University tuition fees are expected to hit nearly £11,000 a year by 2030, leaving some of this year’s freshers with debts as high as £100,000, The i Paper can reveal.
Students starting four-year courses this autumn are set to see their fees go up by more than £800 in their final year.
Record numbers of students were accepted into undergraduate degree courses on A-levels results day on Thursday, but experts warned that they are being asked to bail out struggling universities.
Tuition fees will reach £9,790 this autumn and £10,050 next year, with the previous Keir Starmer-led government saying they would continue rising with inflation.
The Surrey village where it hasn’t rained for two months
The village of Wisley, located between Cobham and Woking, has gone 56 consecutive days without rainfall, a record-breaking streak that is posing risks to prized plants, wildlife and residents.
Vegetation affected
Home to RHS Garden Wisley, which welcomes more than a million visitors each year, Surrey is known for its trees as England’s most densely-wooded county.
However, visitors to the charity’s flagship garden are concerned about how the prolonged dry and hot conditions are impacting the once green surroundings.
RHS Garden Wisley is still staying strong
RHS director of gardens and horticulture, Tim Upson, said while the wider treescape at Wisley remains green and key areas of the garden continue to look good, some parts have been impacted by the prolonged summer heat.
“Some trees, such as the Common Birch, Betula pendula, around the periphery of the garden are yellowing with early leaf drop,” he said.
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Wildfire fears
Lowland heathland reserves such as Wisley and Ockham Commons are highly prone to fires – and these can have a devastating effect on the complex web of flora and fauna (…) Without the checks provided by rainfall, these fires can spread rapidly (…) and have devastating effects on rare wildlife.
James Herd, director of reserves management at Surrey Wildlife Trust
The secretive Russian weapons powerhouse Ukraine is targeting next
Moscow was incensed after Ukraine hit an oil refinery hundreds of miles inside Russia this week.
The Ukrainian drone strike
Local officials said 13 people, including a child had been killed, making it one of the deadliest attacks on a Russian city since 2022.
The drone strike hit the Taneco refinery in Nizhnekamsk. Nizhnekamsk lies in the Republic of Tatarstan and is a top oil producer and refining hub that is central to the war effort.
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A factory essential for Moscow’s war effort
What is most worrying for Putin is that barely an hour’s drive north of Nizhnekamsk is the sprawling Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Yelabuga.
It has become central in the production of suicide drones, first making Shahed drones in conjunction with Iran and now making the Russian Geran drones.
An important target
- Satellite imagery revealed rapid expansion at the drone factory early this year, with it reportedly making 170 to 190 every day.
- The threat posed by the factory makes it a key target, and Ukraine’s rapid advances in weapons technology have brought it into range.
- Ukraine targeted the factory in 2024 and 2025, but only inflicted limited damage.
How Ukraine could disrupt the factory’s production
- Luke Coffey, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said that Ukraine could target nearby energy and electrical infrastructure to impact the production.
- Options from other experts included targeting supply chains via direct rail links from China, or hitting it multiple times a week to force Russia to give up production.
Three key points as students receive A-level results
Record levels of A*’s for sixth formers has meant that nearly 263,000 UK pupils have already been accepted on to university courses.
Here are three things to know from this year’s A-level results.
Record proportion of A-level students get top grades in England
More than a quarter (28.5 per cent) of UK entries were awarded an A or A* grade, up by 0.2 percentage points on last year, with 9.6 per cent getting the top A* grade, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ).
This saw 228,990 university offer holders get their first choice.
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Boys outperform girls at top A-level grades for second year in row
Boys have outperformed girls for the second year in a row and the gap is widening. The percentage of boys’ grades that were A* or A was 28.9 per cent, pulling ahead of the 28.0 per cent achieved by girls, according to the JCQ.
Last year boys got 28.4 per cent and girls achieved 28.2 per cent of the top grades. However, female students made up a greater proportion of entries and got a higher number of A* and A grades overall.
Regional divide widens in England
The gap between the highest- and lowest-performing regions in England has grown to a record level.
In London, 32.7 per cent of A-level grades were marked at A* or A, up from 32.1 per cent last year. In the North East and the East Midlands, it’s 23.1 per cent.
That’s a 9.6 percentage point gap – up from 9.2 last year and is the largest between these regions since the present system of grading began in 2010.
Universities at risk of going bust before 2026 freshers finish their degrees
Bankruptcies, mergers and course closures are expected to accelerate from 2030 because of a sharp drop-off in British students, according to analysts.
It comes as Andy Burnham faces pressure to help students with the burgeoning cost of student loans as part of his drive to lower the cost of living.
Last year the government said it intended to introduce legislation so that tuition fees automatically rise with inflation every year, but it has not yet been implemented.
Although fees for the following years have not yet been confirmed, they are set to climb to around £10,328 in 2028-29 and £10,898 in 2030-31, according to analysis by The i Paper using inflation forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
A graduate beginning a four-year undergraduate degree this autumn, who is taking out the maximum student loans, would face tuition fee debt of about £40,800 plus interest.
Students living without their parents outside London would leave university with debts of £85,900 if they take out the maximum maintenance loans, while those living with their parents would accumulate loans worth about £78,800 plus interest.
Interest accumulates daily on the entire loan balance and, for graduates starting their degrees this year, will be pegged to the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation – adding thousands to their debts.
Graduates with older “Plan 2” loans, which were issued in England between September 2012 and July 2023, is set at RPI plus 3 per cent.
Last month the Education Secretary, Lucy Powell, said the issue of student loans was “very much at the top of my in-tray” and described interest charges on Plan 2 loans as “egregious”.
Lewis Wilson, vice president at the National Union of Students, said the costs of attending university were “astronomical” and students were left with “mortgage-sized” debts.
“It’s a graduate tax for life, but it’s completely unfair,” he said. “It’s a tax that wealthy people can completely opt out of because they won’t have taken out student loans.”
He said it was “unfair” that students were left with big bills because the government “refuses” to adequately fund universities.
He said rising numbers of students are still going to university despite the cost because of the opportunities and knowledge they gain.
“People are graduating, wanting to start families, buy houses or do all of these very normal things in life, and they can’t because they realise that the loan that they’ve taken out is mortgage-sized and adds so much of a burden,” he said.
The Government previously announced plans to reintroduce maintenance grants but they will only be for some subjects such as engineering and healthcare, will be means-tested, and will not take effect until 2028-29.
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank, said the tuition fee increases are “nothing like enough” to help beleaguered institutions, some of which are on the brink of bankruptcy.
University undergraduate tuition fees for UK students were frozen at £9,250 from 2017 to 2025.
Inflation during this period means that the cost of delivering degrees has outstripped tuition fees, leaving institutions increasingly reliant on additional money from international student fees, which are uncapped and can be as high as £70,000 a year.
However, an immigration crackdown has led to falling numbers of overseas students and a rise in universities accepting UK students, which Hillman said was an effort to plug the gap.
He said questions remain whether or not Burnham will see through his predecessor’s plan to enshrine tuition fee increases in primary legislation.
“I’ve always been sceptical that will ever happen because I don’t feel a massive appetite among Labour MPs to change primary legislation to have automatic fee rises every year, and as the next election gets closer, that’s going to get even less and less likely,” he said.
Iain Mansfield, head of education at the Policy Exchange think-tank, said: “Lucy Powell has indicated she’s got real concerns about the student loan system. Given the increasing concern about the quality of universities, there is a real question about whether or not they’ll choose to go ahead with it. It feels like a fifty-fifty decision.”
He said it would be a mistake to raise tuition fees to be as generous as they were more than a decade ago, saying that the money universities receive per student “should be enough for them” and is above what is seen in other countries.
The Department for Education was approached for comment.