Foreign students 'squeeze out' UK teenagers

Teenagers from the UK face being squeezed out of places at Oxford University as it lays plans to take more graduate and overseas students to boost its income.

Radical proposals to re-shape admissions are disclosed in internal documents on Oxford's strategy to retain its status as a world-class institution. They suggest that in the next 15 years, the university could lose 1,500 UK undergraduate places.

It is the first hard evidence that top universities are planning to take more undergraduates from outside the UK and EU, and more graduate students, as they pay higher fees.

Other elite universities have warned they would be forced into this policy if government plans to allow them to charge higher tuition fees - up to £3,000 a year - fail to pass through Parliament or are watered down.

What will alarm ministers is that Oxford is apparently planning to pursue this policy in any case - arguing that extra revenue from topup fees will not enable it to compete with the top universities in the world.

Oxford spends £18,600 educating each of its 11,000 undergraduates - but receives only half that for each UK undergraduate through fees and government grants. It struggles to make up the shortfall through endowments, donations and research.

Fees paid by graduate and overseas students range up to £20,000 a year. The continuing deficit means the university is finding it harder to compete for top academic staff.