EU students could pay discounted £12,500-a-year fees under Brexit reset

University students from the EU could pay around £2,500 a year more than their British classmates if their fees are cut as part of a compromise in Brexit reset talks, analysis by The i Paper shows. Students from the bloc currently pay the same fees as international students, which can reach up to £38,000 per year – far higher than the home costs they were charged before Brexit. In reset talks, the EU had originally asked for a return to home fees. These are currently a maximum of £9,790 a year for students in England but are due to rise to £10,050 in 2027-28. Shorts The bloc has since offered a compromise under which European students would pay what it costs a university to teach their course instead, The i Paper reported last month. Charged on that basis, they could pay around £12,300 a year on average – about £2,500 more than British students pay now, or around £7,600 more over a three-year course. The cost would vary by subject, from as low as £9,475 a year for law to as high as £19,986 for medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences. However, costs would still be lower than most international fees. It is understood that Andy Burnham is prepared to offer EU students cheaper access to UK universities at a summit on 20 November, with the Government potentially paying universities up to £450m a year to cover any lost income from lower fees. However, a deal on fees may not be agreed at the summit itself, with Brussels considering shelving the issue for up to six months to avoid derailing wider talks. Diplomats expect the wider reset deal to be put into effect only once the fees dispute is resolved, The i Paper has reported. The analysis by The i Paper is based on a KPMG study for the Department for Education published in September, which looked at the cost of delivering university courses in England based on 2023-24 costs. Nick Hillman, chief executive of the Higher Education Policy Institute, explained that any new fee category “would need to be different for different subjects”, but said: “The average would need to be a little over £12,000.” Who pays for cheaper fees Rather than leaving universities to absorb the loss, the Government is understood to be prepared to pay them for any lost income, according to The Guardian. In the most expensive Treasury scenario, where EU students pay UK fees, officials have estimated this could cost up to £450m a year. Some in the Government told The Financial Times the figure was “far too high”, but Mark Corver, director of Campus Numerics, believes it is realistic. He told The i Paper around 7,600 EU students starting courses this year were paying international fees which were around £20,000 a year more than British students on average. Giving them home fees would cost around £150m in their first year, rising to around £450m a year once three-year groups were paying the lower fee, he said, if student numbers stayed the same. He said that if EU students were instead charged around £23,000 a year, the compensation needed at the most selective universities would fall to around £10,000 per student, “more than halving the overall cost to the Government”. Universities have warned against any move to charge EU students home fees, arguing it could leave them significantly out of pocket. In a statement in October, Universities UK estimated that if EU students had paid British fees in 2024-25, institutions would have lost around £287m that year. It added that any fee agreement “would need to be accompanied by a credible and sustainable funding solution that protects our universities” as international fee income “plays a vital role in supporting teaching, research and innovation”. The Russell Group, which represents 24 leading universities, has put the cost of charging EU students UK fees at £580m a year, The i Paper has previously reported. Hollie Chandler, The Russell Group’s director of strategic policy, said in October that “a deal that changes EU student fee status would put further strain on UK universities, and undermine the growth the Prime Minister is looking for”. Universities could ‘go to the wall’ On average, the current £9,790 home fee falls short of the £12,317 it costs to teach each British undergraduate, KPMG figures show, with many universities relying on income from international students to make up the shortfall. If Government compensation did not fully cover the income universities lost from EU students, some institutions would be more exposed than others. Around 2 per cent of all students in the UK originated from the EU in 2024-25, according to Higher Education Statistics Agency figures. This compares to 14 per cent at the London School of Economics, and 9 per cent at both Imperial College London and the University of St Andrews. “Forcing universities to accept more students at a fee level where they lose money would be like telling a supermarket they must have far more loss leaders,” Hillman said. He warned that “you can only have so many students on which you are making a loss before you go to the wall”, and said universities could try to recoup the money through “redundancies or putting up fees” for postgraduate courses.