BRITAIN: Fees for attending university in Britain are to treble amid government admissions that UK students could soon expect to graduate with debts of £15,000 sterling (€22,600).
The widely-trailed fee increase, from £1,100 to up to £3,000, will not start until 2006, but it came under heavy fire from activists, including Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw's son Will, president of the Oxford University Student Union.
Some Labour MPs were unhappy too despite the government's decision to restore grants worth up to £1,000 a year, which Education Secretary Mr Charles Clarke said 30 per cent of students would be eligible for.
Debts of £15,000 were more realistic than the £21,000 figure he mentioned at the weekend, said the Department for Education and Skills.
Upfront fees will be abolished and universities will only be allowed to charge more if they satisfy a new "access regulator" that they are making real efforts to recruit more working class students.
Fees could vary according to which university and/or course students opted for but they will not attract commercial rates of interest - instead, repayments will be adjusted for inflation.
However, today's primary school children face the prospect of even higher fees as the £3,000 limit will only apply until 2011.
As fees will have trebled between 1998 and 2006, it would not be unreasonable to expect a similar rise in the following five years.
Mr Clarke said that current student loan holders who took them out from 1998 onwards would benefit from the fact that their repayment threshold was also being raised to £15,000 a year from April 2005.
Mr Clarke said that spending on higher education as a whole would rise by an average of 6% a year between 2003 and 2006 to almost £10 billion. - (PA)