[MM1234]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12879817

Leeds Metropolitan has become the first of the newer, less selective group of universities to officially announce its new fee level.

Announcing the fee level, the chair of the board at Leeds Metropolitan University, Lord Woolmer of Leeds, said: "We are totally committed to providing a high quality student experience.

[llys]

Ahaha. Brilliant. So by not going for the maximum they are saying (to students and graduate employers): we need to charge 8.5k just to cover our costs / "provide a high quality student experience", and as you can see, because we have to charge so much just to cover our costs, our degrees are high-quality. Eh, Dave?

To be fair, if there was no cap, Oxbridge would probably charge around 12k or more, so Leeds Met charging 8.5k doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

[Phalanges]

The story is largely unsurprising. What will be interesting is the amount of scrutiny the Government does before deciding whether the fee is fair.

[f00ddude]

leeds met at 8.5k? no chance
i swear they were doing 2k fees last year?

[theronkinator]

Funniest joke so far this month.

[linkdapink]

The saddening thing is, if this is the first of the "less selective" Uni's, like the report is saying, then surely it will either set a precedent, or start a price war (LOL).

[Joinedup]

(Original post by Phalanges)
The story is largely unsurprising. What will be interesting is the amount of scrutiny the Government does before deciding whether the fee is fair.

They better get a move on - 2012 ucas cycle isn't that far away.

it almost.. almost looks like a government cock up waiting to happen.

[wdywuk]

It's around the figure we expect most post 92 uni's to set. As soon as the government said they expected the average to be £7500 it is was on the cards. Who would want to set a value less than £7500 and thus stand out as being lower than average? As most will claim to be above average they then set them between £7500 and £9k and might as well go higher rather than lower. Is £500 a year a worthwhile difference and be the deciding factor on which uni to apply to? ...I highly doubt it.

I'd really love to see some uni come out and say they are charging £7999 (plus double points redeemable in the union)

The other thing uni's have to dactro in is that if the average fee is above £7.5k its likely the remianing teaching funding for STEM subjects will be cut further. THis was going to equate to between £1k and £2k per band B student so if it is liable to be cut then the uni needs to raise their original fee estimate to cover this.

[ZizziHikaru]

What a shame since it was one of the cheaper ones before.

[nexttime]

(Original post by llys)
To be fair, if there was no cap, Oxbridge would probably charge around 12k or more, so Leeds Met charging 8.5k doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

They probably would. However, Oxford explicitly said that it only needed 8K to maintain its levels of funding as they were before. They then chose to charge 9K to satisfy the student union's demands for fee waivers for the less wealthy.

[WelshBluebird]

Again, no surprise.

[inksplodge]

a lot of people i know are at leeds met, it doesn't sound like they get a lot of contact time, they spend most of their time partying.
£8.5k a year to party? I'd rather go on a round-the-world trip or something with the debt I'd get...

[llys]

(Original post by nexttime)
They probably would. However, Oxford explicitly said that it only needed 8K to maintain its levels of funding as they were before. They then chose to charge 9K to satisfy the student union's demands for fee waivers for the less wealthy.

True, but I also read somewhere that Oxbridge are actually less affected by the cuts than other universities (so they would need less income from tuition fees to make up for the cuts). I'll try to find a link.

Edit: England's newer universities face biggest cuts as teaching budgets slashed

(I'm not sure though if they are confusing research funding and teaching funding in this article - Oxford may well have more research funding but I thought that research funding cannot normally be used to plug holes in teaching funding (depending on the fund).)

[wdywuk]

(Original post by nexttime)
They probably would. However, Oxford explicitly said that it only needed 8K to maintain its levels of funding as they were before.

That's close to the figure for most universities up and down the country. With balancing the fees/government subsidies for the various bands of students along with factoring in research income and/or student staff ratio (less research, typically more bums on seats needed), everyone is going to be +- £1k from that figure. Admin/academic salaries are comparable.

[nexttime]

(Original post by llys)
True, but I also read somewhere that Oxbridge are actually less affected by the cuts than other universities. I'll try to find a link.

They are, and they get a lot more alumni donations than most unis, plus lucrative patents on things like antibiotics. I was just pointing it out.

[nexttime]

(Original post by wdywuk)
That's close to the figure for most universities up and down the country. With balancing the fees/government subsidies for the various bands of students along with factoring in research income and/or student staff ratio (less research, typically more bums on seats needed), everyone is going to be +- £1k from that figure. Admin/academic salaries are comparable.

So you think such unis as Leeds Met are genuinely meeting the cost of what they have lost in government funding? As opposed to trying to save face against other unis and get a bit more cash? (not saying you're wrong, just wondering. We'd need pretty detailed financial breakdowns in order to tell definitively)

[Diffusion]

I laughed. Then I cried.

So I suppose that's the Coalition's claim that universities can only charge above £6000 in exceptional circumstances blown out of the water then eh.

[Dude Where's My Username]

This revelation isn't as funny as the one the Daily Mail claimed a while back that "The University of East London would need to charge the same as Imperial and UCL [£9,000] otherwise students would think it was a second rate university"

I've yet to read another tabloid sentence this year that made laugh as hard as that one

[Philosopher-of-sorts]

(Original post by nexttime)
They probably would. However, Oxford explicitly said that it only needed 8K to maintain its levels of funding as they were before. They then chose to charge 9K to satisfy the student union's demands for fee waivers for the less wealthy.

But Oxford did already lose a significant amount on each domestic/EU undergrad. "We also calculate the cost of educating an undergraduate at Oxford to be in the region of £16,000 a year" So maintaining current funding wouldn't really be sufficient anyway.

Not advocating higher fees (quite the contrary) just saying.

On a separate note, it would seem likely that a lot of the newer unis will have to have fees over £7k or so since, while they may spend less per student, they're more dependent on the teaching grant that has disappeared.

Thinking in terms of costs the lower the cost per student they previously had, the higher the gearing their fees will have towards the lost teaching grant.

[AreYouDizzeeBlud_x]

Is this an early April fools joke or something?