Labour today announced the first rise in university tution fees in eight years.
Amid fears of a growing financial crisis in the sector, the Government is hiking charges for students from next year.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson revealed students will now face maximum fees of £9,535.
Tuition fees had previously remained frozen at £9,250 in England since 2017.
Ms Phillipson said the tuition fees cap was being increased by £285 per year due to the ‘severe financial challenges’ facing universities.
She said there had been a ‘significant real-terms decline in their income’ due to rampant inflation in recent years.
The Education Secretary blasted the previous Tory government for failing to take action on fees, saying they had ‘ducked’ tough decisions ‘time and again’.
Ms Phillipson also announced she is increasing the maximum maintenance loans available to students by up to £414 per year from next year.
Laura Trott, the Conservatives’ newly-appointed shadow education secretary, said Labour was hiking tuition fees ‘when students can least afford it’.
She also attacked Sir Keir Starmer over his previous pledge to ‘abolish tuition fees’ when he was campaigning for the Labour leadership in 2020.
‘Perhaps we should start putting sell-by dates on statements the Prime Minister makes,’ Ms Trott told the Commons.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson today announced the first rise in university tution fees in eight years.
Tuition fees had previously remained frozen at £9,250 in England since 2017
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
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.
During the general election campaign this year, the Labour leader said he had abandoned his pledge in order to prioritise tackling NHS waiting lists.
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.’
