Labour has “no plans” to raise tuition fees

On the World at One on King’s speech day, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson offered some warm words on international students.

Asked whether she was happy to see international student numbers rise, she said:

We have the graduate route that has worked very successfully for universities, has delivered massive benefits to communities like mine in Sunderland, where it has furthered investment opportunities – an important part of the system.

There will be those in the sector hoping that Phillipson was hinting that the ban on dependants might be lifted, or that there will be some reduction in the cost of visas.

Something something warm words, something something buttery parsnips. The problem is that two years on from the family housing crisis that nobody wants to talk about out loud, there’s still no bedspace capacity in the system. And it’s hard to imagine that Labour will want to wave away the revenue from visa fees.

And anyway – what if it’s not about immigration? What if international PGTs are drying up because the experience isn’t very good?

What if they’ve clocked that they’re being milked a bit too much? What if they’ve fed back that a handful of huge lectures, a paucity of structured networking opportunities, hardly any interaction with UK students to help their English language, poor careers support, costs way beyond their expectations and perfunctory dissertation supervision is not worth it?

Then what?

The hitman and HERR

There will be some in the sector hoping that somewhere in the bowels of 20 Great Smith Street, some civil servants are busy resurrecting the Covid-era Higher Education Restructuring Regime (HERR).

The problem there is that however hamfisted it was, it wanted something in exchange for a big loan. The problem is that Labour are likely to want something more sophisticated than the dross that was plonked into the HERR – which, lest we forget, included getting bailed out universities to promise that they wouldn’t fund their SU to carry out “niche activism” (ie work on EDI issues).

The unpaid disabled students officer that gets plonked on to countless university committees to know everything about every disability will be surprised to learn that any funding was being allocated – or that 40 per cent of students is a “niche”.

But I digress.

Labour’s wider agenda is some distance from being worked up. And some universities in financial trouble will end up with a revised model that is so thin that the already significantly different experience enjoyed by undergraduates all paying the same sticker price will go beyond breaking point as the debt on the buildings – and the bailout – gets paid down.

That’s the trouble with inequality – either between international and home students on costs, or between Russell Group facilities and everyone else’s. Eventually it becomes completely unjustifiable.

A new planning regime

Earlier, the King had promised “planning reform”.

But on the World at One, Phillipson said that Labour had “no plans” to raise fees. That’s the usual confection, of course – and as I noted a few weeks ago, they’ll have to plan pretty sharpish for 2025 as the civil service are already working on the basis that fees are to be unfrozen.

They just don’t yet have direction on the temperature level on the hairdryer.

So let’s imagine that at some point – either for September 2025 or earlier – that our own Mark Leach is right, and the undergraduate fee cap in England is allowed to rise to £9,850 pending a big and complex review of fees and funding and finance and tertiary.

I’ve been diving into university terms and conditions on my train journeys so far this summer, and I’ve now read enough to jot down some thoughts on university fee increases.

If the government does raise the cap, for existing/continuing students the question will be whether the Ts and Cs allow for a price increase in subsequent years.

Some Ts and Cs don’t allow for price increases at all for existing students in subsequent years. Doh!

Some allow them to rise “by inflation” if permitted by government. There’s two issues with that. Plenty don’t say which inflation, and when inflation. Several measures of inflation are available, and the month or moment you pick can have quite a big impact.

I know of a handful of universities, for example, that seem to have shifted the measure and the month without clear justification when imposing increases to international fees.

More seriously, both Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority have been looking at this re phone/broadband contracts – and seem to be settling on a view that mid-contract price increases that allow inflationary increases are unfair because it’s a term that the consumer can’t predict the full impact of.

The risk ends up being borne by the user, so the term may well be unfair. Ofcom are proposing a simple outright ban on mid-contract price increases to avoid consumer harm.

Tuition fee contracts are a lot bigger in financial value than mobile and broadband contracts.

CMA advice for universities still says that linking a verifiable index like inflation would be OK – but it’s not clear how that view is compatible with the noises they’ve been making on the above.

Oh do you now

As well as inflation, some universities say things like:

…we reserve the right to increase tuition fees by inflation and/or the maximum permitted by law or government policy (which may exceed the rate of inflation) in the second and subsequent years of your course.

The second half of that feels more clear – again, it’s impossible for the user to predict/forsee the implications, so it’s almost certainly an unfair term.

Timing matters too. For new students when the offer has been made, that’s the price they get to pay – not the price that universities then might have set by enrolment. A number of Welsh universities were caught out on this this year over the £250 rise.

That’s also true on other terms. If a university is offering seven instalments for international fees now and then switches to three for international fees, it’s the number that were on offer when the university made the offer that matters – and several universities seem to be in breach on that this year.

Same with other material information. Cuts like this might seem sensible – but in theory if a student decides on a university based on the fact that they’ll be getting free intercampus transport, it can’t just be cut mid-contract without express individual consent.

Universities in England will shortly be ordered to ensure that all students know all about sexual consent. It’s the same sort of principle when it comes to price and what you get for it.

Oh – and a university was to try to rely on RPI, it’s worth remembering that on today’s figures, that means very slightly over £250. It doesn’t mean £600.

In some Welsh universities the “we’ll just apply the increase to those coming in through clearing” thing means that clearing students will graduate with more debt than others. That strikes me as profoundly immoral given what we know about the likely characteristics differences between clearing students and others.

One careful owner

But the real kicker would be a sticker price increase – which, let’s remember has also been accompanied by an overall increase in average repayments via stealth changes to student loan repayments – with nothing on the “what you’ll get for the money” side.

It’s long been astonishing that England has pretty much the highest regulated tuition fees in Europe only to accompany that with pretty much the weakest student rights regime in Europe.

I was at a university this week where students going into their third year – who’ve already chosen specialist modules – are watching the teachers on those modules resign in real time as they take VR. It’s not the only one.

If the university course this widget appears on has had its staff cut by 75 per cent this summer, this “official” info from the university regulator – designed to support student choice – is downright dangerous. Unless this one appears as well.

Even on the outputs rather than the outcomes, I reckon most people know that if they buy defective goods, they have a right to a refund.

There’s often argument about whether a defect was the consumers fault, or how long it took before something stopped working or broke down (reasonable wear and tear). Sometimes retailers try to erroneously argue that the supplier has to be contacted/bears the responsibility.

But broadly, most folk know if they get a dud or it stops working soon, they have a right to a refund.

That matters. It means that when they raise it, it often results in that refund with no other intervention from a regulator or the state.

But what do students know?

Beyond these walls

I was thinking about that in the context of Keir Starmer’s King’s Speech speech to parliament. He said:

I know what service can do when it listens to and empowers people far beyond the walls of the state.

Now consider the design of HE regulation right now. Pretty much no student understands what they have the right to as a minimum. Nor do most know how to differentiate between their fault (lack of effort) or the university’s fault (unacceptably low support).

In England, OfS sets out the minimum characteristics of courses/student experiences. Hardly anyone working in HE has read those conditions, let alone students.

The design is “complain and OIA might adjudicate” or “notify OfS and we might go in”.

But neither could cope if students all went to the OIA with their issues. And nor is it desirable that everyone invokes the regulator.

Then because students don’t know their rights, they’re rarely assertive about them – until it’s too late. Most of the NSS questions, for example, are really rights if you rewrite them. But we only tell students about them at the end. Not at the start.

Better regulation says to students “this is what you have the right to” much earlier on. That gives them the confidence to raise it when it matters.

Giving students that confidence appears nowhere in the regulatory design that surrounds HE right now. And it allows poor provision and/or courses to morph way beyond what was originally promised with complete impunity.

Worse, unless rights are clear, cocky or desperate students then start to assert they have the right to a good grade. Because no effort is made to explain what they do and don’t have the right to.

If OfS ever gets around to a new student engagement strategy, it would do well to start by attempting to ensure that students know their rights and so can resolve things without further intervention from regulators.

I have delivered, I will deliver. Delivery is my middle name

On the radio, Phillipson said:

There is a lot I believe we can and will do to ensure there is good regulation and oversight of what has gone on. We’ve started that work already. The Office for Students, for example, we’ve begun to make changes there because the system we have had hasn’t delivered.

As Phillipson was speaking, staff working in management, governance and financial roles gathered at the palatial surroundings of the Park Plaza London Riverbank to get advice from OfS on “practical ways in which institutions can address financial risks”.

Was not unilaterally chopping that intercampus bus service or not slashing a shed ton of optional modules on the agenda? I wouldn’t bet on it.

This event will not be recorded.

Labour permitting a fee increase while doing nothing on maintenance would be a big problem. Labour permitting a fee increase while doing nothing to ensure that students get what they signed up for would be a scandal.