Higher fees for Guernsey students at Warwick

From the 2013/14 academic year onwards, the University of Warwick, along with Cardiff, Cambridge and Imperial College, will demand international tuition fees for students from Guernsey.

Peter Dunn, head of communications at Warwick, told the BBC that favouring Channel Island students over other non-EU students would be discriminatory.

He said: “We have to decide what that means in terms of the impact on other non-EU students who may see us offering something to Jersey and Guernsey which they don’t receive.”

The decision to increase fees for Guernsey students, he says, was prompted by a relaxation of rules as to what fees can be charged by universities.

Wesley Yung, first-year Law student from Hong Kong, does not think that charging Guernsey students the local fee would be discriminatory. Instead, by increasing fees “it would be rather discriminatory to Guernsey students”, he said.

From 2013 onwards, tuition fees for Guernsey students may increase by up to £9400, an increase of over 100 percent compared to local tuition fees.

This means that Guernsey students entering the University the next academic year may be paying international fees up to £18,400 a year, instead of the local fee of £9000 a year.

Guernsey’s Deputy Education Minister, Robert Sillars, told the BBC: “We’re trying very hard to bring these four [universities] back in line”.

But he said that the “difficult financial situation many UK higher education institutions find themselves in” may make it difficult to resolve the problem.

Annual tuition fees for EU students have already increased from approximately £3500 to £9000, while international fees are expected to continue to increase progressively.

When asked whether financial difficulties were a justification for raising tuition fees for Guernsey students, Wesley Yung replied “Definitely not. That is not a reason.”