The U.K.’s radical tuition experiment

By Léo Charbonneau. As Quebec debated this week whether to index tuition fees to inflation, a far more radical overhaul of tuition policy plays out in England. The Quebec government announced on Monday it plans to raise tuition by 3 percent, or about $70 from the current level of just under $2,200. Compare this to the U.K. government, which implemented a plan last year that saw university students in England pay on average £8,500 ($13,300 CDN) for the school year, a massive increase of more than 250% from the previous average tuition of £3,300. (Tuition policy in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland is different, and students in those countries did not experience a similar increase in fees.)
It’s been a wild ride for tuition fees in England over a relatively short period of time. Tuition fees of £1,000 were first introduced in 1998 then were tripled to around £3,000 starting in 2006. In the current system, all students are eligible for loans to cover the full tuition costs and repayment of these loans begins after graduation. Read more...