Student fees hike ‘may cut applications by half’
A big rise in tuition fees would lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of teenagers aspiring to go to university, with those from poorer backgrounds the most likely to give up hope of getting a degree, research reveals today.
Four out of five young people in England and Wales currently think they will probably go on into higher education, but that figure would drop to just 45% if fees doubled to £7,000 a year, and to a third among those whose with unemployed parents, the poll found.
The findings, in a survey commissioned by the Sutton Trust educational charity, come after the universities minister, David Willetts, told the Guardian this month that the cost of hundreds of thousands of degree courses was a “burden on the taxpayer that had to be tackled”, and students should consider fees “more as an obligation to pay higher income tax” than a debt. Lord Browne’s independent review into student funding reports this autumn …