Nearly every university to lift fees to £9,250

VIRTUALLY every university in England plans to charge £9,250 tuition fees next year in return for attempting to break a ‘middle-class stranglehold’ on places.

Only two out of 123 institutions with full-time undergraduate courses have ruled out increasing their charges from the current £9,000 a year.

The remainder – including every single English university in the elite Russell Group – will raise fees under an inflation-linked agreement for some or all of their degree courses in 2017/18.

The National Union of Students said the move would have a ‘damaging impact’ on undergraduates amid concerns over mounting levels of debt.

The Office for Fair Access (OFFA) said the only universities to have rejected fee hikes for the next academic year were University College Birmingham and the University of St Mark and St John in Plymouth.

Thirty- six higher education institutions will charge £9,250-ayear for all their courses.

In addition, 13 further education colleges in England have stated they will charge the higher rate for some or all of their degree courses.

Universities and colleges with undergraduate courses must submit documents to OFFA, laying out their tuition fee levels and how they plan to improve access for ‘under-represented’ groups. OFFA must approve these ‘access agreements’ and has the power to impose fines or prevent universities from charging higher fees if they are breached.

In return for charging higher fees, universities have agreed to pour extra millions into recruiting more students from poor families and ethnic minority

‘Middle-class stranglehold’

backgrounds. They will spend £833.5million under their 2017-18 access agreements on schemes such as summer schools and fee waivers.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: ‘OFFA is trying to break what they see as a middle-class stranglehold on top universities in return for allowing them to charge maximum tuition fees.

‘But this creates an unhelpful tension because the groups that are under-represented are generally not well qualified. Universities therefore face a dilemma between pursuing excellence and meeting the requirements of OFFA.’

Sorana Vieru, NUS vice-president for higher education, attacked the fee rises. ‘Universities are taking a short- term approach and are wrong to be pushing for whatever the market can take and reaching a tipping point where all the progress on widening participation could be reversed,’ she said.

All universities looking to charge higher fees next year have passed a ‘baseline’ standard as part of the Government’s new Teaching Excellence Framework, which will link future fee rises with teaching quality.

In future only institutions rated ‘excellent’ or ‘outstanding’ will be able to raise fees in line with inflation, while those ranked as having met ‘expectations’ will be restricted to only half the rate of inflation.

MPs will vote this autumn on whether to allow the increases in tuition fees.

CAMBRIDGE has dropped out of the top three of global university league tables for the first time in more than decade.

It is now fourth in the QS World University Rankings and is among 38 of the UK’s 48 universities in the top 400 to have dropped down the rankings.