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UK: Tuition fees 'should be lower for humanities students'

07.03.2011

Universities have been told to limit tuition fees to just £6,000 for students taking arts and humanities degrees. David Willetts, the Universities Minister, said institutions should be able to impose much lower charges for these courses because they are cheaper to run than others such as medicine and science.

He also denied the Coalition’s higher education reforms would spell the death of arts and humanities subjects despite claims from academics that they would increasingly become the preserve of the rich.

The comments represent the latest warning to universities against imposing blanket fees of £9,000 – the maximum permitted – when higher education reforms are introduced next year.

It comes just weeks after Cambridge and Imperial College London became the first universities to declare they wanted to charge a flat rate of £9,000 for degree courses.

But the minister’s comments were branded “flawed” by lecturers’ leaders who claimed fees for arts and humanities courses could not be kept as low as £6,000 following swingeing cuts to higher education budgets.

Full text: The Telegraph
Photo: The Telegraph

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