Surrey University has announced it is to charge the maximum £9000 tuition fees for students, blaming the requirement on cuts to its teaching funds and capital grants. It joins Oxford, Imperial College, Durham and Exeter in announcing it will charge the highest level of fees.
As covered by our earlier article “Tuition Fees: The Law of Unintended Consequences“, the government has warned that, if too many universities decide to charge £9,000, there may be further cuts to teaching grants. As more universities are due to vote on their fees, warnings such as this are as likely to lead to universities charging the higher rates to make up a shortfall imposed by other high fees, as to charge the lower rate.
To date, no university has announced it will charge below the maximum rate. Probably not a surprise to any of us, except those in government it seems.