Responding to Prime Minister Theresa May’s announcements today on tuition fees, including plans to raise the repayment threshold, freeze fees and have a wider review of student finance, Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation, said:

“We welcome the planned raising of the graduate repayment threshold for tuition fees. We have called for this since our report Unfair Deal two years ago. We also welcome the freeze on fees.

“However the government must go much further to make fees fairer, and it is right to set up a review. It’s a scandal that the poorest students graduate with the highest debt. Fees should be means tested so that those from low income families repay less and maintenance grants should be reintroduced for the poorest students.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

Unfair Deal analysed the impact of changes to the repayment terms for student loans. It found that if the repayment threshold were frozen for five years, as originally proposed, the typical borrower is estimated to repay an extra £2,800

Degrees of Debt compared tuition funding arrangements, debt at graduation and earnings outcomes for full-time domestic undergraduates in eight Anglophone countries. It found that graduates from English universities have face some of the highest debts in the English speaking world.

 

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