University fees need to go up £100m to cover cuts

New figures show the region’s nine universities and university college will get £115m less for delivering degrees in the next academic year as the Government’s radical shake up of higher education takes effect.

The figures came amid predictions yesterday that almost every university in Yorkshire will recruit fewer students this September under the new system.

Four universities in Yorkshire: Bradford, Hull, Leeds Metropolitan and Sheffield Hallam are expected to see student numbers drop by more than 10 per cent, according to estimates by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

Figures published yesterday show how much teaching and research funding every university in the country is to receive for the 2012/13 academic year.

Cuts first announced in Chancellor George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review back in 2010 will be felt for the first time by universities in September.

For students starting in 2012 the majority of degrees will receive no state funding at all. This has led to the cap on tuition fees rising from £3,375 to a top level of £9,000 a year.

Figures produced by HEFCE show Yorkshire universities will get around £312m for teaching compared with £428m for the 2011/12 year.

Similar drops in funding will be experienced over the next two years as new year groups start university under the new funding system.

The shortfall in teaching funding will be met through higher tuition fees which will be initially paid for by the Treasury through loans which graduates start to pay back once they earn more than £21,000 a year.

The Government’s shake up of higher education has also changed the rules governing how many students a university can recruit.

University student numbers are capped each year with institutions facing fines if they go above their limit.

From September, universities will be allowed to recruit unlimited numbers of students who achieve AAB grades or better at A-level. These students will not be included in the university’s capped figure.

The Government has, however, also taken 20,000 places out of the system and ring-fenced them for universities and colleges which can deliver courses for less than £7,500 a year.

This change saw every university lose places and only those where average fees are below £7,500 have the opportunity to bid for them back.

Huddersfield, Leeds Trinity University College and York St John all successfully secured some of these “core and margin” places. Fees at the rest of the region’s universities were too high.

The Government has also withdrawn another 10,000 places from the system compared with 2011/12. The effect of these changes is that more than a quarter of universities across the country could see at least a 10 per cent drop in student numbers as a result of government reforms, official figures show.

In total, around three in four universities are likely to have an overall drop in numbers including eight of the nine in Yorkshire, according to HEFCE. This prediction is based on universities recruiting the same level of AAB students as they did last year.

The hardest hit universities will be those which are charging too much to be able to apply for the places reserved for courses costing below £7,500 but which are also unable to increase the number of top performing AAB students they can recruit.

HEFCE chief executive Sir Alan Langlands said he did not believe the drops in student numbers would tip any institution into “significant financial trouble”.