Falmouth College charges the full £9,000 tuition fees

London Editor

Falmouth College has become the latest university to hike tuition fees to the £9,000 per year maximum.

Three-year undergraduate courses at the university arts college will cost £27,000 from September 2012, the college confirmed yesterday.

The controversial move follows MPs last year voting to treble the cap on tuition fees from £3,000 a year.

While ministers insist institutions should only charge the top rate in “exceptional circumstances”, many colleges and universities have since opted to reach the cap.

University College Falmouth (UCF), which offers degrees ranging from fine art to journalism and includes courses from the former Dartington College, will be hit hard when teaching grants for arts and humanities subjects, unlike science and technology, are phased out.

The college, which boasts about 3,000 students, is expected to lose its entire teaching grant next year – amounting to £13 million a year. The fees will cover the loss of the grant and leave the college with extra cash to invest in new areas including computer gaming, software design and social media.

Professor Anne Carlisle, chief executive of the college, told the

She said: “Students and employers rightly expect the very highest standards, and those expectations will be raised by the Government’s new fees regime.”

While the fees look daunting to many families in Cornwall, the college stresses students will not pay a penny back until they start to earn more than £21,000. More than 30 universities have already declared their intended fee levels for next year, with the majority planning to charge £9,000.

Exeter University was one of the first in the country to propose a maximum fee increase from 2012. This will affect students at the university’s Combined Universities in Cornwall campuses in the Duchy.

Plymouth University and Plymouth’s University College St Marks and St Johns (Marjons) have yet to make a decision on future tuition fee levels.

If ramping-up fees is signed-off by ministers, UCF says it would more than double what it spends on outreach work and financial assistance for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Andy Edmonds, National Union of Students president for UCF, said the college had to prove teaching and facilities would improve. He said: “I think students will stop to think.”

All universities planning to charge more than £6,000 will have to have their fees approved by the Office for Fair Access (Offa). Ministers have warned universities that if the majority set fees at or close to the maximum £9,000 then they will face cuts to funding and student places.