Students from England look north to avoid top-up fees

Published on Thursday 28 April 2005 02:27

ENGLISH students are applying to Scottish universities in record numbers to try to avoid top-up tuition fees south of the Border.

Figures released yesterday by the university admissions body UCAS showed that almost 29,000 applications to Scottish universities had been received from England - a rise of 17 per cent on the same time last year.

Experts blamed the introduction of top-up fees, which will allow English universities to charge students 3,000 a year from 2006.

It has been claimed that the rise in applications from England could result in Scottish students being squeezed out.

A spokesman for the umbrella body Universities Scotland said: "On the one hand it is simplistic to say it is just down to top-up fees, but there is no doubt that is the major reason.

"Numbers were going down until two years ago and then all of a sudden they started going through the roof, so what else has changed in that time apart from the government’s plans to introduce top-up fees in England?"

• Scotland’s colleges need to spend almost half a billion pounds to bring their buildings up to modern standards, it emerged yesterday.

The figure was revealed as the Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC) announced that 66 million had been earmarked to be spent on college buildings in 2005-6 - an increase of 28 million on last year.

A total of 241 million will be spent on colleges over the next three years - but the SFEFC said that would go only half way towards bringing buildings and equipment up to the required standard.