University bosses are calling for tuition fees to be raised closer to the £24,000 a year average that foreign students pay.
They warn the £9,250 paid by UK students, which has been frozen for a decade, is forcing them to take on an ever-increasing number of foreign applicants from countries such as China and India.
A record one in five young undergraduates starting at top universities this autumn are from overseas, according to official figures, up 7 per cent in a year. The number of British undergraduates has declined by 13 per cent.
School pupils received their A-level results last week, triggering a battle for higher education places and vice-chancellors have been urged to take on more domestic applicants to ease the pressure.
However, Sir David Bell, vice-chancellor at the University of Sunderland and a former permanent secretary at the Department for Education, said: “You cannot expect to run universities on a fee level of £9,250 a year, which by 2025 will be worth around £6,000 in real terms because of inflation.
“If you want to keep running universities even at the level we have now, you have to increase the tuition fee at some point.”
He said universities were simply making “a rational choice” in supplementing their finances with income from overseas students.
Bell said he would like to be able to recruit foreign students “as a matter of choice, not simply because there is a financial imperative to do it”, adding: “Universities cannot afford not to take more overseas students.”
Professor Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, said the government had a “national duty to ensure that it was at least viable for us to teach students from this country”.
Professor Sir Chris Husbands, vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, said: “There are high-tariff universities [which ask for very high A-level grades] pulling back from the UK market because they can charge higher prices in international markets. There is an urgent need to look at UK student funding.”
Stephen Marston, vice-chancellor of the University of Gloucester, said he and other vice-chancellors in England wanted to get into talks with government for a “long-term viable funding model for universities”. Until then, he said, “we are likely to see increasing recruitment of overseas students”.
The most selective institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol, turned away four out of ten UK candidates who applied to start a degree course this autumn, according to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas). This is the highest rejection rate ever recorded.
Overseas students are being enrolled at a higher rate than British ones at the most elite universities, according to a new analysis of admissions data by the consultancy DataHE.
Its founder, Mark Corver, who is the former head of data at Ucas, said there was an “accelerating trend” for a higher share of places at top universities going to students paying higher fees.
For students accepted to start at these universities this autumn, the number of those paying £9,250 has dropped by 12,000, a fall of 13 per cent on last year, to just under 80,000. The number of those paying higher fees has jumped by 1,400, up 7 per cent, according to an analysis of the latest Ucas data.
If tuition fees had kept pace with inflation, they would now be £12,000 a year, rather than £9,250. Students are graduating with loan debts of £50,000 on average.
Would-be medical students face a particularly difficult challenge to secure a place as the government has capped the number it helps to fund at 7,500, with strict quotas for each medical school. They can recruit up to 7.5 per cent of their intake from overseas students, who can be charged up to £45,000 a year.
About 85 per cent of British students who applied to medical school were rejected, despite the shortage of GPs and hospital doctors.
Professor Karol Sikora, who set up the University of Buckingham medical school, called for fees between UK and overseas students to be “equalised”. He said the UK fee should rise to between £12,000 and £13,000.
“It is heartbreaking that we are having to turn away bright British students with straight As who want to be doctors. We have a moral obligation to train more British doctors. We should be self-sufficient in the NHS,” he said.
Last week James Cleverly, the education secretary, defended the government’s refusal to lift the cap.
Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, said the decision “beggars belief”, adding: “There is a cost to lifting or increasing the cap but the £6 billion annual cost of using locums because we haven’t trained enough doctors is far, far higher.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “The student finance system must be fair for students, universities and the taxpayer, and it is right that we have frozen tuition fees to reduce the burden of debt on graduates. To support universities, we’re providing £750 million extra funding over the next three years.
“It is a myth that offering a place to an international student takes a place away from a student in the UK. They actually support the creation of more places for domestic students.”
Author: https://twitter.com/SianGriffiths6
Should be fucking free and done in a scholarship basis.
Imagine starting young people in life with a huge debt.
Where the fuck is the money going? if a classroom has 30 students £9k with one lecturer, the profit margin seems insane already.
They had the gall to charge my class the full £9250 during the lockdown when we couldn’t access most of the university services, just teaching. Meanwhile when people want refunds due to strikes they also refuse them because you can still access the services, just not teaching. Fuck them.
[deleted]
What a surprise, an institution that was profiteering before the pandemic is…. Profiteering. Who woulda thought. Let universities go bankrupt for all I care
£9250 a year is already fucking ridiculous and England has the highest average tuition cost in the world (yes, higher than the US).
What many people fail to comprehend is thay wrnt tuition fees were increased from around 3k to 9k, the funding the government gives to universities went the opposite way and was significantly cut.
Due to the price not increasing for 10 years and government funding also not increasing university budgets are being squeezed.
Universities have a lot more staff and expenses than just lecturer salaries. They also pay out tens of millions in scholarship, have huge utility bills, cleaning staff, admin, library costs, etc.
There are 3 solutions. Increase foreign student numbers, raise tuition fees or fund them properly.
Obviously the last option is the best one.
Charging £24K in tuition fees is ridiculous when a tiny fraction of graduates will go on to earn enough in a sufficient timeframe to pay any of that back. I have student loan debt in excess of £50K and my repayments (from my above median income) don’t even exceed the interest I’m accruing, so my debt is only increasing over time. I’d have to be on something like £80K or more to match the interest.
–edit– *Damn, I totally missed that the text had already been posted. Reding it now*
OK, so they want to raise the fee to “between £12,000 and £13,000” for the student. In the absence of a cost of living crisis, I’m not sure that would be a particularly egregious increase after a decade of the price being fixed, especially since the repayment conditions for the loans are so good. Not many people actually fully repay their loan.
But then that last fact also makes me think that the whole student loan system is pointless anyway. The government already bears a huge chunk of the cost, so why bother with this weird pseudo-personal finance system at all? Just switch to a proper grant and graduate tax system (and/or remove the Upper Earnings Limit for National Insurance) and be done with it.
I went to uni in cardiff 2007 and it was £1500 a year tuition (discount for staying in wales).
Aside from intangibles like greater earning potential on average I havent seen a great deal of value from that investment of time and £4500 compared to courses ive done since.
For 9250 a year… no chance.
When I came out of uni I was completely unemployable with no idea how business or office life worked or no idea how to start my own business. I went back and washes dishes in a restaurant.
More fees, more courses, ever more students… the profit is absurd.
11 comments
University bosses are calling for tuition fees to be raised closer to the £24,000 a year average that foreign students pay.
They warn the £9,250 paid by UK students, which has been frozen for a decade, is forcing them to take on an ever-increasing number of foreign applicants from countries such as China and India.
A record one in five young undergraduates starting at top universities this autumn are from overseas, according to official figures, up 7 per cent in a year. The number of British undergraduates has declined by 13 per cent.
School pupils received their A-level results last week, triggering a battle for higher education places and vice-chancellors have been urged to take on more domestic applicants to ease the pressure.
However, Sir David Bell, vice-chancellor at the University of Sunderland and a former permanent secretary at the Department for Education, said: “You cannot expect to run universities on a fee level of £9,250 a year, which by 2025 will be worth around £6,000 in real terms because of inflation.
“If you want to keep running universities even at the level we have now, you have to increase the tuition fee at some point.”
He said universities were simply making “a rational choice” in supplementing their finances with income from overseas students.
Bell said he would like to be able to recruit foreign students “as a matter of choice, not simply because there is a financial imperative to do it”, adding: “Universities cannot afford not to take more overseas students.”
Professor Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, said the government had a “national duty to ensure that it was at least viable for us to teach students from this country”.
Professor Sir Chris Husbands, vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, said: “There are high-tariff universities [which ask for very high A-level grades] pulling back from the UK market because they can charge higher prices in international markets. There is an urgent need to look at UK student funding.”
Stephen Marston, vice-chancellor of the University of Gloucester, said he and other vice-chancellors in England wanted to get into talks with government for a “long-term viable funding model for universities”. Until then, he said, “we are likely to see increasing recruitment of overseas students”.
The most selective institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol, turned away four out of ten UK candidates who applied to start a degree course this autumn, according to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas). This is the highest rejection rate ever recorded.
Overseas students are being enrolled at a higher rate than British ones at the most elite universities, according to a new analysis of admissions data by the consultancy DataHE.
Its founder, Mark Corver, who is the former head of data at Ucas, said there was an “accelerating trend” for a higher share of places at top universities going to students paying higher fees.
For students accepted to start at these universities this autumn, the number of those paying £9,250 has dropped by 12,000, a fall of 13 per cent on last year, to just under 80,000. The number of those paying higher fees has jumped by 1,400, up 7 per cent, according to an analysis of the latest Ucas data.
If tuition fees had kept pace with inflation, they would now be £12,000 a year, rather than £9,250. Students are graduating with loan debts of £50,000 on average.
Would-be medical students face a particularly difficult challenge to secure a place as the government has capped the number it helps to fund at 7,500, with strict quotas for each medical school. They can recruit up to 7.5 per cent of their intake from overseas students, who can be charged up to £45,000 a year.
About 85 per cent of British students who applied to medical school were rejected, despite the shortage of GPs and hospital doctors.
Professor Karol Sikora, who set up the University of Buckingham medical school, called for fees between UK and overseas students to be “equalised”. He said the UK fee should rise to between £12,000 and £13,000.
“It is heartbreaking that we are having to turn away bright British students with straight As who want to be doctors. We have a moral obligation to train more British doctors. We should be self-sufficient in the NHS,” he said.
Last week James Cleverly, the education secretary, defended the government’s refusal to lift the cap.
Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, said the decision “beggars belief”, adding: “There is a cost to lifting or increasing the cap but the £6 billion annual cost of using locums because we haven’t trained enough doctors is far, far higher.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “The student finance system must be fair for students, universities and the taxpayer, and it is right that we have frozen tuition fees to reduce the burden of debt on graduates. To support universities, we’re providing £750 million extra funding over the next three years.
“It is a myth that offering a place to an international student takes a place away from a student in the UK. They actually support the creation of more places for domestic students.”
Author: https://twitter.com/SianGriffiths6
Should be fucking free and done in a scholarship basis.
Imagine starting young people in life with a huge debt.
Where the fuck is the money going? if a classroom has 30 students £9k with one lecturer, the profit margin seems insane already.
They had the gall to charge my class the full £9250 during the lockdown when we couldn’t access most of the university services, just teaching. Meanwhile when people want refunds due to strikes they also refuse them because you can still access the services, just not teaching. Fuck them.
[deleted]
What a surprise, an institution that was profiteering before the pandemic is…. Profiteering. Who woulda thought. Let universities go bankrupt for all I care
£9250 a year is already fucking ridiculous and England has the highest average tuition cost in the world (yes, higher than the US).
What many people fail to comprehend is thay wrnt tuition fees were increased from around 3k to 9k, the funding the government gives to universities went the opposite way and was significantly cut.
Due to the price not increasing for 10 years and government funding also not increasing university budgets are being squeezed.
Universities have a lot more staff and expenses than just lecturer salaries. They also pay out tens of millions in scholarship, have huge utility bills, cleaning staff, admin, library costs, etc.
There are 3 solutions. Increase foreign student numbers, raise tuition fees or fund them properly.
Obviously the last option is the best one.
Charging £24K in tuition fees is ridiculous when a tiny fraction of graduates will go on to earn enough in a sufficient timeframe to pay any of that back. I have student loan debt in excess of £50K and my repayments (from my above median income) don’t even exceed the interest I’m accruing, so my debt is only increasing over time. I’d have to be on something like £80K or more to match the interest.
–edit– *Damn, I totally missed that the text had already been posted. Reding it now*
OK, so they want to raise the fee to “between £12,000 and £13,000” for the student. In the absence of a cost of living crisis, I’m not sure that would be a particularly egregious increase after a decade of the price being fixed, especially since the repayment conditions for the loans are so good. Not many people actually fully repay their loan.
But then that last fact also makes me think that the whole student loan system is pointless anyway. The government already bears a huge chunk of the cost, so why bother with this weird pseudo-personal finance system at all? Just switch to a proper grant and graduate tax system (and/or remove the Upper Earnings Limit for National Insurance) and be done with it.
I went to uni in cardiff 2007 and it was £1500 a year tuition (discount for staying in wales).
Aside from intangibles like greater earning potential on average I havent seen a great deal of value from that investment of time and £4500 compared to courses ive done since.
For 9250 a year… no chance.
When I came out of uni I was completely unemployable with no idea how business or office life worked or no idea how to start my own business. I went back and washes dishes in a restaurant.
More fees, more courses, ever more students… the profit is absurd.