Student finance to become big issue with debt to treble

Tue, 07 Jun 2011

Student finance is set to hit the headlines in the coming weeks, after it was revealed that debt could treble over the next four years.

According to a new analysis from the Public Accounts Committee, ministers made a blunder when estimating how many universities would charge the maximum fee of £9,000 when making adjustments to legislation earlier this year.

It means that overall student debt could rise from £24 billion to £70 billion by 2015, which could have huge implications for student finance and the economy as a whole.

Each student could rack up as much as £50,000 in debt throughout the course of their degree, which would cause many to experience problems when it comes to getting a mortgage or saving for a pension.

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills originally assumed universities would charge an average of £7,500 a year for tuition, but the majority of institutions are now planning on pricing most courses at £9,000.

Labour universities spokesman Gareth Thomas said: "The Public Accounts Committee have confirmed the government's sums could be wrong by several hundreds of millions of pounds and that the next generation of students are facing a £70 billion debt bill to pay for the unfair and unnecessary decision to treble tuition fees."

Meanwhile, the Public Accounts Committee also warned that a funding gap could see the number of university places cut.
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.