Charge students £6,500 a year in fees, say university chiefs

The debate over the future of university tuition fees began in earnest today as vice-chancellors demanded the right to charge nearly £7,000 a year - more than double what undergraduates currently pay.

With the Government due to launch a review of fees within months, MPs, students and union leaders said they would oppose such an increase in a recession.

But vice-chancellors said that, without more funding, degree courses could be cut and Britain's status as a world leader for education and research would be at risk.

Gordon Brown faces a near-impossible task trying to navigate a future direction for tuition fees that is palatable to all sides.

The introduction of top-up fees provoked one of Labour's biggest back-bench revolts under Tony Blair, with the Bill surviving by only five votes.

A Commons motion today signed by Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas and Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North, warned against crippling students with "unmanageable levels of debt". Undergraduate fees are currently capped at £3,145 a year and are payable after graduation. In 2006, the year that these higher fees were introduced, applications to university fell sharply but have since recovered.

Today's report, from vice-chancellors' umbrella group Universities UK, found they typically wanted fees to rise to £6,500 per year.

It said students from low-income groups would begin to turn away from university if fees rose to £7,000. At this level students would finish a three-year degree course on average £32,000 in debt. Many middle-class graduates could be saddled with debts well into their forties.

The report suggested that prospective undergraduates would not be deterred if fees increased to £5,000 per year.

Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, said: "In the context of the current recession, it is extremely arrogant for university vice chancellors to be fantasising about charging their students even higher fees and plunging them into over £32,000 of debt."

Lecturers' leaders also warned against increasing fees. Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: "Increasing fees is certainly not the way to deliver a world-class university system."

But Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents some of the most research-intensive universities, welcomed the report. She said: "There is a growing consensus that without increased investment, there is a real danger the success of our world-leading universities will not be sustained."

Higher Education Minister David Lammy said the Government was committed to reviewing fees this year. "There is an important debate to be had, which is about how we maintain the world class status of our higher education sector."

Shadow universities secretary David Willetts accused ministers of ducking the issue and called for the review to be launched immediately.