Tuition fees less than only US and Korea

A study reveals that ahead of this increase British students are paying the equivalent of just $5,000 (£3,165) a year to attend university.

Only students in South Korea and the United States paid more, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest edition of Education at a Glance.

The report analysed and compared education at all levels in 34 member countries of the OECD as well as systems in Brazil, Russia, Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

The analysis shows that almost two-thirds – 65.5 per cent – of funding for higher education in the UK came from private sources in 2008, mainly from student tuition fees.

However, the level of private funding is set to increase next year when Government money for teaching degrees in English universities is slashed. An 80 per cent reduction – worth £2.9bn – in teaching grants will mean that universities have to increase fees to recover their lost income. The majority of Yorkshire universities plan to charge £9,000 a year from 2012.

Report author Andreas Schleicher said: “What you can say is most of the people in the UK are covered – they have access to loans. That’s far different from Korea and the US.”

Under the new fee system in England students will start to repay their loans once they earn more than £21,000 a year, with repayments rising as their salary increases.