As the guessing game for what universities will be charging for tuition fees in 2012 continues it is interesting to speculate what the University of Lincoln will be charging.
So far, there has been no indication of figures for Lincoln or when they will announce it. However, Bishop Grosseteste, the other university in Lincoln, revealed on March 23rd that they will charge £7,500 with Principal Muriel Robinson saying: “We have decided to play this straight with students and charge them the real cost to us of providing their courses”.
Originally, when the proposals to raise tuition fees were put through parliament in late 2010 it was expected that the average cost of tuition fees would be £6,000 a year or less.
Whereas, Dan Derricott, the current vice-president academic affairs at Lincoln Students’ Union, has said previously that the University of Lincoln needs to charge £7,500 to break even.
However, as some of the worst universities in the country or ones that are not recognisable names plan to charge from £7,500 to £9,000, despite David Cameron saying at the time that universities would only be able to charge the full amount in “exceptional circumstances”.
The Independent revealed in early April that every university in England and Wales “has expressed an interest in charging more” than £6,000 with at least 60 universities intending to charge £9,000.
Some of the big chargers so far have been obvious from the start like Oxford and Cambridge, but the University of Leeds and Loughborough University were not expected to charge £9,000, but intend to.
The Times Higher Education wrote in March that universities are opting for higher fees to make up for education cuts and that not even the threat of the government withdrawing funding if they set fees too high will stop them as “senior sector figures have warned that universities are calculating their fee levels to make up for possible punitive withdrawals of funding in the future, rendering the pressure from the government counterproductive.”
While universities had until March 31st to indicate privately to the government what they intend to charge, by April 19th all universities will have to publically announce what they shall be charging. This means the guessing game shall finally be over soon.