University Admissions: Fair or Unfair?

The New Fee Structure and Admission Process

In order to analyse if the new fee structure is fair to the students, let us first understand how this system works. Prior to autumn of 2006, the universities had an upfront fee of around £1200 annually. However, as of now, the students need not worry about paying the fees until they complete their education.

The government has set up a top up fee of £3000. It means that the each university can have their fee structure anywhere between £0 and £3000. Initially, the fee to the university is borne by the government. When the student completes the graduation and gets a job that pays him above £15000 a year, he needs to start repaying the amount in monthly instalments. The rate of interest is calculated based on the inflation rate. The repayment amount increases or decreases based on the salary of the person.

Implications on Different Economic Classes

The government issues grants for students who fall in the lower economic group. These grants usually cover their educational fees and living expenses. They are also eligible to receive scholarship from their college. So as long as the issue of these grants is properly monitored, the students falling in this category would not be affected by the new fee structure.

However, grants are not provided for students from the middle class or rich background. For students from middle class background, loan provided by the government can completely cover their educational fees which they need to pay back as described in the previous section. However, they might need to take up part-time jobs to meet their other expenses.

For students from affluent backgrounds, the government loans cover only a portion of the educational fee. Although a major portion could be received as a loan, they need to either depend on their parents or commercial loans to cover the rest of the fee.

Impact of the Fee Structure on the Students

While the government and universities say that the increase is necessary to better the quality of education, it cannot completely justify the government’s move in more than doubling the top up fees. Grants and government loans do not cover the students’ needs entirely and there are good reasons why the students are upset about the current fee structure. Following are some of the problems faced by the students due to the increase in the tuition fee:

Although £3000 is only the upper limit, irrespective of the facilities provided by them, most of the universities charge the students £3000 annually. Students are left with very little option if they want to choose a cheaper college.
The fee gets accumulated and when the students complete their graduation they have a debt of £9000 or more to pay.
With the burden of the debt, students usually resort to take up jobs rather than taking up their postgraduation.
Government does not provide loan for the postgraduate programs and as a result the students would have to take commercial loans with high interest rates.
In order to meet living expenses and be prepared to pay back the loan, most of the students have to put in extended hours doing part-time jobs. This might be a major distraction to their academics.

These problems scare away the students from taking up a full time program and they prefer part-time and distance education which works out much cheaper.

What the Government Could Do?

Although the government’s education loan system is a move that needs to be appreciated, yet there are other areas of improvement that are required. The top up fee must be reduced and the government should monitor the universities to check if the quality of education is on par with the fee charged by them. Government funding and college scholarships should be granted to students for postgraduate programs also. As education plays an important role in the development of the country, it must be made affordable and accessible to everyone.





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