STUDENTS in England could be facing an automatic hike to university tuition fees each year as ministers are reportedly considering changing the law to increase them in line with inflation.
According to the i Paper, ministers are looking at the move amid fears institutions may start to go bankrupt unless extra funding is injected into the higher education sector.
If fees were tied to inflation south of the Border, they could rise by more than £250 next year to nearly £9800, and it could pave the way for them to hit or exceed £10,000 a year in 2027.
Last November, UK Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson made the call to increase tuition fees in England for the first time since 2017, hiking them from £9250 to £9535 for students starting courses this autumn.
The SNP Scottish Government has had a long-standing policy of not making Scottish-domiciled students pay for tuition in Scotland.
Under the reported new system in England, fees would rise at the start of each academic year in line with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) inflation forecast (Retail Price Index excluding mortgage interest, or RPIX).
Based on the OBR’s current forecast, this would result in fees rising by 2.7% next year, from £9535 to £9792.
Currently, ministers need to get both Houses of Parliament to approve secondary legislation to raise fees.
Making the uplift automatic would provide universities with greater certainty about their long-term funding but it would require the Government to pass legislation which could expose ministers to yet another threat of rebellion.
Asked directly about the subject on the BBC's Today programme on Thursday, Philipson did not say whether she would allow inflation-linked fees.
She said: “We did give universities an increase through the tuition fee increase that we delivered last year, but we’ll be looking at all of these areas around the long-term financial sustainability of universities as part of that post-16 white paper that we’ll set out later on this year.”
It has also been reported the tuition fee increase could be accompanied by enhanced maintenance support to put more money in poorer students’ pockets.
Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, said: “Tuition fees are now worth only two-thirds of what they were in 2012 because for years universities weren’t allowed to increase them to keep pace with inflation.
“Universities are tackling this challenge head-on, finding back-office savings and increasingly working together to become more efficient. However, the country needs universities firing on all cylinders if it is to get the economic growth everybody wants. That means they need to be funded sustainably with tuition fees linked to inflation year-on-year and their ground-breaking research properly funded.”
Nick Hillman, the director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank, said that permanent indexation of fees was “increasingly the assumption that university planners are operating under”.
