My favourite moment in an exam is when the time starts and I can drop all worries because there is nothing left to learn. I either know the answers to the questions or I don’t.

The moment I hate the most is when people start discussing the answers as we walk out. I don’t want to know. I like not worrying for a month or two. I have various memories of this throughout the years and one event that stands out is after an ‘economic theories of government’ exam.

I was one of three Masters students in a mixed class with undergraduates and because of the small group the three of us had to make sure we’d read everything.

As we walked out of the exam, one of the undergraduates came up to us and asked about the first section which consisted of game theory questions. Not sure if you’ve seen them but these ‘games’ are theoretical constructs which have different consequences / payoffs for various players.

The prisoner’s dilemma depicts a situation where two people are arrested for a crime and kept separate for questioning. They are each told that if they speak out and the other stays silent they will get off with no charges. If they say nothing and the other person implicates them they get the maximum time in prison. If they both blame the other they both get some time in prison but not the maximum, if they both say nothing they both get a small penalty. What is the best option?

The best option is to act on your own best interests because the highest payoff is to implicate the other. Since criminals are supposedly not known for their trust, this becomes a fraught situation.

You can use this reasoning in any real life situation and Richard Alcock used it in the Guardian to explain why universities are purportedly being irrational when charging the maximum £9000 for tuition fees with the consequence that there may be further higher education funding cuts. Alcock says it is because of the classic trait of the game which is a lack of communication.

As soon as people start talking to each other the world gets slightly more predictable and the payoffs for the same actions change. Because individual universities don’t know what the others are planning to do they act in their own self interest while hoping the others will act for the collective’s best interest.

However, universities do not act alone and indeed there are very few which are not part of some umbrella group that guides, protects or at least discusses their issues. There is the Russell Group that speaks for 20 HEIs which collectively get apportioned over 65% of the research funding (including Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol University). Other groups include the 1994 group and Million+. These groups represent their members and very few HEIs have no affiliation.

The universities are talking to each other, at least in their own little groups. When you add communication to a scenario the game changes to one called assurance where the players’ best option is to cooperate. This game is also referred to as the stag hunt where two hunters can work together to catch the bigger prize which is more food or work separately to catch rabbits which would bring a much smaller gain.

The THE has a list of HEIs which have announced tuition fees for the academic year 2012/13. Some universities say they will charge less than the maximum fee but no selective, Russell Group HEI has yet said they would. Those with the ability to pick and choose their students, with the most funding, are still the ones who will be getting the most out of the new tuition fee system and who seem to be working together to get the best deal. The rest are getting by with less in order to prove more enticing perhaps.

Back to my exam situation. We were all walking out of the exam and the undergrad asked if it had been a game of prisoner’s dilemma in that first section. We looked at him and said no, it was a game of assurance. He shouldn’t have asked. Just like with the higher education legislation, from the moment it was written there was no going back. The ones losing out are the undergraduates.