Maintenance loans for students in England will also be linked to inflation, though some loans are set to be replaced with grants by 2029.
The rise in fees has been welcomed in some quarters, but challenged in others. Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, said the increase would "help to halt the long-term erosion of universities' financial sustainability, following a decade of fee freezes".
Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, said the changes "doubled down on the disastrous tuition-fees funding model, which created the crisis the sector is currently facing".
How much will university tuition fees increase by?
University tuition fees will increase each year in line with inflation, reportedly by the RPIx (the Retail Price Index minus mortgage payments). The maximum tuition fee that can be charged to full-time students in England is currently set at £9,535 for the 2025/26 academic year, up from £9,250 in 2024/25. This hike of 3.1% was based on a predicted rate of what RPIx would be for midway through the 2025/26 academic year. It is not yet clear which month of the year the new increases will apply, so it remains to be seen exactly how much students starting university courses in 2026 will be paying.
University tuition fees would rise to £9,954.54 if the most recent RPIx figure of 4.4% was applied, which would be a hike of more than £450. That rate of growth, combined with compounding interest, means that we could see university tuition fees approaching £15,000 within ten years. This is in sharp contrast to the eight-year freeze of tuition fees at £9,250.
Universities can choose whether to fix fees for the duration of a course or increase them year by year, meaning students could start the first year of their course without knowing how much the later years will cost.
The government has said that only courses adding sufficient value to a student's education will be able to charge the full fee, though it is unclear how this will be measured. Following previous increases to the maximum fee, most course costs have immediately jumped to the highest possible amount.
How much will maintenance loans increase by?
How much a university student gets from their maintenance loan depends on where they live, where they are going to study and how much their parents earn. For students in England starting their studies this academic year, the maintenance loans range from £3,907 to £13,762 per year. You can find the full details on our student debt page.
This is a 3.1% increase compared with 2024/25, again in line with a predicted rate of what RPIx would be for midway through the 2025/26 academic year. Students who have already started university will still be able to apply for the higher loan amount when it becomes available, as it is not restricted to new students.
The inflation-linked rise will continue for the next two academic years for both maintenance loans and tuition fees. After that, the government plans to introduce legislation to automatically link maintenance loans and tuition fee levels to inflation.
How much does it cost to go to university?
If you do not pay your fees upfront, it is essentially impossible to work out how much your university degree will cost you, even decades after you have graduated. The cost of going to university is based on an increasingly complicated combination of loan repayment thresholds, inflation figures, interest calculations, headline fees, maintenance loans and support grants.
Much of the UK's graduate population will have paid nothing to study at university, with tuition fees first introduced by the Labour government in 1998. This only applied to England, as the devolved governments were able to set their own fee structure and continue to do so. Initially in England, there was a £1,000 per year cap, which was raised to £3,000 in 2004, £3,225 in 2009, £9,000 in 2012, £9,250 in 2017 and £9,535 in 2025.
The jump to £9,000 in 2012 was deeply controversial - especially when paired with an interest rate of RPI plus 3% on student loans - and was part of a restructuring of the student loan repayment system that saw graduating borrowers pay 9% of their earnings over a set threshold towards their debt. This was reformed again in 2023 to lengthen the period before the debt is written off from 30 years to 40 years and decrease the threshold at which you start making repayments.
Most graduates and current students remained under the loan system and repayment plan that was in place when they started their course, so there is a huge variety among UK graduates in what they paid in tuition fees and how they repay their loans.
How many graduates repay their student loans?
The government forecasts that only around 56% of the full-time undergraduates who started their course during the 2024/25 academic year will repay their loans in full. For a significant part of the 44% who do not, the increase in fees will make no difference to what they pay. While the cost might go up every year, if your cut-off period arrives with a significant balance remaining, an extra few thousand will make no difference.
For people who would otherwise pay off their loan, higher tuition fees will mean more interest, more repayments and ultimately a higher overall cost for going to university.
This is because how much you pay back depends on how much you earn, how much interest is charged on your debt, and when that debt is written off, not just on how much the course was advertised as costing. Unless you are able to pay your university tuition fees upfront, the fee you pay to go to university is not actually as important as the repayment scheme.
For example, students starting university in 2012 faced £9,000 fees and an interest rate that reached 12% in 2022, but they benefited from a higher repayment threshold than the 2011 intake and a shorter cut-off period than the 2023 intake. Students starting in 2011 would have missed the fee hike, but would have had to start repaying their debt on a lower salary. 2023 students will not see their debt grow by more than 10% above the base rate, as some of their predecessors did, but they will keep repaying it for an additional 10 years, which could mean they pay much more overall.
What will happen to university tuition fees in the future?
Pricier tuition fees will be demoralising for university students, leading many to question whether higher education is for them. Though it is important that the maintenance loan is also growing, it will still not be enough to cover costs for many students and remains tied to an unenforceable convention that parents will contribute to their adult child's living costs. This is all despite the fact that for many students, the changes will not lead to them paying more overall.
Student loans appear to have become a fixed part of the university experience in England, and as tuition fees begin to rise once again, students will face greater pressure to make difficult choices and balance learning and earning.
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