Blackburn College 'under pressure over low tuition fees' (From This Is Lancashire)

Blackburn College 'under pressure over low tuition fees'

6:30pm Monday 9th May 2011 in News By Nafeesa Shan, Reporter

AN East Lancashire university centre claims it is coming under pressure to increase its fees from rival institutions.

Principal Ian Clinton announced last month that Blackburn College would be charging its fees at £7,000 a year for its higher education courses.

It is the lowest rate in the north west.

But the college claims that universities charging £9,000 have asked it to rise its level to match them.

Blackburn College offers a number of honours degree courses validated by institutions such as Lancaster University which set their rates from September 2012 as £9,000 a year.

Blackburn has said it would even charge £7,000 for those courses and said it was prepared to make ‘changes in some of the partnerships we have’ if it was asked to push the tuition fees to £9,000 a year.

Yana Williams Vice Principal at Blackburn College said: "We are standing by our commitment to set fees at £7,000.

“For example, University of Central Lancashire has set its honours degrees at £9,000 and have expressed their expectation that partner colleges deliver their qualifications at the same fee level. However, we don’t have any honours degrees validated by University of Central Lancashire .

“As we are standing by our commitment to fair student fees it still means we will continue to validate honours degrees with other partners like Lancaster University.”

Universities and university centres say they have been forced to increase tuition fees after the government cut funding for higher education and a vote was passed by MPs to increase them to make up the shortfall.

Dr Graham Baldwin, deputy vice-chancellor (Academic),said: “The University of Central Lancashire has a strong commitment to collaborative provision, values the work undertaken with its partner colleges and has embarked on an extensive consultation exercise with them on the implications of the new funding arrangements from 2012.”