Students split on tuition fees increase
Tuition fees will rise by 3.1% in 2025 after they've been frozen for the past eight years.
Students at Oxford Brookes University showed a range of emotions regarding the announcement that tuition fees will be increasing from October 2025.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the labour party announced the increase five days after Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed the autumn budget.
The increase will see an additional £285 added onto the fees, totalling £9535 a year, which had been frozen at £9250 since 2017. An Oxford Brookes politics student said, “I personally think it’s totally unfair.”
Some raised issues with the fact that Starmer stated in 2020 he would abolish the fees completely, with one student saying, “It was a false promise.”
This isn’t the first time a government official failed to uphold the promise of abolishing tuition fees though, as Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had to apologise in 2013 after failing to do the same thing.
Not all students share the opinion that the increase is a bad move though, as a real estate student said, “They’ve been locked for the past eight years, so the increase is fair enough.”
The same student went on to say, “This is also my last year, so the increase does not affect me”, showing how the hike is not a worry for a lot of students currently on their final year of University.
Watch all of the VoxPop interviews with the students from Oxford Brookes here: