Exeter University becomes the first outside Russell Group to charge maximum fees

Exeter has become the first university outside the Russell Group to announce that it will charge the maximum £9,000 fee for a degree from next year, saying it will need the extra income to meet higher expectations from students.

Exeter, which follows Cambridge and Imperial College London in confirming plans to treble fees, also said it would offer fee waivers or bursaries for students from less well-off backgrounds. Ministers have said the maximum fee should only apply in "exceptional circumstances".

David Allen, Exeter's registrar and deputy chief executive, said: "By setting our fees at the £9,000 level we are able to continue to invest in the student experience, and spend a lot more money to bring in more people from less well-off backgrounds.

"We are talking about having more academic staff, improving the staff-student ratio, more contact hours. What we're doing is to try and give the best possible experience to our students."

Exeter is a member of the 1994 group of smaller research-intensive universities, which includes East Anglia, York and Leicester. Its decision will increase pressure on similar universities to opt for maximum fees to maintain their prestige. Some universities in this group are looking at whether to charge varying fees for different degrees.

Universities minister David Willetts said that institutions would only need to charge £6,000 to cover the costs of arts and humanities students, whose courses are cheaper than science or medicine.

He said: "The maximum allowable charge of £9,000 in 2012/13 would actually represent an increase for them of over 40% even after inflation, as against an increase of 20% or so for the other disciplines."

But Exeter said it would have to raise fees simply to maintain the same quality of teaching. Allen said: "Our own calculations show that we would need a fee of at least £7,000 just to stand still.

"I think you have to bear in mind there will be much higher student expectations, they will expect to see more staff, have better facilities, as more of the onus on paying for their education is coming on to them after graduating."

When fee waivers are taken into account, the average tuition fee would be less than £9,000, the university said. The fee announcement does not cover the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, which is a partnership between Exeter and Plymouth Universities.

The college lecturers' union, the UCU, said that the average fee needed to replace government funding cuts would be £6,863 for universities offering arts and humanities courses to break even. Sally Hunt, the UCU's general secretary, said: "Our own research shows to replace the money he [the government] has cut, the average fee needs to be almost £7,000. The government urgently needs to look again at the severity of its university funding cuts."

Universities could face a change in the law to stop some of them from charging students £9,000 a year if too many institutions are "clustering their charges at the upper end", the government warned last month.

• This article was amended on 2 March 2011. An editing error inserted references to Exeter as outside the top 20 in the Russell Group. This has been corrected.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/02/exeter-university-to-charge-top-fees

Oxford and Cambridge to join £9,000 club on fees

Students whose family income is below £25,000 would pay £6,000 and receive a maintenance bursary of up to £1,625
 

Cambridge university wants to triple fees in autumn next year.
Senior managers at Oxford and Cambridge universities are intent on charging £9,000 a year in tuition fees, the maximum allowed, it has emerged.

A consultation paper shows Cambridge wants to almost triple fees to £9,000 as soon as it can in autumn next year. The university will charge the maximum of £3,375 for this autumn.

Students whose family income is below £25,000 would pay £6,000 and receive a maintenance bursary of up to £1,625, under plans from Cambridge's working group on fees, published internally for consultation. Means testing will taper this £3,000 reduction to zero when family income exceeds £42,000.

Oxford's pro-vice-chancellor, Tony Monaco, has said fees of less than £8,000 would lose the university money because of national cuts to teaching and other grants. He told a Congregation, a formal meeting of senior members of the university, that Oxford subsidised undergraduates by £80m.

"That is already straining research and infrastructure ... Were we to charge £9,000, the additional income would be £14m a year." This would be used to improve outreach activities and waive fees for the poorest students.

The university calculates that to waivefees for the poorest by £3,000, would be the equivalent of charging all undergraduates £8,500. Oxford will make its decision on fees in March.

David Willetts, the universities minister, has said fees of £9,000 will be allowed only in "exceptional circumstances". MPs voted to raise tuition fees in December, after the Lib Dems pledged in their manifesto to scrap fees. The government loans students the fees until they graduate and are earning £21,000 a year.

Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: "We can now expect a race to the top now as universities rush to gain kudos by joining the '£9,000 group' as quickly as possible. How long before the most expensive start asking for the freedom to charge even more?"

The Cambridge report argues that even at £9,000, the university is still "carrying the burden of a significant loss per student … To charge less than the maximum would be fiscally irresponsible. Most if not all of our peers will charge the maximum."

A university spokesman said: "This report has been published online for consultation … It follows due consideration by a working party made up of senior academic, college and student representatives."

Universities are expected to raise fees to at least £6,000. They have to submit their plans to the government's Office for Fair Access, which can decline proposals.

New universities say they will be forced to raise fees to more than £6,000 because of cuts to teaching funds, and are concerned that students from low-income families will not be able to afford them.
Language shortage

Universities must urgently address the country's shortage of linguists, the British Academy warns. There is a growing mismatch between supply and demand in language skills, it argues in a report – Language Matters More and More. The situation has worsened since the academy's previous warning in 2009, it said. In 2010, 57% of UK pupils took no language at GCSE, while the number of A level language candidates fell by a quarter. There is a higher proportion of privately-schooled students on language courses than ever.

 

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/09/oxford-cambridge-9000-fees