Proposed Student Fee Increase

A couple days ago I was made aware that The UK government has made plans to increase student fees in the UK. This post may be considered late but I didn’t want to go on a long irritated rant, so I took my time to catch my breath and collect my thoughts.

The tuition fees for UK undergraduate students will have increased to £9,250 for 2017 onwards if plans go ahead, and this blog is written as though all the plans have (they most likey will pass as the conservatives have a majority). At first, this £250 increase seems like not much, but when you understand what that extra £250 could amount to with interest, plus that it is only one of a group of changes, it is .

The £250 increase isn’t the main issue, which is that the fees will increase with inflation, and with inflation set to be high over the next few years, in 2019 and 2020 expect to see tuition fees over £10,000, which is obscene in my opinion.

These changes could apply to current students, that is up to individual universities. However, these changes hinder an already large problem, how much do we owe once we finish our degrees?
Well as I have said in past posts this is hard enough to calculate currently with 3 years of £9000 with each instalment receiving different amounts of interest throughout your degree, and then taking different amounts of interest throughout your life since RPI and wages change.

Now though it is harder for my year since we have 2 years at £9000 and one at £9250. However, for the year below mine 2016/17 starters have one year at £9000, one year at £9250 and one higher again, with future students having different rates each year. Also, don’t think the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills know either since they struggle to keep track of who owes what to whom already, let alone under the new system.

The thing that really takes the biscuit is the fact that Universities from 2018 won’t automatically be able to charge the new higher rate, no it is now based on a quality system. This means that the best quality universities will be allowed to pay the max fee when lesser universities will only be allowed to charge less.

This has 1 impact, newer and currently lower quality universities will find it harder to compete let alone improve since they are on the lower fees. This change also has one possible impact; this has the potential to create a higher education system for lack of a better word classist. In which the best universities are less assessable to those from the poorer backgrounds and those who will earn less over their lifetimes.

Out of everything wrong with these possible changes I feel that the worst thing is that it imposes a charge on intelligence and merit, and in a meritocracy that’s sort of hypocritical. It is generally accepted those with better grades can choose to go to university, students get into university on merit and the more merit you have the “better” the university you can go to. The student loan system charges merit but these changes mean that the more merit you have the more you are charged.

I personally think these changes are absolutely outrageous and frankly and insult after they announced they were not raising the interest threshold in line with median earnings which i explained in a previous 2 posts I for one will be in the NUS protests against these changes.

(please note I have my own opinions on the concept of the “better” university becoming less relevant, but it has no place in this post)

I hope this blog helps you understand the proposed changes, please share if it helped