Vice-Chancellor Brian Cantor has hinted that York will be one of the universities that will raise its fee cap to £9,000 in the face of the coalition’s suggested education cuts and tuition fee hikes, Vision can exclusively reveal.
Following the Browne Report the coalition government has proposed to raise the general fees cap to £6,000, while some universities, in “exceptional circumstances,” will be able to charge as much as £9000.
On the direct question of whether or not York would be one of these institutions, Cantor told Vision: “The government is going to give us the opportunity to charge anything from naught to £9,000. There will be some extra requirements to go above £6,000.”
“We’re not going to be at the bottom end of the scale, because we’re a high quality university, we want to teach extremely well, that requires money and we have to charge a fee appropriate to that.”
He said that the University has agreed on a set of principles, discussed by both the University Council and University Senate, among which he quotes a commitment to excellence and inclusivity. Though he did not go into detail, he did state that “we are a top ten university and we will charge fees relevant to that, because we believe we must deliver a high student experience. That’s a principle of ours, that’s without saying quite what that would require of fees, but what is does mean is we’re not going to reduce from £3,000.”
The VC, along with Pro-Vice Chancellor for students Jane Grenville yesterday visited the students occupying the Physics Exhibition centre in a protest against higher education cuts. They presented the students with a response to their list of demands, published in yesterday’s issue of Vision, and also opened the floor for questions from those in attendance.
The VC did not seem very positive about the road ahead, saying that the cuts will happen regardless of the outcome of Thursday’s Commons vote. “The government has said that they’re doing this. You have to take that very seriously. The government don’t say they will do X and not mean it.” He added that “it’s too late […] there’s nothing I can do.”
His comments were not well received by the protesters. Second year student Cat Wayland commented that she was “disappointed that the university’s management feels they are unable to do anything more to oppose the cuts” and “frustrated by their perceived lack of options.”
How depressing. I think in years to come, people will look back on the Coalition Government’s reforms to HE and recognise that they caused immense damage to its accessibility, opportunity and the system’s place in society.
After theses comments he got in his chaffered car and shot some grouse. Boom.
I can’t believe universities uk and all the university groups are not united in fighting the marketisation of university and defending public funding. By accepting there will be huge cuts whatever they do and as a result supporting high fees to counter-balance oublic funding cuts they are playing in to the governments hands.
The universities are not innocent. They have a mandate to protect both higher education and research, for the good of the people of Britain. This includes ensuring that reasonable equality of access is maintained. Equality of access means the university can serve the whole population (rather than just certain socio-economic groups) and can produce the highest quality graduates possible (this requires accepting the most talented and hard working from every socio-economic sector).
What every protester is conveniently forgetting is that the new proposals for higher education funding are far more progressive than the current system. All the protests show is how ignorant and ill-informed much of the student population is.
Aren’t York one of the four universities to have been given increased funding by the HEfCE last year? And this joker is talking about raising fees beyond £6,000. I’m a humanities student and I can’t see where £3,000+ a year is going to. This is just greed.
There’s a podcast from an interview with Brian where he discusses this (after some university of the year faff) on URY homepage or here: http://ury.org.uk/uryplayer.php?pod=231
This wouldn’t have happened under a Labour government. LOL.