Ministers deciding the fate of the Oxbridge college fee are considering three main options.
The first is to stick with the status quo, which is defended by some peers but believed to be unpopular with higher education minister Baroness Blackstone and senior members of the government's higher education committee. This means continuing to pay about £35 million to the two universities to help support their ancient buildings, libraries, welfare services and tutorial teaching.
Sir Ron Dearing's committee said it was necessary to review the college fee, taking into account that variations in the level of public funding for teaching should be based on definite differences in provision and good use of resources. Other universities also resent the extra money Oxford receives, from the London School of Economics, which claims to work as well as Oxbridge with less money, to members of the Coalition of Modern Universities, which say the money could be better spent elsewhere. Despite high-level and persistent lobbying, this option is unlikely to be approved.
The second option is to scrap the fee. This remains a possibility, although it would be difficult to do without colleges insisting on their right to levy fees from students instead. The government, which has repeatedly restated its opposition to top-up fees, will be unwilling to see extra charges introduced for students because of the threat to improving the number of state-school pupils at Oxbridge. Scrapping fees would lead to redundancies - some colleges are already putting recruitment on hold until the outcome of the fee inquiry. It could even lead to smaller colleges going bankrupt. Prime Minister Tony Blair is believed to oppose dropping fees. In its advice to the government, the Higher Education Funding Council for England said Oxford and Cambridge should be able to keep their "special character" under any changes.
The third and most likely option is to give the college fee money, at its present level or slightly reduced, to the university rather than to the individual colleges. Currently, the universities have 40 per cent of their HEFCE grant lopped off to balance the university services colleges provide. If colleges were to lose the fee, this 40 per cent would be restored. So the quibble is in fact about 60 per cent of the fee. The government is likely to grant at least part of this in recognition of the expenses Oxbridge colleges incur because of their old and listed buildings. London colleges already receive some extra money for similar reasons.
Both Baroness Blackstone and education secretary David Blunkett stressed recently that they do not wish to see poorer colleges badly affected by any change. This may involve stricter redistribution of money from richer to poorer colleges, which both universities are already investigating. The advantage for the government of incorporating fees into the HEFCE grant is also that it may be easier to reduce the extra subsidy gradually in future, without the fuss this review has generated.
If anything is decided about college fees, it will present a legal minefield, education lawyers have warned. The right of colleges to charge fees is embedded in their statutes, which may be a problem if the government tries to stop them asking students to make up the money. In addition, rules concerning fees have developed haphazardly over hundreds of years and are now a tangle of different clauses.
John Boardman, head of education at Eversheds North, said "It is an incredibly complicated issue and one which throws up all kinds of legal difficulties." For example, unlike universities, colleges cannot levy different fees from overseas and home students. Attempts to make wealthier colleges subsidise poorer ones more formally could run into difficulties with charity law, while the risk of poorer colleges going bankrupt could raise legal difficulties which have not yet been explored.
Finally, ministers will have to work out whether to pass an Act of Parliament to implement any decision on fees, or whether they can simply do it through statutory instruments which would be much quicker.
Oxbridge colleges have levied charges and fees for hundreds of years. This practice was incorporated into their statutes by the Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1923. Each has always charged different amounts, depending on the services offered and the amount of money received from elsewhere, including endowments. This variation has declined over the years, although recent drops in funding have made better-off colleges less willing to lower their fees. On average, annual fees amount to about £2,700 at Cambridge and £3,116 at Oxford.
For most of Oxford and Cambridge's history, the burden of college fees has fallen on the student. Then, after the 1944 Education Act, the state stepped in to pay some of the costs. This was applied equally to students regardless of income. In 1962, means-testing was introduced. All students eligible for state support while at university were also reimbursed for fees. But a few years later, means-testing was removed again. Local education authorities had to pay all tuition and other fees.
John Bradfield, former senior bursar at Trinity College, said: "The colleges never asked for that and we were amazed when it was offered. It was introduced with hardly any consultation." Even then, he said, the cost per student to the state of the extra money never varied from the national average by more than about 10 per cent and was matched at a number of other universities. Nevertheless, the amounts involved caused the Labour government of the time to ask for regular meetings to discuss fee levels. Since then the level has effectively been controlled by the government.
The formula for fixing the fee has differed over the years. At first, fees increased in line with the retail price index. Then, in the early 1990s, they were pegged to increases in the whole of the higher education sector - RPI minus efficiency gains. For a while, this was modified linking increases in college fees to increases in other elite universities. This year the government finally decided to go back to a system based on the whole sector.
OXFORD
Accommodation in halls at St John's College varies from £350 for an eight-week term for a room in the bottom range to £500 for a top-of-the-range room. The fees do not include meals (about £2 for dinner and £1.50 for lunch). St John's has one of the most expensive bars, with a pint of beer at about £1.40. Book grants are available - about £60 a year. There is free computing, but a charge is made for photocopying.
LIVERPOOL
John Moores University in Liverpool offers places in halls of residence to about 2,700 of the 6,000 first-years, including 2,000 from the Merseyside area who attend the university each year. Prices range from £39 to £52 a week for rooms in a flat or house with shared bathrooms. All accommodation is self-catering. The newest hall of residence offers cable television and a telephone in each study bedroom. There are no book grants.
Click for the next item in the 1997 Oxbridge funding row, or for the THES Leader of 21/11/97.