University tuition fees are expected to hit nearly £11,000 a year by 2030, leaving some of this year’s freshers with debts as high as £100,000, The i Paper can reveal.
Students starting four-year courses this autumn are set to see their fees go up by more than £800 in their final year.
Record numbers of students were accepted into undergraduate degree courses on A-levels results day on Thursday, but experts warned that they are being asked to bail out struggling universities.
Tuition fees will reach £9,790 this autumn and £10,050 next year, with the previous Keir Starmer-led government saying they would continue rising with inflation.
It comes as Andy Burnham faces pressure to help students with the burgeoning cost of student loans as part of his drive to lower the cost of living.
Last year the government said it intended to introduce legislation so that tuition fees automatically rise with inflation every year, but it has not yet been implemented.
Although fees for the following years have not yet been confirmed, they are set to climb to around £10,328 in 2028-29 and £10,898 in 2030-31, according to analysis by The i Paper using inflation forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
A graduate beginning a four-year undergraduate degree this autumn, who is taking out the maximum student loans, would face tuition fee debt of about £40,800 plus interest.
If they live in London without their parents and take out the maximum maintenance loan, they would graduate with a total student loan debt of nearly £100,000 plus interest.
Students living without their parents outside London would leave university with debts of £85,900 if they take out the maximum maintenance loans, while those living with their parents would accumulate loans worth about £78,800 plus interest.
Interest accumulates daily on the entire loan balance and, for graduates starting their degrees this year, will be pegged to the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation – adding thousands to their debts.
Graduates with older “Plan 2” loans, which were issued in England between September 2012 and July 2023, is set at RPI plus 3 per cent.
‘Astronomical’ cost
Last month the Education Secretary, Lucy Powell, said the issue of student loans was “very much at the top of my in-tray” and described interest charges on Plan 2 loans as “egregious”.
Lewis Wilson, vice president at the National Union of Students, said the costs of attending university were “astronomical” and students were left with “mortgage-sized” debts.
“It’s a graduate tax for life, but it’s completely unfair,” he said. “It’s a tax that wealthy people can completely opt out of because they won’t have taken out student loans.”
He said it was “unfair” that students were left with big bills because the government “refuses” to adequately fund universities.
He said rising numbers of students are still going to university despite the cost because of the opportunities and knowledge they gain.
“People are graduating, wanting to start families, buy houses or do all of these very normal things in life, and they can’t because they realise that the loan that they’ve taken out is mortgage-sized and adds so much of a burden,” he said.
The Government previously announced plans to reintroduce maintenance grants but they will only be for some subjects such as engineering and healthcare, will be means-tested, and will not take effect until 2028-29.
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank, said the tuition fee increases are “nothing like enough” to help beleaguered institutions, some of which are on the brink of bankruptcy.
University undergraduate tuition fees for UK students were frozen at £9,250 from 2017 to 2025.
Inflation during this period means that the cost of delivering degrees has outstripped tuition fees, leaving institutions increasingly reliant on additional money from international student fees, which are uncapped and can be as high as £70,000 a year.
However, an immigration crackdown has led to falling numbers of overseas students and a rise in universities accepting UK students, which Hillman said was an effort to plug the gap.
He said questions remain whether or not Burnham will see through his predecessor’s plan to enshrine tuition fee increases in primary legislation.
“I’ve always been sceptical that will ever happen because I don’t feel a massive appetite among Labour MPs to change primary legislation to have automatic fee rises every year, and as the next election gets closer, that’s going to get even less and less likely,” he said.
Iain Mansfield, head of education at the Policy Exchange think-tank, said: “Lucy Powell has indicated she’s got real concerns about the student loan system. Given the increasing concern about the quality of universities, there is a real question about whether or not they’ll choose to go ahead with it. It feels like a fifty-fifty decision.”
He said it would be a mistake to raise tuition fees to be as generous as they were more than a decade ago, saying that the money universities receive per student “should be enough for them” and is above what is seen in other countries.
The Department for Education was approached for comment.
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