Students will need larger loans to cover tuition fees

By Nicholas Boyle

Following the announcement that three out of four universities plan to charge £9,000 a year for tuition fees, students will have to take out larger loans to cover the cost of their studies.

The Daily Mail reported that of the 70 universities `to publicly announce` what they plan to charge in 2012, 46 said they would charge the maximum £9,000 a year for all their courses. A further six institutions will charge £9,000 for their most expensive courses.

This means the average tuition fee next year will be around £8,500, and because most of the fees will be paid using student loans funded from Whitehall, the Government may have to `find` an extra £450m a year by 2014.

It is feared that up to 36,000 university places could be cut to `solve the crisis`.

Universities had until midnight on Tuesday to submit their tuition fee plans to the Office for Fair Access. Universities that wanted to charge more than £6,000 a year also had to declare how they would ensure poorer students can gain access to higher education.

Tags: student, loans, student loans, tuition fees, cost of university

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