The tuition increase that went into effect at English universities in 2006 has not deterred students from applying to those institutions, according to a report released today by the trade association for British universities’ vice chancellors.
The Universities U.K. publication, “Variable Tuition Fees in England: Assessing Their Impact on Students and Higher Education Institutions,” is the third annual report the group has prepared on the issue, but the first that reveals the full impact on enrollments since the new rates went into effect.
The vice chancellors’ group lobbied hard for the controversial tuition increase, termed “variable fees” because institutions can in theory charge full-time undergraduates any amount up to a government-dictated annual cap of about $6,000.
“Over all there is nothing in the available data that indicates that the introduction of variable fees in England has yet had any lasting impact on the level or pattern of demand for full-time undergraduate education,” the report says.
But, in a development that opponents of the tuition increase will cite as vindication of their fears, the report notes that there has been “no significant change in the ethnic, social class, or age profile of accepted applicants across the four years 2004/05-2007/08,” even though the number of full-time undergraduate applicants rose 10 percent in England and 9 percent in Britain as a whole. The government introduced measures to encourage young people from underrepresented groups to apply to universities when it passed the contentious tuition increase.
The University and College Union, Britain’s main faculty union, which represents 120,000 academics, issued a pointed statement warning institutions and politicians not to use the report to claim that the introduction of higher tuition rates has been a success. The union said that the failure of universities to increase the number of students from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, despite the government’s insistence that higher tuition would not disproportionately hurt those groups, was “extremely worrying.” —Aisha Labi
