4th October 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The National Union of Students (NUS) has called for the government to rule out suggestions that university tuition fees could be increased to £10,000 per year. In a report on the BBC website, the NUS claimed that the increase in tuition fees would make degrees ‘unviably’ expensive. The reason for the statement is because Lord Browne is due to release his report on higher education funding next month, and it’s rumoured that he will suggest raising tuition fees from £3,290, their current level, to £7,000, with the possibly of further increasing them to £10,000.
The NUS president, Aaron Porter, said that a raise to three times the current tuition fees would deter many students from continuing to higher education, and would mean that some of the brightest and most ambitious students in the country choose not to begin an undergraduate degree.
It’s thought that Lord Browne will ask universities if they will underwrite the loans to students, if the fees are set at £10,000. The amount of repayment is also expected to change, with higher earning graduates paying proportionally more than others, although every student would have the option to pay some of tuition fees back sooner, and avoid any ‘high earners increase’, and lessen the impact of the interest, which is expected to be increased in line with more commercial loans.
Increasing tuition fees will create considerable political pressure for the coalition government, because the Liberal Democrats have long campaigned to scrap fees for students, but the Conservatives have not. Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader, is in favour of removing tuition fees, and replacing them with a graduate tax.