Tuition fees will rise in 2012 Far more English university students than originally expected will be paying the maximum tuition fee of £9,000 a year, BBC research suggests.
About half of the 111 universities contacted by the BBC said they would charge £9,000 for all their courses.
And about two thirds said they would charge the top rate for at least some courses.
Ministers had said they had wanted the top fee to be charged only in “exceptional circumstances”.
The BBC research also suggests there will big differences in the financial support offered to poorer students, with some being offered as much as a £6,000 “discount” or fee waiver.
Among the universities that will charge £9,000 for all courses, the fee waiver for the poorest students ranges from £2,000 to £6,000 a year.
Changes mean that from autumn 2012, universities in England will be able to raise tuition fees from the present level of £3,290 a year to between £6,000 and £9,000, if they meet certain conditions.
Students will pay the fees once they graduate and are earning at least £21,000, and there will be support for those from poorer homes.
More than 50 of England’s 134 universities were surveyed.
The BBC contacted the 111 state-funded universities that offer undergraduate courses, but not private universities nor those offering only postgraduate courses.
More than 30 universities have already made their plans public and have details on their websites.
The BBC survey includes institutions that have not yet published their fee levels, which gave the information on the basis that they would not be identified.
Vince Cable warned universities against charging top fees A total of 45 universities were able to tell us a clear average fee. The average of these was £8,536.
Of the 10 prestigious Russell Group universities that took part, nine said they would charge £9,000 for all courses.
Their fee waivers, or discounts, for poorer students range between £2,500 and £6,000.
Of the 1994 Group, which represents other leading research universities, eight out of 11 universities that responded said they intended to charge £9,000 across the board.
Of the newer Million+ universities, only half – six out of the 12 that responded – will be charging £9,000 for some or all courses. Two say that they will charge £9,000 for all courses.
The fees should all be made public by late June or mid-July, months before teenagers apply for university places for 2012.
They will be published by the Office for Fair Access (Offa), together with the extra bursaries and fee waivers they plan to offer poorer students.
Offa is working through universities’ plans for these at the moment and has to approve them.
It has the power to take away a university’s right to charge fees of more than £6,000 a year if it is not doing enough to attract and financially support students from poorer homes.
Ministers have warned that further cuts could be made to teaching budgets if too many universities set higher fees.
Originally, they had said they had expected universities to charge £9,000 only in “exceptional circumstances”.
The government based its calculations on what the new system would cost the state, on an estimate that the average fee for a university course would be £7,500 a year.
But universities are independent bodies and many say they need to charge maximum fees to make up for the loss of funds from teaching grants.
In response to the survey, Universities Minister David Willetts said it was “important to look beyond the £9,000 headline”.
Once bursaries for poorer students and lower fees likely to be charged by private providers were taken into account, he said, the average was likely to be “significantly below” £9,000.
Mr Willetts also says universities could have 10% more in cash terms by 2014 under the new system.
The government’s changes to university funding are based on the idea that fees will rise and replace money being taken from teaching budgets.
Four universities surveyed by the BBC said they expected courses to close as a result of the funding changes.
One university said it expected more than 10 courses to close.
More than 30 universities have now declared the fees they plan to charge next year.
Those planning to charge the maximum are Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London, Manchester, Warwick, Essex, Leeds, Durham, Lancaster, Bath, Birmingham, Loughborough, Exeter, Sussex, Surrey, Liverpool, Aston, Liverpool John Moores, Reading, Kent, Central Lancashire, Leicester, Nottingham and Oxford Brookes.
The BBC News website has published a list of the universities that have declared their fees so far.
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