Despite assurances that students won’t have to pay back loans until they earn enough money, Great Britain’s recent country-wide tuition hike will cause fewer students to enroll in universities this fall.
According to an article by Simon Baker in the Times Higher Education:
More than half of English universities are expecting a fall in undergraduate numbers in the first year of higher fees, with the sector as a whole planning for a drop of almost 2 per cent.
The predictions come in a report from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, considered at a board meeting on 7 July, which collates information from financial forecasts submitted by universities earlier this year. The analysis shows that 56 per cent of institutions are expecting home and European Union full-time undergraduate numbers to fall in 2012-13, with one institution predicting its numbers will fall by 20 per cent, and five others by more than 10 per cent.
That is, after all, what happens when an institution enacts massive tuition hikes; less people can afford to pay for higher education.
