Tens of thousands of students would take two-year degrees costing only £5,000 in a revamp of university finances being proposed tonight by an adviser to Ed Miliband.
In a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts, former Cabinet minister John Denham will outline plans to halve tuition fees for all students, while increasing the amount spent on teaching degrees.
His blueprint includes a big rise in two-year degrees, from a few thousand to about 100,000 graduates each year, or a third of the total. More students would be encouraged to live at home.
Mr Denham will propose £2 billion in extra teaching funds, worth £15,000 per student, which would allow fees to fall from £9,000 a year to about £10,000 in total for a three-year degree.
A former universities secretary, he calculates that the books would balance as fewer graduates would find themselves unable to repay student debts, cutting £2 billion from the annual cost of writing off such debts.
“If we do nothing, university finances are going to collapse because of the amount of money being spent on debt cancellation,” he said. Under government policies, he claimed, £6 will be spent on debt-cancellation for every £1 spent on teaching. His ideas have been fed into Labour’s policy-making review.
Read More
MORE ABOUT