Cost of a degree could be as much as £52k

27/04/2011

Students face a £50,000 bill for a three-year degree from next year because of increased tuition fees and the rising cost of living, the Daily Mail reports.

Current undergraduates pay £31,373 at an elite Russell Group university, which will increase by 55 per cent to an average £48,503 in 2012.

The most expensive courses are those in London due to astronomical accommodation prices.

The cheapest university is Manchester, where a student will run up debts of £46,537 over three years.

The figures are based on an analysis of tuition fees, at the new £9,000 maximum, and accommodation at the Russell Group of universities.

Collectively, England’s full-time undergraduates will pay £46.2 billion to complete their degrees.

According to the Daily Mail, Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students (NUS), said: “These figures begin to paint a picture of just how much debt young people will be leaving university with as they start their careers and families.

“Even high earners could see their ability to save to buy a home curtailed for many years. We’ve seen the Government completely losing control of a policy that was deeply unpopular from the start.

‘Ambitious young people, their families, academics and economists united last year to tell the Government that the plan to hike fees to £9,000 would result in chaos and they have been proven correct.”

Some 20 of the 123 universities are members of the Russell Group.

However, many, including new universities offering non-academic courses, will charge the same fees – £9,000 a year – for their courses.

For the average Russell Group student enrolling after 2012, their first year in university will cost £16,407.

This includes £9,000 in fees, £3,807 in self-catering university accommodation and an estimated further £3,600 in living costs.

HomesforStudents.co.uk, which conducted the research, claimed students can save around £400 a year by renting privately.

It said much university accommodation is more expensive because it has hidden costs – such as for cleaners. Only in Oxford and Cambridge is it cheaper to stay in university halls, it found.

Jonathan Moore, of HomesforStudents.co.uk, said: “Undergraduates are already under extreme financial pressure – and this is only going to get worse as higher fees kick in.

“Rents in the private sector have been rocketing up but they are still some distance from matching the cost of a room in most university halls, which cover cleaners, wardens and layers of university administration.”

Nearly three-quarters of universities – 72 per cent – have said they intend to charge £9,000 for some, or all, of their courses. All 123 universities will charge more than £6,000.

This week universities including Bradford, Bristol, Hull, Harper Adams, in Shropshire, and Lincoln became the latest to announce plans to charge £9,000.

Tags; Current UK Economy, Housing Debt and Bills, Recent Graduate Debt,

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