Universities may be allowed soon to increase their fees beyond £9000 per year, subject to teaching standard monitoring. It is easy to fail to appreciate that universities did not see large increases in their revenue per student with the big increase in 2012 because this was largely caused by the withdrawal of much of the taxpayers' subsidy for Higher Education.
It seems reasonable that the universities with better teaching should command a higher price, but it will be important to follow how affordability for students from lower income households is sustained in these circumstances. Also all universities really do need to think about models of tuition which have very low contact time in terms of value for money. As always the decision to be made by future prospective applicants will be a subtle and challenging one. As much clarity of information as possible should be an essential prerequisite of any further change,
