Dear all,

There has been stuff in the news recently about possible massive rises in fees eg to £7k
http://tinyurl.com/yzw8yno
So would a PhD student starting this year know the fees only for the first year? If so, it seems that the student is buying something without being told the price. I mean how does the student know whether he can afford it if he doesn't know the price? :-(

======= Date Modified 26 Mar 2010 23:27:20 =======
I think that fee rise applies mainly to taught Masters courses, all of which seem to start in the region of 5000-7000 per annum. As far as I'm aware, fees for non-lab based PhDs (so, arts, humanities etc) rise only in line with inflation, by about 50-80 pounds per year. They're about 3400 now, and I wouldn't think that they will be much above that next year, or the year after.

I return to my previous question above. I am thinking about starting a self-funded phd in October, fees are £3.5k. I am concerned that after the first year they will say say ok now it's £5k for year 2 and then £7k for year 3 etc. Is anyone else concerned about this?

Would the University not have to state at the start how much the following years would cost you? I don't really know how it would work but could you not ask? The previous poster seemed to think PhD fees would not increase but I have no idea if this is the case.

I would think it would make sense to either inform students how much the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year would cost or have it fixed at the usual price (£3,400 or what price it actually is) for each year and if the price increases only have this apply to new students. So although the price has increased you would still pay the old price...

This is an assumption and how I think it might work. The best thing to do would be to ask your university and if anyone says to you the price will not increase ask for it in writing. Hope this is of some use...probably not since it's opinion and not fact :-)

I'm not entirely sure how it would work but when they last raised fees and introduced the top up business I was doing my UG degree - those of us who had already started were not charged any more - in our case the price you pay at the start was the price you paid throughout, however new students starting after the changes were charged the higher rate. I think from what happened then, that if they do raise fees (which seems inevitable the way things are going :-() that it won't affect those of us who are already midway through. I could be wrong, but its not the way they've done it before.

I would think that is what would happen as well, Stressed, where only new students would see the increases.

It also talks about undergraduate fees, postgraduate fees have always been a different kettle of fish altogether, I don't believe they are capped in the same way anyway (happy to be proved otherwise).

======= Date Modified 19 Jun 2010 00:29:34 =======
OK so I enquired at my prospective department about whether I could be affected by big increases in fees / restructuring of fees in my second or third year and (amazing to me) the answer from the department representative was in effect 'I don't know'.

:-(