An Analysis On The Change Of The UK Higher Education Tuition Policy

The higher education tuition policy of a country is directly relevant to the degrees ofsocial justice and fairness as well as the prospective of its HE. As one of those first highereducation countries, the UK has been staging a series of tuition policies which have aprofound influence on HE since the World War II. On the basis of the existing researchresults, this essay divides the evolution of the UK’s HE into four phrases:“Free Tuitionand Grants”,“Tuition Fees and Loans”,“Different Fees for Different Courses” and“Increased Tuition Fees”.The essay uses the ways of text and policy analyzing, based onthe relevant theories about pedagogy, economics and sociology, relying on the theory of“Cost-sharing”,“Human Capital”,“Difference Principles and Equalization of Opportunity”.By combing the evolution of the UK HE from the20thcentury to now, the purposes of theresearch is to find out the backgrounds, processes, reasons, features and influences of theHE policies and bring a series of practical proposals to our country’s higher education.This essay includes five parts. Firstly, by studying the background, process, reasonand influence of the phrase “Free and Grants”, the writer analyzes the effect of the policy.In this stage, the tuition policy enabled the British university enrollment to rise steeply butbrought a heavy financial burden as well as inequality of higher education to the UK.Secondly, by means of a detailed analysis of the background, process, feature, reason,influence to the policy “Tuition fees and loans”, the essay gets the conclusion that it notonly vastly increased the British HE’s educational fund but accelerated the rapid of masshigher education. However, the phenomenon of unfair entrance that the inequality of HEentrance transferred to the individual was not eliminated. Thirdly, it studies the process,background, feature, reason, effect of the policy “Different Fees for Different Courses” and“Increased Tuition Fees”, revealing that universities had more independence and studentsfrom poor family got equal entrance opportunities after the policy promulgated andimplemented but the rising tuition fees that brought huge debt to students could easilycause the Matthew Effect. Fourthly, the writer defines this phrase as “Increased Tuition Fees” because Britain decided to increase HE tuition fees after its economy had met with aserious strike during global financial crisis. By the analysis of the background, process,feature, reason, effect, this essay concludes that with a series of comparatively completedstudent loan policies and enhanced purchasing power the rising tuition can be accepted bythe public. Finally, the purpose of this chapter is to find out the problems of our country’sHE tuition policies and figure out how to solve them. The writer firmly believe we canfollow the example of the UK’s way of “Different Fees for Different Courses” by adjustingtuition fees according to household income differences and guaranteeing the sufficient HEfund while improving the student financial assistant policies.