Tuition Fee Increase: Why the Current System is the Fairest and Why Students Should Welcome the Rise

On Monday 4th November, the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced that from the next academic year tuition fees are to be raised by £285 to £9,535. This was met by much aggravation from students, many who see the rises as unfair and that it will further increase pressure on student’s finances. However, this was a rise which is long overdue and, in my view, one that students should expect to increase in the years to come.

Since 2017, the maximum fee which a university can charge home students in England has sat at £9,250 a year. Many universities have expressed concerns around the fact that this, unlike most goods and services, has not kept up with inflation. It is unrealistic to expect universities to be completely immune to the effects of inflation and to simply swallow the costs themselves, unlike any other business. Many universities estimate that, if fees were to have kept up with inflation over the previous eight years, they would now sit somewhere between £12,000 – £13,000.

Of course, the news has brought the expected calls for tuition fees to be scrapped completely. Others have, in personal opinion, falsely said that this will prevent more students from accessing higher education, I believe neither of these statements are correct and I find the latter dangerously inaccurate.

Firstly, the current system of tuition fees in the UK is broadly the fairest possible system of repayment. It is in affect a graduate tax, after graduation, those who earn over £25,000 per year pay back 9% of their salary until either their debt is settled or, as in most cases, 40 years is reached.  It is not unreasonable to ask students who will benefit from their time at University, to contribute something back into the system which they have took out of. In 2023, the Governments own figures showed that the median annual salary for graduates was £40,000, £10,500 higher than the equivalent for non-graduates. It seems to me wholly ludicrous that graduates should feel so entitled that they believe that those who average wages are so much lower than theirs should pay for their education to which they have hugely benefited from. 

My second issue I have is those that argue that the rise will put off students going to University, particularly those from a more disadvantaged background. This is in part true, but I believe this is only a result of the way in which University debt is framed in the media. University debt is not like standard debt, it is paid back as and when you can. There is no way in which students should feel put off by the current system of tuition fees over fears they will be saddled with debt when they graduate, however, they are made to worry this way as a result of these equivocations around student debt. It has, and always will be, a graduate tax, and this is the way in which it should be framed. 

Whilst these increases in tuition fees are long overdue, they should be widely welcomed. Reports over the summer showed that universities faced a crisis point in their existence if this issue of below inflation levels of funding where not directly addressed, with many being forced to make cuts and redundancies. Students should be relieved that this rise secures the future, at least in the short term, of the world leading higher education system in the UK.

Words by James Childs

Cover Image Credit: Andrew Fox/ Alamy