Warwick confirms fee rise to £9,000 for 2012

The University has announced today, March 23, that it intends to almost triple tuition fees for home and EU undergraduate students to £9,000 for students studying at Warwick from 2012, pending approval from the Office for Fair Access.

The proposal includes measures to alleviate the impact of the fee rise to those from lower income backgrounds, who will be offered fee-waivers and bursaries worth up to £4,500 if they have a family income below £25,000.

According to the University “around 1,500 (19%) of Warwick’s current undergraduate student population falls within those terms.”

Furthermore, courses aimed to widen access at Warwick such as 2+2 sandwich courses and part-time degrees are set to cost £6,000.

This proposal follows a number of meetings featuring representatives from the University, student representatives, faculty members and heads of department which discussed student experience and funding.

The Senate and Council have taken into consideration the feedback from these sessions and have approved the proposal for the above measures to be instigated from 2012.

The University argued the need for the tripling in fees next year in a press release on its website: “Warwick provides an extremely high quality teaching and learning environment that is valued, and highly sought after, by both students and staff…

“Warwick students are taught by world-leading academics on a campus with a global reputation. Warwick is also consistently ranked as one of the UK’s top ten universities. We need to not just preserve that level of excellence, but to build on it and enhance it despite the reduction in funding that English universities are facing through the cuts to their teaching grants.”

The Students’ Union released a statement earlier today which outlined their position as “opposed to £9,000 fees but determined to win increased investment in the student experience”.

The statement, which denounced the fee rise, argued that “future generations of graduates will be burdened by fees that will result in huge amounts of personal debt during a period of record levels of graduate unemployment.”

Students’ Union Education Officer Sean Ruston maintained his firm opposition to the proposals. “Throughout our negotiations with the University we have remained consistently opposed to the fee rise, but at the same time we’ve had serious discussions about how to invest extra income into improving the student experience.”

Almost all the universities which have already announced their plans for the next year have chosen to raise fees from the current £3,375 to £9,000, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, Durham and Exeter. Only one university so far – London Metropolitan – has chosen not to charge the maximum figure despite government criticisms that only the top universities should charge this, and must then prove that a significant amount of the extra funds will be put toward improving the student experience.

Warwick have announced that £9.6 million will be invested in enhancing “the student experience”, though the details of how this money will be spent were not identified at the time of publication.

Ruston emphasised the efforts of the Students’ Unions’ to influence the University with regard to these proposals. “Some of our recommendations have directly influenced the allocation of extra funds to improve things like teaching facilities and the general quality of education of Warwick.

“At the same time, we have pushed hard for the University to be as ambitious as possible in providing support for students who need it in terms of bursaries and putting in place new measures to widen access from students from low income backgrounds,” he added.

Students’ Union President Daniel Stevens expressed his frustrations of the proposed plans. “It’s disappointing that Warwick is joining other institutions in charging £9,000 and that higher education is in more of a mess… this is definitely a step backward for social mobility in the U.K.”

One first-year English Literature student David Levesley said: “I find it completely irresponsible that a university that based itself off liberal, west coast universities… has decided to use finance to seem like its stuffy Oxbridge rivals.”

Andrew Wilkin, a second-year History undergraduate commented: “After Manchester, Oxbridge, Exeter… I’m not shocked by this whatsoever. All it needed was one top university to state their 9,000 fees and all would follow suit.”

One fourth-year student stated that the announcement was “unsurprising”.

Stevens concluded by stating that: “The students have to be [at] the centre under the new fees regime, given that students now have the burden and not the government.”

Further details on the proposals will be available once the terms have been agreed with Office for Fair Access in July 2011.