University students from the EU could pay around £2,500 a year more than their British classmates if their fees are cut as part of a compromise in Brexit reset talks, analysis by The i Paper shows.
Students from the bloc currently pay the same fees as international students, which can reach up to £38,000 per year – far higher than the home costs they were charged before Brexit.
In reset talks, the EU had originally asked for a return to home fees. These are currently a maximum of £9,790 a year for students in England but are due to rise to £10,050 in 2027-28.
How autism diagnoses are ‘increasingly linked to ADHD’
Experts found a rapid rise in autism diagnoses among 16-to 20-year-olds since 2010 in the UK, as well as a rise in women and white people, compared to other ethnicities.
What were the findings?
Researchers from the Medical Research Council looked at data from the UK and Sweden.
They found that new diagnoses have increased from six people per 100,000 in 2010, to 64 per 100,000 in 2023.
Analysis also showed there has been a change in the make-up of people diagnosed with autism, with a decrease in those with a prior diagnosis of epilepsy.
Instead, they found an increase in the proportion of people who had a prior diagnosis of ADHD, stress-related disorders, eating disorders, headaches and chronic fatigue.
The story in numbers
58%
The proportion of autism diagnoses in people with anxiety more than doubled form 29 per cent to 58 per cent between 2010 and 2023.
- In the UK, 24.5 million adults contributed to the study, including 141,119 with an autism diagnosis.
- Writing in , the team said this could be the result of “greater appreciation of nuanced forms of autism that may have previously been labelled as other conditions due to overlapping features, particularly in females”.
How menopause is affecting women’s careers and pensions
Half of women in the perimenopause or menopause say their career has suffered as a result, with workers cutting their hours or feeling forced to turn down opportunities for career progression, according to a new survey.
Lack of support for symptoms
Nearly one in three said their life stage had influenced their retirement savings, according to the research for Scottish Widows. A similar number also said their regular finances had been affected.
And 50 per cent of women surveyed said they would like more support at work. 17 per cent said they had been forced to take time away to manage symptoms.
Breaking down the numbers
- One in eight (13 per cent) women had reduced their working hours and 10 per cent had turned down a promotion or career progression opportunity, for menopause-related reasons.
Scottish Widows found that a 50-year-old woman in full-time work taking a six-month unpaid break could potentially cost £1,300 in pension contributions.
Gaps in pension contributions will have a bigger impact over time, as savers will also miss out on the interest that could have been earned on them.
Two-thirds of women surveyed believe employers should be required to provide better support to women experiencing menopause symptoms, including financial support.
A blow to pension pots
Perimenopause or often coincides with what should be the peak earnings potential of a woman’s career. When symptoms force women to reduce their hours, step back from promotion opportunities or leave work entirely, the ripple effect on their pension pots is huge
Susan Hope, a retirement expert at Scottish Widows
The lessons Britain can learn from France’s pensions crisis
The i Paper takes a look at why the bill for pensions keeps rising on both sides of the Channel – and what can be done about it.
What’s the situation in France?
France will be unable to resolve its debt crisis without tackling sky-high pension bills, economists have warned.
It spends a massive 14 per cent of its GDP on pensions and the costs are rising every day.
Falling birth rates and rising life expectancy in France and the UK means pensions are mounting pressure on public finances.
3 min read
Why pension burdens are becoming unsustainable
- Economists have warned that unless France takes action to overhaul the pension system, it is unlikely to end its debt crisis.
- In the UK, public spending will be further strained next year, as state pensions are set to get a 3.5 per cent boost.
- Fraser Thorne, CEO of Edison, told The i Paper: “The UK’s… trajectory is more manageable. But more manageable isn’t the same as sustainable.”
UK advantages over France
Heidi Karjalainen, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says bigger private pension pots in the UK are making it easier to increase the state pension age, whereas “in France, it’s been really difficult to do that”.
It’s this cushion that will help the UK better navigate the trials and tribulations that come with an ageing population and falling birth rates, she says.
Giving people time to adjust
The French proposals were announced “without much notice”, Karjalainen noted, while the UK made the decision more than a decade ago.
Thorne says France offers a “pointed lesson in what can happen when governments try to reset the terms of the pension contract: five prime ministers in two years; mass street protests; and a reform ultimately diluted by political reality even when the economics were clear”.
3 min read
2 min read
Virgin Media O2 cutting thousands of jobs to save costs
Up to 4,000 jobs could be affected as the flailing company attempts to slash outgoings in a bid to save £800m by 2029.
What you need to know
- Virgin Media O2 has built up £22bn in debt.
- CEO Lutz Schüler said in the light of its financial struggles, “doing what we’ve always done is not an option”.
- Currently employing 15,000 people, could cut as many as 4,000 jobs, an inside source told .
- The aim is to reduce the company’s wage bill by 30 per cent.
2 min read
What will this mean for customers?
The majority of job losses will be in non customer-facing roles, the company suggested.
Virgin Media O2 has also decided to scrap planned upgrades, including its fibre broadband rollout, to try to reduce costs even further.
Prospect, one of the unions which represents staff, billed the upcoming redundancies as “disappointing and very unsettling”.
Major study into ‘forever chemicals’ in our bodies launched
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has set out to understand more about the health impacts of PFAS, known as forever chemicals.
How will it work?
Dr Edward Wynne-Evans, a director at the UKHSA, told BBC Radio 4 he hopes the study will reveal “what different levels of exposure mean for an individual’s long-term health”.
What are the impacts of PFAS?
They do not break down in the environment and two types have already been banned for cancer risks.
For these, PFOA and PFOS, known risks also include raised cholesterol, lower antibodies and impacts on the thyroid.
This summer, blood testing in the Lancashire town of Thornton -Cleveleys, near a major chemical factory, found elevated PFOA levels.
3 min read
The help available for first-time buyers, rated
The Government’s Your First Home scheme won’t launch until the spring but others are currently available.
Here is what might work best for you.
The scheme will see first-time buyers buy a new-build property with a small deposit, backed by a 20 per cent equity loan.
Housing developers will contribute to fund the scheme, which will have an earnings cap.
Experts warn that such a small deposit could mean buyers will have limited savings.
2 min read
Lifetime and first-time buyer ISA
The Lifetime ISA allows people to receive a 25 per cent bonus on their savings up to £1,000 per tax year.
The Government also confirmed first-time buyers will have access to a new savings product called the first-time buyer ISA from April 2029.
It will replace the existing LISA for new savers and will allow them to save up to £4,000 a year with a 25 per cent government bonus that will be paid upon withdrawal towards a home worth £450,000, with the maximum value of the bonus capped at £20,000.
3 min read
Other options on offer
- Shared ownership: Purchase a share of the property’s value, and then pay the rest in rent, as well as a monthly service charge and ground rent.
- Low-deposit schemes offered by developers: Many developers offer help towards people’s deposits. But experts warned buyers should not be tempted to stretch for a bigger home than they can afford.
3 min read
The bloc has since offered a compromise under which European students would pay what it costs a university to teach their course instead, The i Paper reported last month.
Charged on that basis, they could pay around £12,300 a year on average – about £2,500 more than British students pay now, or around £7,600 more over a three-year course.
The cost would vary by subject, from as low as £9,475 a year for law to as high as £19,986 for medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences. However, costs would still be lower than most international fees.
It is understood that Andy Burnham is prepared to offer EU students cheaper access to UK universities at a summit on 20 November, with the Government potentially paying universities up to £450m a year to cover any lost income from lower fees.
However, a deal on fees may not be agreed at the summit itself, with Brussels considering shelving the issue for up to six months to avoid derailing wider talks.
Diplomats expect the wider reset deal to be put into effect only once the fees dispute is resolved, The i Paper has reported.
The analysis by The i Paper is based on a KPMG study for the Department for Education published in September, which looked at the cost of delivering university courses in England based on 2023-24 costs.
Nick Hillman, chief executive of the Higher Education Policy Institute, explained that any new fee category “would need to be different for different subjects”, but said: “The average would need to be a little over £12,000.”
Who pays for cheaper fees
Rather than leaving universities to absorb the loss, the Government is understood to be prepared to pay them for any lost income, according to . In the most expensive Treasury scenario, where EU students pay UK fees, officials have estimated this could cost up to £450m a year.
Some in the Government told the figure was “far too high”, but Mark Corver, director of Campus Numerics, believes it is realistic.
He told The i Paper around 7,600 EU students starting courses this year were paying international fees which were around £20,000 a year more than British students on average.
Giving them home fees would cost around £150m in their first year, rising to around £450m a year once three-year groups were paying the lower fee, he said, if student numbers stayed the same.
He said that if EU students were instead charged around £23,000 a year, the compensation needed at the most selective universities would fall to around £10,000 per student, “more than halving the overall cost to the Government”.
Universities have warned against any move to charge EU students home fees, arguing it could leave them significantly out of pocket.
In a statement in October, Universities UK estimated that if EU students had paid British fees in 2024-25, institutions would have lost around £287m that year.
It added that any fee agreement “would need to be accompanied by a credible and sustainable funding solution that protects our universities” as international fee income “plays a vital role in supporting teaching, research and innovation”.
The Russell Group, which represents 24 leading universities, has put the cost of charging EU students UK fees at £580m a year, The i Paper has previously reported.
Hollie Chandler, The Russell Group’s director of strategic policy, said in October that “a deal that changes EU student fee status would put further strain on UK universities, and undermine the growth the Prime Minister is looking for”.
Universities could ‘go to the wall’
On average, the current £9,790 home fee falls short of the £12,317 it costs to teach each British undergraduate, KPMG figures show, with many universities relying on income from international students to make up the shortfall.
If Government compensation did not fully cover the income universities lost from EU students, some institutions would be more exposed than others.
Around 2 per cent of all students in the UK originated from the EU in 2024-25, according to Higher Education Statistics Agency figures. This compares to 14 per cent at the London School of Economics, and 9 per cent at both Imperial College London and the University of St Andrews.
“Forcing universities to accept more students at a fee level where they lose money would be like telling a supermarket they must have far more loss leaders,” Hillman said.
He warned that “you can only have so many students on which you are making a loss before you go to the wall”, and said universities could try to recoup the money through “redundancies or putting up fees” for postgraduate courses.