The government has announced plans to allow universities to increase tuition fees above the current £9,000 limit in what has been described as a massive overhaul of funding.
Speaking at the launch of a White Paper, universities minister Jo Johnson said fees would be linked to the "quality of the university experience" and that the proposals would encourage more competition and better consumer value for students.
Johnson said the plans would make it easier for new universities to open and allow more private institutions to be granted university status.
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Under the new proposals, universities will be allowed to increase their fees in line with inflation from September next year. But, according to The Times, at the same time they will be asked to volunteer for "Ofsted-style" assessments that will eventually determine whether they can continue to do so.
The assessment will rate teaching as 'meeting expectations', 'excellent' or 'outstanding'. From 2019, only those achieving the top two grades will be able to apply the full inflation increase, with any university scoring below this restricted to half of this amount and "effectively offering a discounted education".
"Institutions do need to be able to address the real-terms erosion in their fee income... [but] we want the emphasis to be on getting the system right before we hang financial consequences from it," Johnson said.
Sorana Vieru, vice president of the National Union of Students, said students would be "outraged" at the prospect of tuition fees being increased, but told the BBC that she welcomed the recognition of the "need for progress on access and widening participations".
Labour's shadow universities minister, Gordon Marsden, warned that it was "potentially very dangerous" to allow new providers to award degrees. The move has been "widely criticised as a way of increasing tuition fees by stealth and further limiting access to higher education for disadvantaged students," says The Independent.
A recent report by the Sutton Trust has revealed that English graduates are now more in debt that their American, Canadian and Australian counterparts.
