University Tuition Fees ‘should be cut to £7,500’

30/05/19

University tuition fees in England should be cut to £7,500, according to a review which also says student loan repayments should continue for up to 40 rather than 30 years.

The government-commissioned review calls for better funding for students in vocational education.

Maintenance grants to support poorer students, scrapped in 2016, should also be reinstated, it says.

The review warns that “some students are charged too much for their degrees” – and calls for the maximum fee to be reduced from £9,250 per year to £7,500, beginning from 2021-22.

This fee level would be frozen until 2023-24, says the review, after which it would rise with inflation.

Such changes to the level of fees would have to be approved by Parliament before they could be implemented.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, Chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee, said:

“I welcome the Augar review’s challenge to the primacy of the full-time undergraduate degree. The Economic Affairs Committee’s 2018 report Treating Students Fairly found that the funding system for post-school education had incentivised universities to attract as many students as possible onto undergraduate degrees, which meant other types and form of study had been neglected. The review’s recommendations would help address the decline of part-time and adult education, and ensure more funding is available for other forms of higher education, such as Level 4 and Level 5 technical qualifications.”

“I also welcome the Augar review’s recommendations on funding for Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications. Our 2018 report found that current funding arrangements prevent retraining and stifle attempts to create coherent pathways between higher and further education.”

Click HERE to view the House of Lords report: ‘Treating Students Fairly: The Economics of Post-School Education’.

Click HERE for the full article, courtesy of the BBC.