University tuition fees in England are set to rise to more than £10,000

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University fees in England are set to exceed £10,000 this Parliament, as Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson sets out plans to continue inflation-linked fee increases over the next three years.

The funding settlement will come in the Labor government’s three-year public spending review next year, when universities are expected to enact reforms in exchange for fee increases, according to government officials.

Show one person PhillipsonHis thinking was that although a final decision had not yet been made, the “direction of travel” was clear.

and November, Phillipson Announce The first increase in university tuition fees since 2017, taking the £9,250 for domestic students to £9,535 for the 2025-26 academic year – an increase of £285.

Tying fees to inflation over the next three years could push tuition costs past £10,000. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts an annual inflation rate of just over 2 percent until 2028.

Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, a lobby group for the sector, said institutions would welcome reliable annual fee increases after a decade when payments were effectively frozen, storing up financial woes for universities as the real value of fees eroded. .

“Creating expectations that university fees rise with inflation every year, not just once in a blue month, is essential to achieving this stability and will lead to better financial management for universities,” she said.

A government official said any fee increases would be linked to “major reform that enhances value for money”, including improving access for students from poor backgrounds and closer ties between universities and further education colleges.

Phillipson also wants to raise the quality of teaching and demand that universities support more innovation, as part of Labour’s ambition to raise growth rates.

“We will also look at whether the regulator has the right role and powers in overseeing value for money,” one of the people familiar with Phillipson’s ideas said.

The Department for Education said the government had made “difficult decisions” to put universities on a firm footing, and that the Office for Students, the independent regulator, was “rightly focusing its efforts on monitoring financial sustainability”.

He added: “Although the institutions are autonomous, we are committed to restoring universities as engines of opportunity, growth and ambition.”

The University UK analysis found that raising fees would provide £1.4bn in extra funding for the sector in 2029-30, while creating an additional long-term cost to the government of £400m of funding additional loan allocations.

University leaders said inflation-linked fee hikes would help stabilize the sector, after a recent surge in lucrative international student recruitment stalled last year.

The Conservative government’s recent decision to prevent postgraduate students from bringing family members, coupled with the currency crisis in Nigeria, has caused international numbers to fall by more than 30% at some institutions.

In November, the Student Office to caution A £3.4 billion drop in net income across the sector will mean that nearly three-quarters of universities will run a deficit in the academic year starting in September 2025.

the accounts The Russell Group for Research Intensive Universities estimates that, before fees rise this year, universities were making an annual “loss” of £2,500 per domestic student.

However, analysts have warned that the latest rise in fees has been largely eaten up by the rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions announced in the Budget, which will come into force in April.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates that the latest increase in tuition fees will raise an extra £390m a year for universities, against an increase in NIC costs of £372m a year, leaving a net profit of just £18m.

“It’s not enough,” said Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a think tank. The sector needed investments higher than inflation, similar to the “inflation plus 1 percent” formula. Agreed in October He added that social housing rents.

Data visualization by Amy Burritt