Top-up fees 'will divide students'

Students living side by side in the same universities could be paying radically different fees for their courses under plans being finalised this weekend.

Law students at Oxford or Cambridge would almost certainly be made to pay the top rate of £3,000 a year which, on top of living costs, would mean they left university with debts likely to exceed £20,000.

But they could be living in the same colleges as students paying much smaller fees, or none at all, because they have opted for courses that are cheaper to lay on.

The details of how to charge fees are still being fought over this weekend, with Gordon Brown and David Blunkett reputed to be holding out for a "pool" system, which would operate more like a graduate tax. At least three other ministers, including the Secretary of State for Trade, Patricia Hewitt, criticised the plan.

It would involve money collected from student fees going into a central fund, controlled by the Government, and then redistributed to the universities. All graduates would pay the same flat fee, irrespective of the specific costs of their courses.

However, Tony Blair is expected to rule in favour of Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, who wants to link fees to the number of students on individual courses as an incentive for the universities to provide the courses that attract the most students.

The money would be repaid through the tax system, like a student loan, once the graduate is earning enough, but there may be a system of "golden hellos" for graduates who go into low-paid public sector jobs such as teaching or nursing.

Yesterday, Mr Clarke circulated a new version of his White Paper on university funding, which is due to be published on Wednesday. The revisions represented Mr Clarke's attempt to answer the fears of Mr Brown, Mr Blunkett and other ministers that higher fees would deter children from poorer families from going to elite universities.

Mr Clarke's latest plan includes the creation of a regulator with the power to decide which universities should be allowed to introduce top-up fees. To qualify, the universities will need to show that they have procedures that "positively seek out talented individuals from poorer backgrounds".

Universities that go on to break their agreements to recruit working-class students will risk being heavily fined or losing their right to set variable fees altogether.

Mr Clarke also wants classes for schoolchildren aged 14 or over to be made more interesting, to discourage those from poorer backgrounds from dropping out of full-time education.

"That means relaxing the sometimes over-rigid demands of the national curriculum after 14, so that children can follow courses that they enjoy and on which they thrive, rather than forcing them to study subjects in which they have no interest or aptitude," he wrote, in yesterday's Eastern Daily Press.