Scrap the fee cap – let universities compete

Many students do not feel they are getting value for their money. Higher education needs to innovate and be more diverse

Universities are appealing to the Government to let them raise tuition fees which have been capped at £9,250 in England since 2017. Had they been allowed to rise with inflation they would be around £13,000.
This is a significant shortfall which is putting many of the 140 institutions in jeopardy.
That number is an indication of how the sector has expanded in recent decades as successive governments have pushed more school-leavers into higher education. Now almost half attend a university or college of varying quality. One idea behind fees was that the best would charge most but nearly all set their fees at the maximum level allowed.
The finances of universities became so bad that they were driven to attract ever more foreign students who paid the market rate, to the detriment of British school-leavers who found it harder to get a place.
But a crackdown on overseas students bringing their families to the UK saw a marked decrease with a record number of home-grown undergraduates able to start courses this month. This means the universities are getting less money because of the domestic cap. About 40 per cent of universities are expected to run a budget deficit this year.
The problem is that many students do not feel they are getting value for their money, which they have to borrow and pay back on graduating. Although academics say they are under more pressure than ever, undergraduates say they get precious little in the way of face-to-face tuition, seminars or lectures.
It is a far cry from Sir Keir Starmer’s promise in 2020 to abolish tuition fees, a promise that helped him secure the Labour leadership but which he must have known was utterly impractical. Now he will have to agree to the first rise in seven years unless he wants to see the sector collapse.
The politics of tuition fees are toxic but the time to put them up is now at the beginning of a government with a massive Commons majority. Sir Keir would risk a backbench rebellion but the choice is between higher fees and more public funding at a time when the Government is supposedly strapped for cash.
A new approach is needed. Let universities set their own fees and agree contracts for maintenance with their students and encourage employers to pay off the loans of new recruits. The biggest drag on universities is ministerial interference.