(Bloomberg) — University tuition fees in England will rise in line with inflation next year, the first increase since 2017, as Keir Starmer’s administration tries to address significant funding pressures in the higher education sector.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the maximum cap for tuition fees would rise to £9,535 ($12,340) per year from April, compared to the current level of £9,250. The UK’s other devolved nations set their own tariffs.
“We inherited in our universities, as across much of our public sector, the consequences of long years of shameful abdication of responsibility,” Phillipson said in the House of Commons on Monday. “We will fix the foundations, we will secure the future of higher education.”
Universities have been facing a growing funding crisis, with the freeze on tuition fees since 2017 coinciding with an estimated 40% of higher education providers being pushed into deficit. They have responded by recruiting more overseas students who tend to pay higher fees, but a clampdown on visas by the previous Conservative government aggravated financial pressures by contributing to a decline in foreign student numbers.
Next year’s increase was first reported by the Telegraph newspaper.
Still, it is a politically sensitive move for the prime minister, who campaigned to become Labour’s leader on a platform of abolishing tuition fees. Fees famously tripled to £9,000 in 2012 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, a decision that sparked a major political backlash for the Liberal Democrats because their manifesto had also pledged to scrap fees.
Last month Universities UK, which represents 141 institutions, called for fees to be index-linked to inflation. It said per-student funding is at its lowest since 2004 and that the current £9,250 fee is worth £5,924 in 2012-13 prices.
(Updates with more details from second paragraph.)
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