The Government’s universities minister has said the average cost of tuition fees will be “significantly below” the top rate of £9,000, but a senior academic has warned this could lead to under-investment and threaten the future of some institutions.
More than 20 universities have already stated they intend to charge up to £9,000 a year, but David Willetts insisted others were “itching” to provide courses at lower rates and there would a range of options for students to choose from.
From September 2012 universities can charge anything from £6,000 a year for courses and £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”. The announcement of the plans led to a series of protests, some violent, in central London at the end of last year.
Speaking on the BBC’s Politics Show, Willetts said: “The Office for Fair Access’s job, under the legislation we inherited from Labour, is to make sure that universities are doing everything they can to widen access. It is not an overall price regulator for the sector, that is not its legal powers.
“What I am keen to do, in terms of getting a wider range of offers for students ... is that new providers come in, many of whom will wish to compete with universities, notably, but not only, further education colleges.
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“There are further education colleges that are itching to come in at significantly below these headline top prices and one of the things we are looking at is how we can make it easier for people to go to these new alternative providers.”
He added: “At the end of the day, when the dust settles, I think we will find there is a great range of options available to students and the average is significantly below that headline £9,000 that you are talking about.”
But the vice-chancellor of Liverpool John Moores, Professor Michael Brown, warned his university could not maintain quality levels if it charged students £6,000.
"We're in pretty lean form as a university and yet the calculation we do is: we charge £6,000, we'll lose £26m. We can't do it," he told the BBC’s North West Politics Show.
He suggested that any university charging the base figure might not be “around for very long” adding: “They’ll be a very different institution in a few years’ time with that under investment.”
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The coalition has faced opposition from Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who fear the fees increase will stop those from poorer backgrounds going on to further education. Students will start paying back the debt until they earn more than £21,000 a year.
Willetts said he wanted universities to look for “potential” when it came to selecting students.
He said: “If you get an A and two Bs at a school where the average A-level grades are a C and two Ds, then I think that shows you’re achieving something exceptional.
“Someone who is getting perhaps even better grades, but at a school where everyone gets good grades may not have achieved something so exceptional and what universities have to be able to do is to look beyond the headline A-level grades to what that individual’s potential might be.
“I think universities have to be meritocratic, universities have to go on who are the people who are the brightest and best that can go to our universities.”