UK universities have been given 14 days to justify their fees

Students are been advised to postpone their University applications whilst Universities set their tuition fee prices for 2012.

Hundreds of thousands of students applying for university places in Britain for 2012 are facing weeks of uncertainty as the government tries to persuade universities to lower their tuition fees.

There are twenty eight universities in England who are considering lowering their fees to below £7,500 a year so they can make use of the 20,000 places which were held back by ministers. According to the Office for Fair Access, eight institutions have already submitted their proposals to lower their tuition fees from what they had previously submitted.

Students are angry that the hastily drawn up plans for the tuition fee rise has already thrown the application process into disarray as they still can’t decide where they want to go. With the increase in graduates who are looking for jobs not in line with the amount of graduate jobs available, students have to take longer deciding on what degree to take and what the best universities are to get ahead of the competition. Yet once the Universities submit their tuition fees proposals, students will only have 6 weeks to choose their universities they want to apply to and submit their application.

The confusion has come after the government announced major changes to its white paper which aimed at driving down the current average tuition fee cost of £8,393. At present only 29 out of 140 universities charge less than £7,500 a year.

Toni Pearce, NUS vice-president, said funding changes are continuing to wreak havoc. "To cover for its own, expensive mistakes, the Government is sledge-hammering into place an artificial market that treats students as pieces to be traded, gives them no power to demand the support they need and encourages the poorest students to seek out the least-funded courses," she said.

Offa commented that it couldn’t issue the new guidelines to universities or colleges until the Higher Education Funding Council publishes its details on how they can bid for the extra places.

Sir Martin Harris, the director for fair access at Offa, said he had sought to minimise the impact on applicants. "Our resulting guidance makes it clear applicants must continue to receive the same overall level of financial support – even if the balance changes between bursaries and fee waivers – and must receive sufficient warning of any revised package to enable them to change their university choices, if they so wish, without prejudice before the Ucas deadline of 15 January," he said.

Source: Pareto.co.uk, Monday 24th October 2011