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Labour is poised to announce the first rise in university tuition fees in eight years, according to reports.
Amid fears of a growing financial crisis among universities, the Government is expected to unveil a hike in charges for students from September.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is due to make a statement to the House of Commons later this afternoon.
Tuition fees have remained frozen at £9,250 in England since 2017, but university leaders have recently been calling on the Government to help institutions struggling financially.
Due to rampant inflation in recent years, universities have seen the value of domestic tuition fees fall.
This has left them increasingly reliant on foreign students, who can be charged significantly more.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is due to make a statement to the House of Commons later this afternoon
Tuition fees have remained frozen at £9,250 since 2017, but university leaders have recently been calling on the Government to help institutions struggling financially
When he was campaigning to be Labour leader in 2020, Sir Keir Starmer pledged to ‘support the abolition of tuition fees’ but has since rowed back on that promise
According to the Telegraph, Ms Phillipson will announce an increase in tuition fees in line with inflation.
Previous hikes in tuition fees have been linked to the inflation measure known as RPIX, which excludes mortgage interest payments.
In a report in June, the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank suggested that raising the tuition fee cap to match RPIX inflation would see fees rise by 2.1 per cent to £9,450 in 2025 and they would reach £10,500 by 2029.
Universities UK (UUK), which represents 141 universities, recently called on the Government to increase funding for teaching in England by linking tuition fees to inflation and restoring the teaching grant.
The blueprint from UUK, published in September, warned that teaching funding per student in England was at its ‘lowest point since 2004’ and the current £9,250 fee would have been worth £5,924 in 2012/13.
It added that any rise should be accompanied by additional support to help with the cost of studying – including restoring grants for the poorest students.
Professor Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of King’s College London (KCL), had previously suggested that universities in England needed between £12,000 and £13,000 per year in tuition fees to meet costs.
Speaking in August, Ms Phillipson said raising tuition fees would be ‘really unpalatable’ but did not rule out Labour doing so.
The previous government raised the cap on university tuition fees in England to £9,000 a year in 2012, but it has been fixed at £9,250 since 2017.
Asked whether tuition fee caps would be increased in the next five years, Ms Phillipson told Sky News this summer: ‘I do recognise the challenge, and I hear that message from institutions as well, but I think that’s a really unpalatable thing to be considering.
‘Not least because I know that lots of students across the country are already facing big challenges around the cost of living, housing costs, lots of students I speak to who are already working lots of jobs, extra hours, in order to pay for their studies.’
Ms Phillipson said the Government does intend to ‘reform the system overall’, adding: ‘I’ve been looking at what the options around that will be and I hope at a later stage to be able to say more about that.’
The Education Secretary previously said Labour had ‘no plans’ to increase fees.
When he was campaigning to be Labour leader in 2020, Sir Keir Starmer pledged to ‘support the abolition of tuition fees’ but has since rowed back on that promise.
Ahead of Ms Phillipson’s statement to the House of Commons this afternoon, suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana branded a rise in fees as ‘wrong’.
‘The Government’s increase to tuition fees is wrong,’ the Coventry South MP said. ‘Students shouldn’t have to pay tuition this year, or any year.’
‘It’s time to abolish tuition fees and cancel student debt because education is a public good, not a commodity.’
Education policy analyst Tom Richmond, host of Inside Your Ed podcast, said: ‘At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if tuition fees creep up by £250 in 2025 to around £9,500, and this pattern is repeated for another couple of years, we’ll hit £10,000 tuition fees in this Parliament.’
Dani Payne, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation, said: ‘The announcement this afternoon for a one-off inflationary rise to tuition fees and maintenance loans is a sensible and necessary step given the financial pressures facing institutions and students, but must come hand-in-hand with greater financial accountability from universities.
‘With over a third of providers reporting deficits, and growing concerns about the potential of institutions collapsing entirely, it is right that the Government has stepped in to stabilise the sector.’
