Universities in England Seek to Charge the Highest Fees They Can

By Aisha Labi

Britain's controversial new tuition system faced fresh criticism this week as many universities sought to charge students close to the highest fee allowed, £9,000, or $14,700.

While the university fees are far from set, British politicians who last year backed the contentious plan are facing angry recriminations as it becomes apparent that the high fees could end up being more the rule than the exception—an outcome at odds with the predictions of the policy's architects.

In December, members of the House of Commons voted to allow universities in England to increase undergraduate tuition from the current limit of £3,350, or $5,500, beginning next year.

When the government announced its plans for overhauling the fee system, the £9,000 cap was described as an "absolute limit" to be charged by a handful of universities, with most institutions expected to set their rates closer to a "basic threshold" of £6,000, or $9,450.

The political climate surrounding the policy shift was so fraught that in the run-up to the vote, London saw the largest and most violent student protests in a generation.

The revamped system requires higher-education institutions intending to charge more than £6,000 to submit plans to the Office for Fair Access, an independent public body responsible for safeguarding and promoting accessibility to higher education. Each institution must spell out how it intends to ensure that it will remain accessible to students from disadvantaged backgrounds despite the steep increase in tuition that will go into effect in 2012.

This week marked the deadline, at midnight on April 19th, for institutions to submit those plans and, although the Office for Fair Access has not disclosed how many institutions have requested permission to charge up to £9,000, initial indications are that the average rate charged by universities will be much closer to that figure than to the "basic threshold" of £6,000. Although not all institutions have publicly announced what they plan to charge, an analysis conducted by The Guardian newspaper found that "almost three-quarters of English universities and university colleges intend to charge" £9,000 for at least some courses of study.

A steady procession of universities, including elite institutions such as the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, as well as less selective universities, have disclosed over the past several weeks that they would be seeking permission to charge the maximum rate for at least some degree programs, with each wave of announcements generating headlines highlighting the discrepancy with the government's initial predictions. As the list has grown, opponents of the fee policy have been voicing their frustrations at the apparent political miscalculation by government officials who insisted that the £9,000 limit would be "exceptional."

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, Britain's main faculty union, said in a statement that the government's tuition plans were "in complete disarray" and that the growing chorus of criticism should force a reconsideration of higher-education policy.

Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, assailed what he called "the government's shambolic fees policy" in a statement. Saying that "ministers' miscalculations" risked affecting the ability of students to obtain a university education, he urged the government to "take responsibility for a policy that has caused costly chaos and take the entire scheme back to the drawing board before it causes irreparable damage to students and universities."

Others in the university world, however, are calling for a more measured assessment. "Much of the media debate has focused on a possible average fee level, but this doesn't take into account some of the fee waivers that will be on offer to students from poorer backgrounds," a spokesman for Universities UK, the British vice chancellors' group, told The Chronicle.

The apparent discrepancy between what the government initially predicted and the maximum rates that so many institutions are now seeking is incontestable, acknowledged Paul M. Marshall, executive director of the 1994 Group, which represents 19 of Britain's leading student-focused research-intensive universities. But those figures convey only part of the picture and do not yet give an accurate indication of the average tuition students are likely to end up paying once the new tuition rates are in place.

Under the new policy, he emphasized, students at all institutions will pay nothing up front and are required to begin paying back their education loans only once their income has reached a certain level.

Although all institutions have now declared their tuition intentions, this week's deadline marked only the initial step of a process that will involve the Office for Fair Access rigorously assessing each university's plans. While the £9,000 figure has grabbed most of the headlines, all institutions seeking to charge above £6,000 have assembled extensive aid packages that will be scrutinized by the Office for Fair Access. The office expects to sign off on each agreement by mid-July.

"Over the next few months, there will be a lot of brokering backward and forward" behind closed doors, Mr. Marshall said. Only once the final agreements are made public, which is expected to be at the same moment for all institutions, will it be possible to determine what average fees are going to be and what the average student is likely to end up paying, he said.

"That's not to say that there won't be a large number of students paying £9,000," Mr. Marshall said, but "we are going to be seeing very generous packages," and the final system is going to be "much more complex than it first appears—not that much different, actually, than the U.S. system."

Each year, during a process known as clearing, universities fill vacant places with students still seeking spots for the forthcoming academic year. Mr. Marshall predicts that during next year's clearing, some institutions will end up effectively putting some courses on sale in order to attract students, driving average costs even lower. With such a possibility still more than a year away, however, and attention focused for the moment on the far-from-bargain-basement rates many institutions are asking to be allowed to charge, government ministers have been scrambling to shift public perception and undo the damage of weeks of sticker-shock headlines.

In a commentary in The Guardian, David Willetts, the minister for universities and science, tackled what he called "the fixation with the £9,000 figure" to plead the government's case. "If you look behind the headlines, the reality is that lots of students will not face fees anything close to £9,000 a year—including at the most prestigious universities," he wrote.

With the true contours of the tuition landscape unlikely to become clear for months, looking behind the headlines will remain a complicated proposition, with potential political complications for Mr. Willetts and his colleagues.