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Parents will be forced to start saving for their children's university education as soon as they are born if ministers scrap the limit on tuition fees, a leading vice-chancellor has warned.
Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London, spoke as the Government is set to launch a review of university fees, which are capped at £3,225 a year for English undergraduates.
Many vice-chancellors want to see the cap raised to around £7,000 per year, while some feel that top universities should be privatised, allowing them to charge unlimited fees.
Professor Grant, who until last month led the Russell Group of elite research universities, rejected the idea.
“You would have to be pretty naive to assume that we could move quite quickly from the existing model of capped fees in the UK to an open-market model such as the US Ivy League,” he said. “In the US, parents start saving at birth for college fees for their children.”
Yet he hinted that fees may have to rise to maintain Britain's reputation as a world leader for higher education and research.
“We do have to find a way of funding universities long term,” he said.
Last week, UCL was ranked fourth in the world behind Harvard, Cambridge and Yale, moving ahead of Oxford, which was joint fifth with Imperial.
In June, Sir Roy Anderson, the head of Imperial, called for Britain's top universities to form a privatised elite like the US Ivy League.
The Government is due to launch its review by the end of the year.
Reader views (5)
For once a bit of news that has pleased me. I was not able to go to university as my parents could not afford it. I have no children now so why should I have to pay for other people's brats to go from my taxes? You have kids, you pay for 'em or go without!
- Sarah Bradshaw, Enfield, Middx
It would be far better to move back from NuLabour's dream of 50% of the population having degrees that they pay an arm and a leg for, to the 70's where 2% of the population had degrees and not only did not pay, but got a grant to attend.
However, it did rely on only the brightest 2% (not richest) of kids applying and getting the required A level grades. What we currently have is a school leaving age of 21 if you want any kind of job that pays better than legal minimum. Thereby reducing the unemployment numbers by 1million (would be 3.5 million otherwise).
- Graham, Reading, England
Don't waste your money.
There will be no jobs in the UK and unless your child can make a contribution in the sciences, engineering or medicine they will be under some level of misapprehension that their degree has some sort of value that can be measured in future income - wrong.
The UK is full of people with subsided degrees that add no foreign income productive value to the English nation
- James, City of London
They do already: it's called 'TAX'. It really is a disgrace that a political party which was set up to improve the lot of the working classes and the underdogs could so utterly betray their origins.
- Roz, France
One of the few sensible statements I have read on the topic. He seems to recognise that, whilst tuition fee caps may well need to be lifted in the long term, there is both impracticability and unfairness in moving too quickly. Unlike Patten, who would like to start charging £20k a year. Seems quite fitting to me that UCL are now ranked ahead of Oxford !
- Andrew, Hampton Hill
