Universities in England have been warned that the fees and teaching funding freeze may be continued by the next government given the political difficulty of raising tuition fees, despite increasing agitation over the issue.
Lord Johnson of Marylebone, the Conservative former universities minister, tabled an amendment to the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill that would allow the £9,250 tuition fee cap to rise in line with inflation, warning that the freeze was “creating a situation in which we are systematically defunding our universities” and could lead to them “falling over one by one”.
With Labour sending signals that some interpret as an acceptance of tuition fees – the party has so far confined itself to talking about making graduates’ loan repayments fairer and enhancing maintenance support – there are big questions about where any reversal of the decline in university funding, which is being eroded by inflation, will come from.
The government has said the fee cap will be frozen until at least 2024-25, which would mean the fee will have been static for at least seven years since its last increase, to £9,250 in 2017, and will have moved little since trebling to £9,000 in 2012 to make up for the slashing of direct public funding.
