Students are been advised to postpone their University
applications whilst Universities set their tuition fee prices
for
2012
Hundreds of thousands of students applying for
university places in Britain for 2012 are facing weeks of
uncertainty as the government tries to persuade universities to
lower their tuition fees.
There are twenty eight universities in England
who are considering lowering their fees to below £7,500 a year so
they can make use of the 20,000 places which were held back by
ministers. According to the Office for Fair Access, eight
institutions have already submitted their proposals to lower their
tuition fees from what they had previously submitted.
Students are angry that the hastily drawn up
plans for the tuition fee rise has already thrown the application
process into disarray as they still can’t decide where they want to
go. With the increase in graduates who are looking for jobs not in
line with the amount of graduate jobs available, students have to take
longer deciding on what degree to take and what the best
universities are to get ahead of the competition. Yet once the
Universities submit their tuition fees proposals, students will
only have 6 weeks to choose their universities they want to apply
to and submit their application.
The confusion has come after the government
announced major changes to its white paper which aimed at driving
down the current average tuition fee cost of £8,393. At present
only 29 out of 140 universities charge less than £7,500 a year.
Toni Pearce, NUS vice-president, said funding
changes are continuing to wreak havoc. "To cover for its own,
expensive mistakes, the Government is sledge-hammering into place
an artificial market that treats students as pieces to be traded,
gives them no power to demand the support they need and encourages
the poorest students to seek out the least-funded courses," she
said.
Offa commented that it couldn’t issue the new
guidelines to universities or colleges until the Higher Education
Funding Council publishes its details on how they can bid for the
extra places.
Sir Martin Harris, the director for fair
access at Offa, said he had sought to minimise the impact on
applicants. "Our resulting guidance makes it clear applicants must
continue to receive the same overall level of financial support –
even if the balance changes between bursaries and fee waivers – and
must receive sufficient warning of any revised package to enable
them to change their university choices, if they so wish, without
prejudice before the Ucas deadline of 15 January," he said.
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