically and strategically critical. Perhaps we would allow those Scottish children who miss out on a "free" place to choose to pay fees to a Scottish university rather than forcing them to pay fees to an English university.

We have options to make this better, and none of them punish students or graduates. They will be fine, either because they are earning enough to repay their fees or because they are not earning enough and therefore never repay their fees.

However, let us make our starting point that we want to keep young Scots, who want to be in Scotland, in Scotland. The harsh realities of running a country are beginning to smack devolved Scotland in the face. We must respond maturely.