Britain: Most universities to charge maximum tuition fees

[Hannah Bell]

Following the parliamentary vote to triple the cap on student tuition fees from £3290 to £9000 a year, there has been a stampede of universities indicating that they will charge the maximum.

The rush makes a mockery of claims by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government that universities would only charge over £6000 in “exceptional circumstances” and that if they exceeded this figure they would have to ensure financial support for their poorest students. When the cap was raised to £9000 (nearly US$15,000), the public was assured that universities would be unlikely to charge the maximum.

Already over two-thirds of the 32 universities that have so far made their intentions public will charge the maximum fee and the rest will charge around £8000. Only a handful propose to charge around £6000.

The decision to charge the maximum spans the entire range of universities, also exposing the government’s claims that their policies will result in a higher education market with variable fees. The least prestigious universities...will be charging the same as those universities in the elite Russell group such as Oxford and Cambridge... The trebling of fees will have a major impact upon working class students... “We’re now seeing second and third-tier universities charging the maximum…. These fees are going to put a lot of children from low and middle-income homes off universities.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/stud-a25.shtml