University fees to increase from September 2025

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Just announced.

And looks like a complete overhaul coming.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/04/raise-university-tuition-fees-2025-starmer/

Things will improve if we change the political system

We only just changed the guard.

What do you mean? Republicanism? Dictatorship?

The IFS says yesterday's tuition fee hike raises £390m
The Higher Education Policy Institute says the NI hike will cost universities £400m
So every single extra penny graduates are paying goes on Labour's NI hike

What I mean is actual people with real talent and business acumen and STEM/tech experts with NO SLEAZE. Rather than a bunch of solipsistic individuals out for themselves and fighting their direct enemy across the board in a playgroundesque style and shouting like Neanderthalers in the Oxford Union.

“The IFS says yesterday's tuition fee hike raises £390m
The Higher Education Policy Institute says the NI hike will cost universities £400m
So every single extra penny graduates are paying goes on Labour's NI hike”

So the Government is borrowing more to pay themselves NI?

Like I said, a bunch of incompetents.

So how would you make the sector viable if not via increased fee's? would you cut? tax or borrow?

Don't mis understand me, i would like tuition fee's to drop to around 3k to 5k and restore the mtce grant BUT the country simply hasn't the money e.g it will cost billions to give us back an NHS dentist system...... i doubt very much there is the money to do that either.

Defence spending has to increase & the GOvt has to prepare for the possible withdrawal of the USA from NATO and the probable halting of aid to Ukraine by the USA.

Then there is climate change and the extra funding needed for flood defence...

The Conservatives, to be kind to them, thought everything would be sorted by the 'market..... an unkind opinion would be they just kicked everything into the long grass... ignoring all our long term problems, inc energy supply, it was Labour who proposed Hinkley to be built.... not the Tories, who actually delayed it and involved the Chinese of all people.

@Alexandra2001 - I think the only viable long term option is to make sure it is seen as equally good to go to your local uni and make sure the standards are similar at all unis so students are not forced into huge debt as a result of feeling the pressure to have to go away somewhere like an expensive uni town (which ends up costing unis long term because house prices there keep going up). We need to become more like Germany and Switzerland where all unis are of a certain standard. So closer cooperation between all unis to deliver a more and higher standard programme to all children and so that poorer children without parents in the know also get a good degree worth the money!

Sadly does not surprise me.

Students are paying it, plus the interest year on year!

Good luck with Oxford or Cambridge agreeing to a level playing field.

Perhaps ditch the Russell group alumni

It will be a long time though before we forget which Unis were of old and which were Polys and Colleges.

Agree all things should be equal.
It would be amazing if schools were too.

But that doesn't increase funding for Uni's, in fact would cost money to bring up the standard of e.g the former Poly's to say that of Durham or Exeter.

German state funding for its Uni sector was 35 billion euros, the UK on the other hand spent £7 billion...... about 8.3 billion euros.

Even allowing for Germany's larger population, thats a huge difference.

How does the UK close that funding gap?

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10037/CBP-10037.pdf

In OECD average terms we spend a lot on students?

If they wanted to, they could use the new Employer NI towards Higher Education couldn’t they? They just don’t want to.

In my opinion, the entire students loan system is not fit for purpose. Costs absolutely everyone.

We haven’t even gotten to the point that the increase in national minimum wage for younger people could be seen as a further subtle disincentive to go to uni in the first place. It’s like they want to be seen to do social mobility, yet what they are actually doing is the complete polar opposite. Making the elite institutions across all of education even more elite.

My only concern with encouraging students to all attend their local university, will this mean less mobility for some in the future (particularly students from less wealthy backgrounds)? Not sure how it works in Europe, but I'm guessing for some kids going away to University opens them up to new places and new people they might never experience otherwise. Just a thought.

I don’t know @Neversaygoodbye - maybe it is good for actual students to stay local rather than what happened in the past when most flocked to the South East and then much talent remained there and house prices just went up and up? When what we actually need to achieve is more jobs and greater equality throughout the country? And with remote working, having educated people living in cheaper areas is a good thing as then employers may also invest etc etc and it could raise up whole communities?

I went to university locally in the North and then moved to London for work once I graduated. This was much better for me financially as I continued to work in my “after school” job and live at home until I went into full time employment after graduation. My parents were on low incomes (I had free school meals) so moving away wasn’t an option.

Good points @Araminta1003 but it would be a shame if it became the only option rather than a choice. I assumed the idea of the maintenance loan was to give students from lower income families the opportunity to live away @Boohoo76 whereas years pre-Liam that wasn't an option?
I had friends back in the early 90s that had left home at 16 and headed south for work living in shared accommodation and doing HNDs part-time but no one could do that now on apprenticeship pay. So Uni loans seems the only option.
I think house prices in the south east and London might mean more people heading north and WFH anyway in the future.

Pre-Liam?

Lol, pre-loan.

I think it would be fair to ask the richer universities to share resources with the poorer ones and help them up their game academically for poorer students? With mergers etc, could this work? Rather than Oxbridge spending millions on trying to get a few extra students from poorer backgrounds, would it not be better to spend those millions raising standards in local universities for as many poorer students as possible? And the London unis coining it on the international student front, can they all do more to help other universities and poorer students? Could it be possible? Or is it naive to think that. Ultimately if every student is spending the same on an actual degree they should all be getting the same quality of degree? In other countries, they are often getting that without any spend at all?

My thinking is very much how can we get more of what students and the tax payer spend directly into the hands of universities to up the quality of degrees for all students which then translates to better growth for the whole economy. So rather than students wasting all their money on rent into the hands of landlords etc on maintenance loans, it is better it goes directly to unis.

I do understand you forego the “initiation” experience that is part of the British uni move away thing, but can that really not be replicated locally somehow? If we take the fact that British unis are good at pastoral care and creating that vibe for students (as opposed to some European unis) can we keep it somehow?
And what contribution can we get from employers to invest into poorer universities directly to create jobs where they are most needed? Again, is this naive or could this actually work, given employers get a good deal hiring people in cheaper areas with lower living costs. How is it that we are happy to ship companies off to eg China in the past to save a few pennies, but we neglect our own areas that need help? What can we do to encourage that as much as possible? If big employers are involved in creating degrees that feed directly to employment and good employees - what can we do there? What industries in like tech should we be heavily investing in so that we have an actual vision for growth and youth as a country? What can public transport companies do to help students go to local unis etc etc?

The richer universities

would that be both of them? @Araminta1003 and the sad thing is I’m not even half joking. You could count the richer universities on one hand, and Oxford and Cambridge are on a completely different level.

probably worth also remembering that London has more than four universities and that the majority of students in London don’t go to them.

Nice idea but it can't work like that. Universities are independent organisations competing against each other in the higher education market. It would be like asking Tesco, Sainsbury's and Morrisons to give some of their profits to Spar so that Spar can start competing directly with them.

Ah! There were loans available (at a much lower interest rate) in my day but I didn’t want to get into debt, particularly as I knew I would have to take a loan for my post-grad course.

@boys3- well yes, but I don’t see what the LSE and Imperial are not helping/being made to help eg Goldsmiths? I would like to see more collaboration than this corporate style competition between unis for the best students/highest league table positions and most international students? Would it not just be better for all? Imagine that in some European countries a student can do 1 year at one university and then easily transfer to another in a different City and it will all count towards their degree? Why is it not more standardised at least in terms of quality of degree offered to the students?
Let’s say you wanted to maintain mobility for students then a year in a different City at a different uni with very strong links to your own uni could work, in theory at least? With technology moving on and online access and some students wanting to do longer part time degrees and work at the same time etc, we will have to rethink the whole thing and how it works eventually anyway.