High Tuition Prices

High Tuition Prices

The higher education fee in the UK was first introduced in 1998. Charges for the new entrants for a full-time undergraduate program were up to £1,000 yearly which was mainly decided on the basis of parental income. In 1999, there was the abolishment of maintenance grants and it was replaced by maintenance loans. In 2006, the charges for tuition fees were capped at £3,000 yearly for the full-time students in the UK. However, the figure is adjusted each year in line with inflation and it reached £3,375 in 2011-12. Future strategies for higher education funding were considered in November 2009 in Browne Review and the findings were published in October 2010. In this report, it was decided to burden the graduates with funding higher education and remove of any cap from the tuition fee charged by the universities. The suggestions were made in light of the findings that the tuition fees do not deter the students’ participation in higher education.

Coalition government

However, it was felt by the coalition government that the tuition fee was unacceptable and thus there was a cap imposed to £9,000 for any yearly fee. According to the Department for Business Innovation & Skills dynamic model, there increase in tuition fee by £1,000 results in a decrease in students’ participation by 4.4%.

However, the participation can be increased by grants and loans. It was noted that since 1998 till 2001, the introduction of tuition fee did not affect the participation of young people as it did not deter their interest in higher education.

It was clear from the enrolment rate that continued to increase each year. However, there are chances of a greater impact on the demand as the tuition fees increases from £3,375 to £9,000. Given the economic downturn and global crises, the unemployment rate rose. This led to a perception of parents as the highest possible reasonable tuition fees to be £6,000 that can be charged by the universities.

Persistence

Persistence is described as the continual pursuit of the degree program so that the student completes the program and achieves the degree in the relevant field of study. The results from the existing empirical studies are mixed but a general argument prevails that the students in post-secondary education programs get discouraged to enroll in universities given hikes in the tuition fees. Despite the attempt to measure the effects of new fee policy, there are many domains that make these predictions problematic.