Manchester University to charge £9000 tuition fees - The Guardian

Manchester University has become the eighth university to state its intention to charge £9,000 tuition fees – the maximum possible – from autumn 2012.

The move has raised fears that the government will have to claw back funds from universities – possibly by reducing the number of places on degree courses – if the majority of institutions charge the maximum.

MPs voted in December to allow fees for UK students on undergraduate courses to rise from £3,350 a year to £6,000, and £9,000 in "exceptional cases".

But ministers assumed that universities would charge different levels of fees and that the average, across more than 130 institutions, would be £7,500.

The government pays students' tuition fees in the first instance. Graduates pay the government back when they are earning more than £21,000. If the average fee is higher than ministers anticipated, the government will end up paying more up front, and this may not be sustainable.

So far, Essex, Surrey, Imperial College London, Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter and Durham universities have stated that they intend to charge the full fees.

Only London Metropolitan University has published plans to charge less than the maximum. Liverpool Hope University has said it intends to charge below £9,000, but has not finalised its plans.

Universities that charge more than £6,000 must set out targets to widen their pool of students beyond white, middle-class teenagers. These must be agreed by the government's access watchdog, the Office for Fair Access.

Manchester said "a large number" of its students would qualify for bursaries of £3,000 a year and would have fees waived for one of the three years of their degree course.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, vice-chancellor of the university, said the board of governors had agreed to the maximum fee "very reluctantly".

She said the full fee was necessary "to ensure and improve the quality of teaching and the wider experience that we offer to all of our students". She said it reflected the value of a Manchester degree in the employment market.

The university intends to triple the amount it spends on supporting students from less advantaged homes to £1.2m a year.

A total of £940m is being cut from English universities' budgets for teaching, research and site renovation for the next academic year, a 12.6% reduction. However, the budget awarded an extra £100m to research.

Gareth Thomas, Labour's shadow universities minister, said the government might have to reduce student numbers, or make an extra cut to the teaching grant. "We have said all along that the government's plans were unfair and unnecessary, but they are also unsustainable. The more universities that charge the maximum, the more money the government will have to find. Cuts to teaching funding or to student numbers might have to happen. This would be a further devastating blow to universities and their students."