Tuition fees hike ‘puts 15,000 off university’

Some 15,000 teenagers who were expected to apply to higher education courses this summer are “missing” from official statistics, it was claimed. The Independent Commission on Fees – set up to track the effects of the new funding regime – warned that students were most likely to be put off in England, where fees are higher than elsewhere in the UK, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph.

It insisted that declines in application rates to the most sought-after universities were higher among students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, who are less likely to benefit from a generous system of grants and bursaries. In a damning conclusion, researchers insisted there was “initial evidence that higher tuition fees are having a measurable impact” on student choices.

The comments come just weeks before hundreds of thousands of students across the UK start university for the first time under the new tuition fees regime.
Full report on The Telegraph site