Tomorrow the Election, Next Week the Tuition Fee Debate

One subject has been studiously ignored by politicians in the UK general election: what will happen to tuition fees over the lifetime of the next parliament and beyond. While many individual MPs and candidates have signed pledges indicating that they will not support an increase in fees from the current £3,000 plus inflation this is unlikely to have any impact on reality.

Without an alternative plan for funding the expansion of higher education it is almost certain that the cap on fees will be first raised and then removed. Otherwise we are likely to see more universities experiencing financial difficulties. The University of Cumbria has already applied for emergency funding from HEFCE and has had to reduce the facilities it offers students; while the circumstances of this situation are unique to Cumbria it is likely that other universities will face similar shortfalls.

One proposal put forward by Lord Browne,who chairs the cross party review, is that fees will be allowed to rise by £1,000 per annum until they reflect the cost of the relevant course. In this scenario we could end up with different level of fees to reflect the relative cost of teaching arts or sciences, for example. This would see British universities adopting the Australian finanical model.

This approach differs from lifting the upper limit to between £5,000 and £7,000 which had previously been thought the most likely outcome.

Uncertainty about tuition fees is likely to remain for some time. With all political parties having no immediate plans to reduce fees (any Lib Dem plan to phase out fees will take some time to introduce even in the event of their making substantial gains in tomorrow's election) the only certainty is that they will rise. The bigger issue in terms of access to higher education will be any change to the interest rate payable on student loans; this, too, it seems is likely to rise in the near future meaning that the overall cost of education will be even harder to judge.

What does this mean for international universities? Universities in Australia, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, Canada and the USA will increasingly be seen as viable alternatives for those students who can finance their entire higher education from their own or their family's resources.

For European universities, we expect a continuing increase in interest not just to state universities but also to private universities. This trend is currently being driven by the shortage of places at British universities and many careers advisors in schools are actively looking to find places abroad for this year's school leavers. One of the unintended consequences of EU membership is that British students can find far more generous higher education opportunities in other countries. In that context perhaps the most important development in the last weeks has been the European Court of Justice's decision to allow some European countries to restrict the number of students coming from other EU member states.