Leading article: Foolish fees?

Three universities and a number of higher education colleges have bucked the trend and decided to set their tuition fees at a sum lower than £3,000 a year.

Three universities and a number of higher education colleges have bucked the trend and decided to set their tuition fees at a sum lower than £3,000 a year. The decisions of Leeds Met, Greenwich and Thames Valley University (TVU) are brave, some would say foolhardy, because they appear to be acknowledging their relative weakness in the marketplace. TVU is setting a fee of £2,700, Greenwich £2,500 and Leeds Met £2,000. No one knows whether the three will thereby attract more students than other universities. The real marketplace is in bursaries. It will be interesting to see whether the three are able to gain some kind of public relations advantage.