Offering home tuition fee status to European Union (EU) students would “make a very difficult financial situation worse”, the chief executive of Universities UK has warned, with domestic students likely to lose places as a result.
After reports suggested the EU was pushing for its students to pay domestic instead of international fees (currently £9,790 a year) as part of ongoing negotiations on youth mobility, Vivienne Stern said the UK government should “push back”.
Russell Group analysis has found including home tuition fee status for EU students could cost UK universities £580 million, with the association of research-intensive institutions calling instead for a “fair, balanced deal with the EU”.
Giving evidence to the House of Lords’ European Affairs committee on the Erasmus+ exchange scheme on 7 July, Stern said: “Our view has been that the government’s right to push back on this status…Under the current circumstances, with the financial pressures on the system, this would just make a very difficult situation worse and the government should therefore not do it.”
“I was speaking to one vice-chancellor this morning who said on the home fee question [for EU students who come to UK universities], ‘the consequence would be I would reduce the number of domestic students I admitted’,” Stern added.
