Unis float £12,500 fees as freshers pack for term

The start of term is around the corner for university students

Tuition fees in England would need to rise to £12,500 to meet universities' teaching costs, the vice-chancellor of King's College London has said - but asking for that would seem "clueless".

Prof Shitij Kapur is one of the brains behind proposals due to be published in the coming weeks by Universities UK, which represents 141 universities.

He told vice-chancellors earlier the "blueprint" would ask for more funding for teaching but without putting a number on it.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said she was looking at "all of the options" but there were "no easy answers or quick fixes".

Vice-chancellors have gathered in Reading this week ahead of a new academic year, which, for those trying to balance their books, looks set to be gloomy.

Students have been warned they may see cuts to staffing and courses, as universities grapple with UK tuition fees worth less than they used to be and fewer international students to make up the financial shortfall.

Prof Kapur said there had been a debate while drafting the blueprint, over how much fees should rise.

He said £12,500 was the "right number we will need" but, in view of the "government's reality", asking for that "would seem so clueless" and "out of touch".

The draft wording would call for "increasing funding for teaching, to meet [universities'] real costs".

That would not necessarily mean raising tuition fees to such an extent - it could mean the government raising tuition fees in line with inflation, for example, and giving universities more direct funding.

In a statement following Prof Kapur's comments, Universities UK stressed it was not calling for the tuition fee cap to rise to £12,500, and suggested the government should pick up more of the tab, rather than future students and graduates.

"More and more of the burden is falling on graduates," it said.

Earlier, its president Prof Dame Sally Mapstone said the government only contributed about 16% of the cost of delivering a degree.

Meanwhile London Economics research, commissioned by Universities UK, suggests universities contribute a net £265bn to the economy.

"We believe it is time for a rebalancing of responsibility for funding to recognise that," the statement from Universities UK added.

Philip Augar, who chaired a review into further and higher education in 2019, told BBC Radio 4's World At One "there should be a very small increase in the student fee" of "a couple of hundred pounds".

"Someone has to pay for this. It's either the student, it's the taxpayer, or possibly employers," he said.

'Solid investment'

The cap on fees was raised to £9,000 per year in 2012 and has risen only slightly since then.

Dame Sally told the conference inflation meant the current £9,250 cap would have been worth just £5,924, in real terms, in 2012.

She said universities across the UK were at "a fork in the road" and would "slide into decline" without action to sort out their finances.

Dame Sally said the blueprint would call for a "reset" and "make the case that it is a solid investment not a drain on public finances".

"However, it will also acknowledge that universities cannot, and should not, lay the entirety of the university sector’s funding pressures at [the] government’s door," she added.

'Raw deal'

Resolution Foundation think tank president Lord Willetts, universities minister in the early 2010s, is also helping draw up the blueprint.

He told the conference: "There is genuine anxiety in government about universities going bust."

"We need to get on with" finding a solution, Lord Willetts said, because "students are getting a very raw deal".

"If lectures become more crowded, labs are less well equipped with up-to-date kit... those are ways in which the education of the next generation is suffering," he added.

The Office for Students, which regulates England's universities and has been told to make their financial stability its priority, has said 40% of them are predicting deficits.

Prof David Maguire, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "All university vice-chancellors that I talk to are looking very carefully at their income expenditure lines and are looking for efficiencies."

That included increasing class sizes and conducting less research, he said.

In a video address to the vice-chancellors, Ms Phillipson said: "We will look carefully at all of the options and come forward with proposals.

"But as you’ll all know too well, these are complex problems.

"There are no easy answers of quick fixes, so I can’t promise painless or immediate resolutions."

On Wednesday, Skills Minister Baroness Smith told the conference the Department for Education was considering how to put universities in a "sustainable financial position" in a way that "doesn’t [place] on to the state the whole responsibility for funding of our higher-education system".

University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady, who has called for bailouts for struggling institutions, said “increased public funding will be necessary”.

But she added: “University leaders cannot be handed blank cheques: they must use public money to invest in their own workforce.”

Cash prizes

National Union of Students higher-education vice-president Alex Stanley said: "If universities are experiencing shortfalls, students should not be the ones expected to cover it."

Student debt was "a huge burden" and increasing fees would "only put off working-class students".

Universities have been recruiting more international students - who pay higher fees - over a number of years, to make up for a loss in funding.

But far fewer study visas have been issued to international students this year, following changes to visa rules and a currency crisis in Nigeria.

And universities have been recruiting more domestic students in an effort to shore up their funding.

More students were accepted into their first-choice university this summer and some universities offered the chance of rent-free accommodation and cash prizes to encourage applications through clearing.

And as of Friday, 30 August, the number of 18-year-olds in the UK accepted into universities that require the highest grades had risen by 13% compared with the same point last year.