FEES! Do you think at 'clearing' time there will be a Sale?

[PaulaYatesbiggestfan]

Where struggling establishments suddenly abandon their 'we are all equal' principles and join the bun fight to grab the last remaining students?

I was thinking this over tonight and surely it is all going to be a real 'free for all'

Some establishments will sink pretty quickly wont they? If they charge full fees people will re buff them and if they charge less they will be 1. scorned 2.unable to afford decent lecturers. 3. running at a loss.

Have the government thought this through?

I agree.

Universities will sink or swim on the basis of their ability to manage the tradeoff between increasing income at the expense of damaging their brand.

I think most of the RG unis will charge the full fee and not sink, as they can already trade on their reputation. It's lower-ranking unis (with lots of courses in Clearing) which IMO are more likely to struggle.

but don't you think at clearing time there will be a battle to woo students for their pennies and thus fees might start dropping with the 'something's better than nothing' theory in mind?

I agree that most rg will be fine. They won't risk damaging their brand by doing deals. As for the rest ... it's going to be mayhem :(

agree muddle - I just cannot imagine. Plus it's a hugely bigger picture involving vast numbers of people working in education and their livelihood. Ill conceived at best

biggestfan - I was thinking ( no doubt wrongly ) that there's going to be more applicants than ever this year .
People not taking gap years and wanting to avoid higher fees next year .
I thought the scenario would be students chasing places ,not unis wooing them ?

Hmmmm I don't expect that tbh. I imagine it will be a gradual fall in applications but with a converse 'graph' at the top of the rg scale. Old style 'colleges' will struggle from the get-go in my opinion. I bet they'll drop like flies within years. Either that or an awful lot of amalgamation will go on

Whatever happens, it won't make this year any easier when its expected there will be fewer places than ever in clearing.

But for 2012 and onwards, David Willetts gave the clearest indication yet of how the gov will regulate the market in a speech last week - they are pressing very hard for fees to be kept close to £6k except where agreements are made with OFFA.

I understand that universities have a few weeks left to propose their fee rates (a deadline in March, I believe) and there is, I'm sure, much scurrying behind the scenes.

I cant imagine though that there will ever be differential pricing - but who knows, its a new world out there.

Just seen on skynews that Exeter is the latest Uni to announce that they will be charging the maximum 9k pa from next year. Thank god DS decided at the last minute to abandon his gap year plans

Anglia Ruskin University is reported in the local papers as being likely to charge £8k - so I can't imagine there will be many places charging much less.

Interesting idea, I think it's unlikely though as the universities are setting their fees based on needs, they will each have to charge a good bit over £7000 just to cover their basic costs given how severe the cuts have been - £6000 is a total fiction. If the unis were to do 'sales' then they would have to increase class sizes even more and limit support so it would end up being counter-productive as they would get even fewer applicants in the following years.

Pity the Welsh Universities who are having their teaching budgets cut quite heavily to fund Welsh students to go to any university in the UK, paying no more than the current fees. I cannot really see how this is possible without damaging the quality of Welsh Universities, though I hope I am wrong.

No, I think they will drop the courses instead. It has happened before.

Anglia Ruskin, 8k??? piss take.

apparently if uni's charge over 6k they have to use £900 to encourage more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Its bad enough that my children have to pay such excessive tuition fees and come out of uni with such high levels of debt. Its really rubbing salt that they will have to subsidise poorer students - people who may go on to earn more than them.

If the gov wants to do social engineering they should pay for it out of the tax system, not expect other students to do it - people who at that stage will not be earning any money and will be very poor themselves.