Universities must offer students value for money, Prime Minister Theresa May said yesterday, launching a review that could reduce fees and restore grants in a bid to entice younger voters who helped punish her party at an election last year.
In a speech designed to show her programme for Britain is more than just its departure from the European Union, May said she wanted not only to look at the funding of education but also at ways of raising the importance of technical studies to prepare the country for life after Brexit in the high-tech age.
Her pitch was also aimed at the opposition Labour Party, which, some pollsters say, won over young voters by promising to get rid of student fees and which threatens to force the Conservatives out of several London councils in local elections in May.
“We now have one of the most expensive systems of university tuition in the world,” she said at a college in Derby, adding that she shared the concerns of students and their carers.
“The review will now look at the whole question of how students and graduates contribute to the cost of their studies,” she said, dodging a question whether taxpayers would have to pay more towards the university education of students.
Labour’s education policy adviser, Angela Rayner, described the speech as an admission by May “that her government got it wrong”.
“This long-winded review is an unnecessary waste of time. Labour will abolish tuition fees, bring back maintenance grants and provide free, lifelong education in Further Education colleges,” Rayner said in a statement.
May’s predecessor David Cameron, a fellow Conservative, tripled the cost of tuition for students from England and Wales to £9,000 a year, higher than the fees other EU countries charge their citizens.
In 2016, the government also phased out all grants to help poorer students with living costs, replacing them with loans.
May’s Conservatives have long defended their approach, arguing that requiring students to pay helps fund more places so more people can study, and puts more of the burden of the cost of higher education on those who benefit most from it.
Students do not have to make payments on their loans unless they earn above a minimum threshold, although they continue to accrue interest. Unpaid balances are wiped out after 30 years.
But the system is unpopular with younger voters, angry about being the first British generation to start their careers often with tens of thousands of pounds of debt.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds said on Sunday that students could be charged variable tuition rates depending on the economic value of degrees in the subjects they study.
Hinds said he wants “more variety” in the level of fees, rather than almost all courses and universities charging the maximum amount.
He also calls for more flexibility in how courses are delivered, such as two-year degrees, encouraging “commuter degrees” where students live at home and making it easier for part-time students and those who want to carry on working while studying.
Former Labour education minister, Lord Adonis, called for a more significant change - arguing that fees should be much lower or abolished, in the way that had happened in Germany.
He accused universities of being “bloated” on high fees and said they needed to “get real” over how much they should charge.
Lord Adonis rejected the idea of different subjects having different costs as a “big backward step”, which would reduce numbers applying for science subjects, if they became more expensive than arts and humanities.
The tuition fee review also will consider ways of reducing costs such as cutting interest rates on loans and reintroducing maintenance grants for disadvantaged students, as well as examining the level of fees.
May said that sure poorer students should have an “equal chance” in higher education – but that at present they had the greatest burden of debt.
Prime Minister Theresa May walks to deliver a speech to students and staff during her visit to Derby College in Derby yesterday.
