Will higher fees kill Kent universities?

University fees will increase by nearly £300 following an announce by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.  Kristin Hawthorne reports.

Transcript

00:00£9,535. This is how much it could soon cost for students to attend university in the UK.

00:11Since 2017, fees have been capped at £9,250. The Education Secretary, Bridget Philipson,

00:18has indicated that costs currently do not reflect the true value of the education provided.

00:24This increase is in response to many intuitions suffering from the cost-of-living crisis,

00:30with 40% of English universities expecting to fall below the financial thresholds this

00:35year.

00:36From April 2025, we will be increasing the maximum cap for tuition fees in line with

00:41inflation to £9,535, an increase of £285 per academic year.

00:50With increases coming for those hoping to join university in the coming year, it's

00:54feared many students may feel discouraged from joining university.

00:59When people read a headline that says tuition fees are going to go up, they will naturally

01:04assume that just means their debt's going to go up, or their potential debt is going

01:07to go up, and that might put them off going to university, and that's a very bad thing.

01:13The university fee system is so completely broken, and none of the main parties have

01:21really wanted to grasp the nettle of doing a really full and proper review of how universities

01:28are funded. Labour has essentially fallen into the same trap of not wanting to do that,

01:34and therefore it looks like they're just going to continue with the existing system, but

01:41just at a slightly higher level of fees, and that is not the answer.

01:46I definitely think that it will discourage a lot of people from specifically selecting

01:52engineering and STEM subjects, which in themselves are very, I would say they're already difficult

02:00to begin with without prior knowledge.

02:05People are already struggling with what is the prices right now, so I feel it's going

02:09to be quite a lot. I'm an international student as well, so if that happens to international

02:13students, I think definitely most of them, they're going to be so encouraged to come

02:17to university, and here they might choose another country, which is really sad.

02:24Universities have already suffered a financial hit, with many international students hoping

02:28to stay in their home countries, citing the cost of living as a hurdle. It is not yet

02:33clear how much fees may go up for international students, but what we do know is that foreign

02:39students pay around triple the fees of British students, so the impact of this raise may

02:44be felt more in international students.

02:48Kristen Hawthorne, KMTV.