The figures simply don’t add up for higher education in England and Wales. Yet delusional politicians from all parties seem intent on avoiding the issue
Tuition fees in England go up this year for the first time in eight years and the response from universities has ranged from tepid to dismayed. It’s not hard to see why: Russell Group analysis found that the new amount of £9,535 a year – an increase of £285 – is a real-terms decrease of 26% since 2017.
The value of the fees has been steadily eroding since 2012, and the original figure of a maximum of £9,000 a year was artificially low for many courses anyway. Universities started off cross-subsidising expensive courses whose costs weren’t met by nine grand a student with the cheaper, classroom-based ones, mainly humanities, which were running a surplus. Within a decade, those courses – such as history, law, English – were running at or near cost.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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