Tution fees set to rise to £9,535 a year
From September 2025, tuition fees will increase from £9,250 to £9,535 a year. Wondering how that'll actually impact you? We'll explain all...
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The government has just announced that the tuition fee cap in England will increase for the first time in eight years.
This means that both current and new students will be charged £285 more a year for their university education starting from September 2025.
This has come in response to many universities reporting that they are in danger of going bust if something doesn't change. It's also been noted that had fees kept up with inflation since they increased to £9,000 a year in 2012, they'd currently be closer to £12,000.
Should you be worried about the tuition fee increase?
This may sound like an alarming increase. But at Save the Student, we're keen to stress that, despite us being against any tuition fee increases, these changes may not have a huge financial impact on the majority of students.
Here are the main reasons why:
The majority of students don't pay tuition fees upfront
For many, tuition fees are paid directly to the university via Student Finance through a Tuition Fee Loan. This means you won't have to pay the extra £285 straight away.
Instead, it'll be added to your overall Student Loan debt, which you won't start repaying until you graduate and earn over the repayment threshold for your Student Loan plan.
You may never end up paying back the extra fees
Your monthly Student Loan repayments are completely unaffected by the size of your student debt. The only factor that affects this is how much you earn as a graduate.
For those that started university on or after 1st August 2023, you only repay 9% of any earnings above £25,000. What's more, any remaining debt is wiped after 40 years, no matter how much you have left to repay.
To put it another way: tuition fees could be £9 a year, £9,000 a year or £9 million a year – you still only repay 9% of whatever you earn over the repayment threshold.
Because of this, a significant proportion of current students are unlikely to repay their loans before the 40 years are up. For many students, the extra borrowing for this tuition fee increase will just be adding to a debt that they were never going to pay off in the first place.
What are the real issues facing university students?
It's true that tuition fees are a headline grabber but the real issues facing students are:
It may put off prospective students
Research has shown that prospective students from the poorest backgrounds also tend to be the most debt-averse, and as a direct result are more likely to be put off going to university.
This latest increase could lead to more students, especially those from lower-income backgrounds, questioning whether it's a viable financial option for them.
But at Save the Student, we would always encourage prospective students from all backgrounds to separate the price of university from what you'll actually end up repaying.
Previous Student Loan changes have had a worse impact
Whilst they didn't grab the same attention as this tuition fee increase, there have been far more expensive changes to Student Finances in recent years.
The Student Loan repayment plan introduced for new English students in 2023 and after (Plan 5), involved reduced the repayment threshold, extending the repayment period and reducing the interest rate.
In the long term, this will make university far more expensive for the majority of students – and will make a much bigger difference than this increase to tuition fees.
Maintenance Loans are still not large enough
We've long campaigned for the government to look at the real issue facing students at university: the size of the Maintenance Loan that's intended to help pay for living costs.
Along with the tuition fee announcement the government has committed to increasing maintenance loans by 3.1% from September 2025. Whilst this is a welcome increase it still doesn't go far enough.
Our latest National Student Money Survey showed that the gap between the average Maintenance Loan and monthly student costs is a whopping £504 a month.
Not only was the amount never enough in the first place, but in recent year it's also fallen way behind inflation. This has led to students struggling to get by, with students turning to food banks, skipping meals and, in some cases, even dropping out of university altogether.
Our resident Student Money Expert, Tom Allingham, says:
An increase in tuition fees simply rubs salt into the wounds for students, and ignores the single biggest issue they currently face: huge real-terms cuts to maintenance funding.
Although extra cash was needed to address successive freezes to fees, we had hoped this would be met by increasing the government grant rather than adding to student debt. We’re even more disappointed that they’ve decided to do this without taking any significant action on student maintenance funding.
It was rumoured that Maintenance Grants would be brought back to soften the psychological blow of a fee hike. But instead, all we got was a 3.1% increase to the Maintenance Loan – in line with inflation, but nowhere near enough to start eroding the huge real-terms cuts we’ve seen to funding in recent years.
Our National Student Money Survey 2024 found that loans now fall short of living costs by £504 every month, over double the shortfall from just four years ago. With that in mind, we repeat our call that any action on Maintenance Loans and Grants must involve increasing overall funding levels to catch up with inflation.
In the meantime, despite our dismay at the increase in tuition fees, it is worth noting that this relatively modest uplift will make little difference to overall levels of student debt, and will have no impact whatsoever on the amount a graduate repays each month. This figure is only affected by your salary, and doesn’t vary depending on how much you owe.
We'll cover much more on this story over the coming weeks and months so make sure you follow us on Instagram for key updates.
