Universities told to aid poorer students

Top universities will be ordered to offer "generous" grants to less well-off students if they want to charge £3,000-ayear top-up fees under official guidance revealed today.

They must also greatly increase the number of state school, working-class and ethnic minority students they accept, the Government's new university watchdog warned.

The Office for Fair Access (Offa), which unveiled its guidance today, told universities that if they fail to obey the rules, they will not be allowed to raise their fees to the full £3,000 the law is to allow.

Sir Martin Harris, director of Offa and former vice-chancellor of Manchester University, has the power to decide whether universities can raise their fees from £1,150 a year to £3,000 from 2006.

Most universities are expected to want to use the levy; elite institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, King's College and University College London are almost certain to want to charge the maximum. The guidance reveals that Sir Martin must be convinced that the five-year "access agreement" each university will have to publish - a plan of how they intend to encourage more working-class and other "non-traditional" students to apply - shows they are making enough effort to deserve the extra income.

Setting out detailed rules on what must be included in access agreements, he said: "We aim to ensure the introduction of variable fees does not have a detrimental effect on widening participation."

If a university wants to charge the top rate, it must make sure that the poorest students have access to a bursary worth at least ?300, he said. That is the difference between the charge and the Government's ?2,700 grant to which people from families with an annual income of less than ?15,970 will be entitled.

But Sir Martin warned elite universities they would not be allowed to get away with the bare minimum 10 per cent demanded by Education Secretary Charles Clarke.

He stressed: "We expect institutions whose records suggest they have the furthest to go in attracting a wider range of applications may wish to invest more than others."

Some have already promised to put up to a third of their topup fee income into bursaries. Cambridge has announced plans for grants worth up to ?4,000 a year. Sir Martin assured less prestigious universities which already have large numbers of working-class students that they would not be expected to be so generous.

Universities will have to set "reasonably stretching targets" for more state-educated students, he said. He will accept their own, if they are "robust", but cited the Government's recently published targets as a goal.

These provoked fury among university chiefs, particularly at Oxford and Cambridge, as their state school targets increased by more than 10 per cent.

If universities try to charge more than agreed by Offa, Sir Martin can fine them up to ?500,000 or refuse to renew the access agreement contract once the five-year term is up.