Why are fees so high if universities say they lose money on teaching?
England built a market in higher education and then fixed the price. Every provider charges essentially the same headline fee, which means competition had to express itself through something other than price — and it did.
The number itself has a history. £9,000 in 2012–13, £9,250 from 2017–18, then frozen for eight years while pay, energy, maintenance, software, pensions and borrowing all became more expensive. The government's own assessment says the maximum fee is now worth around 38 per cent less than when it was introduced. Uprating has resumed, but it preserves the diminished figure rather than restoring what was lost.
This chapter is the book's clearest statement of the quasi-market problem: a system that demanded market discipline while withholding the single instrument a market uses to signal anything.
A freeze sounds as if nothing is happening. In real terms, something happens every year.
Regulated to Fail, Chapter 5
The convenient number
The headline tuition fee barely moved for thirteen years. The government's own assessment says what it was actually worth.
Maximum fee, cash terms
What it is worth, in 2012–13 prices (government estimate)
Measure: £ per year, standard full-time undergraduate course, England. Coverage: England. Approved fee-cap providers with a Teaching Excellence Framework award and an access and participation plan. Lower limits apply elsewhere. 2012–13 to 2027–28.
What this chart does not show (4)
The real-terms values are two published point estimates, not a continuous series. The dashed line between them is illustrative of direction only.
The fee limit is not the same as the teaching resource available for any particular course.
Applies to England only, and only to providers meeting the higher fee-limit conditions.
2026–27 and 2027–28 limits were set in legislation; outturn inflation may differ from the assumptions behind them.
How the figures were prepared: Cash fee limits are as published. The real-terms figures are the government's own published estimates in 2012–13 prices, shown as annotated points rather than an interpolated series — no deflator has been applied by the author.
View as a table
Maximum tuition fee for a standard full-time undergraduate course in England.
Academic year
Cash terms
Worth in 2012–13 prices
2012-13
£9,000
£9,000
2013-14
£9,000
—
2014-15
£9,000
—
2015-16
£9,000
—
2016-17
£9,000
—
2017-18
£9,250
—
2018-19
£9,250
—
2019-20
£9,250
—
2020-21
£9,250
—
2021-22
£9,250
—
2022-23
£9,250
—
2023-24
£9,250
—
2024-25
£9,250
£5,860
2025-26
£9,535
£5,920
2026-27
£9,790
—
2027-28
£10,050
—
Where this goes next
This is the question the chapter opens with and the mechanism it identifies. What it concludes — and what follows from it — is in the book.