She is reported to have said that:-
"The reason being because the actual cost of providing higher education at this level exceeds £9,000 for most courses in most universities."
I wonder what her evidence base is for this. The data on the actual cost of providing degrees is very opaque.
Look at these examples.
It is believed that the cost of providing law degrees is higher than that of most arts subjects because the library costs are higher and the number and pay grades of additional casual staff to teach tutorials is higher. The cost of a GDL must be higher than that of an LLB because the material is essentially the same but taught more intensively with greater contact hours. There are no government subsidies for GDL fees. Plymouth charged £4770 home fees in 2014. Westminster is charging £3250 for 2015. I accept their overseas fees are much higher, but are we really suggesting that these courses are running at a loss for home students?
Instinctively one assumes that the cost of a degree Child Care ie training as a nanny with a salary potential in the stratosphere, at the private Norland College (which is a commercial organisation) is about as good and expensive as it gets. Yet their fees are £12,750 per year.
Heatherley's Art School is a private charitable art school teaching at degree level in London. Its fees are £8310 per annum.
Leicester's Study Abroad programme fees are £9,000 arts and £12,000 sciences. UCL's are £15,200 arts and £15,200 sciences.
Harlaxton, a US Study abroad campus in Lincolnshire which recruits students from a wide range of US Colleges is charging a top line price (before financial aid after the US fashion) of $21,343 including accommodation and meals.
Scottish Baptist College receives no government funding. Its fees for theological degrees are £3850 per year.
What is very hard hard to find is the true cost of the provision of science degrees because there is virtually no wholly private sector science teaching. The Centre for Homeopathic Education is charging £4,350.00. Ignoring the pseudo-science underpinning homeopathy, the course content is probably little different to that for any other profession allied to medicine.
I have chosen this list to try and find fees which are neither constrained by government fee caps nor where the institution is simply charging what the market will bear. Several of the providers have no mainstream fee cap students so their fees cannot be being charged on a marginal cost basis.
Not a lot here suggests that the actual cost of providing higher education at this level exceeds £9,000 for most courses in most universities.