£3,000 is 'only the start' for tuition fees

The architect of the Government's tuition fee policy today warned that charges for university courses will inevitably have to rise higher than ministers are proposing.

Professor Nick Barr, an economist at the London School of Economics, said fees of £3,000 a year - the upper limit currently proposed - would be insufficient to maintain the international competitiveness of the country's universities.

"The cap that is proposed will have to rise," he told the Evening Standard. "We will need to spend more on our universities and it will have to come from somewhere, if we are not to fall behind countries like Singapore."

The frank admission from an academic widely credited by colleagues at the LSE as the originator of the Government's plans will drop like a bombshell into the current debate over university fees.

Just 24 hours before the Government publishes its proposed legislation, ministers are still struggling to persuade scores of rebel Labour MPs that higher fees will not price students from poorer backgrounds out of attending the most prestigious universities.

More than 150 Labour MPs have signed a Commons motion condemning higher fees, and particularly the Government's plan to allow universities to set their own fees, within the £3,000 limit.

Ministers are still locked in discussions about concessions which would offer more financial support to students from poorer backgrounds. But the admission that £3,000

may not be the limit of higher fees will only add fuel to the rebellion.

Education Secretary Charles Clarke has promised that the proposed £3,000 cap will apply for the duration of the next Parliament - up to at least 2010.

Professor Barr said it would then be for Parliament to decide how far it should then rise.

"What the Government is talking about is a market, but one that is regulated and it is giving itself a mechanism which can achieve that," he said, adding that even after 2010, he did not believe fees would rise to the levels suggested by some leading rebels.

Former chief whip Nick Brown, for example, has warned that elite universities were drawing up plans for fees as high as £15,000 a year - a suggestion dismissed as "absurd" by Mr Clarke.

But university vice chancellors have made no secret of the fact that once legislation allowing them to charge variable fees is on the statute book, they will begin a campaign to increase the upper limit further.

Professor Sir Richard Sykes, rector of London's Imperial College, said his university would push for full economic fees - as high as £20,000 a year for degrees in medicine and £10,000 for others.

Professor Michael Sterling, vice chancellor of Birmingham, said it would take average fees of at least £5,000 a year to bring UK universities "within shouting distance" of US competitors.