Treasury alert as universities charge maximum

The University of Bath has become the latest institution to announce that it plans to charge students £9,000 a year as part of the tuition fees hike.

The university’s Vice Chancellor said the price rise was to ensure it could maintain “quality of provision”.

More than 20 English universities have already declared their intended fee levels for next year, with the majority planning to charge the maximum £9,000.

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Almost all of these are among the most selective institutions including Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London, Manchester and Warwick.

MPs voted to raise tuition fees to £6,000 from 2012 at the end of last year, with institutions only allowed to charge up to £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”.

But so far, most universities are clustering around the £9,000 mark, with elite institutions leading the way.

This is set to cause problems for the Government which is budgeting for loans which students will take out from next September based on average fees being about £7,500. With 18 of the 23 universities that have announced their fees so far planning to charge the full £9,000-a-year, the average will be higher.

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Labour claims this could now result in further cuts as the Treasury tries to balance its books.

Shadow Universities Minister Gareth Thomas said: “Contrary to what David Cameron and Nick Clegg claimed, universities charging close to the maximum are set to be the norm not the exception.

“Unless the Government gets a grip on this shambles we could see further serious cuts to the higher education budget or cuts to student numbers.”

Figures from the House of Commons Library show that if the average fee level is £8,000 the number of places the Government could afford to pay would need to be cut by five per cent – 17,000 places.

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Ed Miliband attacked David Cameron yesterday on the issue saying of £9,000 fees: “It’s not the exception, it’s the rule.”

The Prime Minister said that the Office for Fair Access would decide whether an institution could go to the £9,000 limit.