Lowest ranking university to charge £9k
A former polytechnic languishing at the bottom of university league tables is to charge tuition fees close to the £9,000 maximum.
Learning the lesson: Ministers' plans to make universities charge less have failed.
London South Bank University - where one fifth of students drop out - yesterday announced that undergraduates would have to pay £8,450 a year.
It joined a roster of universities levying full or nearly full fees. The move makes a mockery of ministerial claims that only elite institutions would do so.
It is also a challenge to the Office for Fair Access which demands evidence that universities are working hard to retain students in return for charging more than £6,000.
South Bank ranked 113th out of 113 in The Times Good University Guide, 2011.
Low-ranking universities charging top fees risk losing any place they cannot fill, Vince Cable will say today.
The Business Secretary will issue a stark warning to vicechancellors who are clustering their fees at the top.
He said that low-ranking universities that charge top fees will be uncompetitive.
Mr Cable is to tell a conference at Aston University: 'The biggest mistake a university could make is to underestimate its consumers. Students will search for value for money and compare the offers of different universities. 'Under the new principle whereby funding follows student choices, some institutions could very well find themselves in trouble if students can't see value.
'That trouble would only intensify as those institutions who prove themselves capable of attracting students and keen to expand their provision are given opportunities to do so.
'We want a system that's more responsive to demand. In circumstances where places are unfilled, we might withdraw those places, and institutions should not assume they will easily get them back.
'The idea, therefore, of using high fees as an insurance policy against other factors preoccupying institutions can itself serve to magnify risk.'
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Another former polytechnic, the University of Central Lancashire, is to announce fees of £9,000 today.
It has a projected drop-out rate of 16% of its 2008 intake and is halfway down the league tables.
Charging the highest rate has become a status symbol for vice-chancellors who are 'greedy to maintain income and their own salary levels', the Unite union told MPs yesterday.
Mike Robinson, of Unite, told a select committee: 'There are a number of institutions going at £9,000 and we don't think it is an accident.
'We think it is deliberate, whether it's planned between them is a concern. The fee increases are a runaway train, with an enormous financial crash at the end, that the public purse will have to pick up.'
South Bank vice-chancellor Martin Earwicker said: 'The board believes this average fee is the right one to ensure that we can continue to deliver the quality of teaching that we offer to all of our students.'
The universities planning to charge the maximum include Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London and University College London.
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