Higher fees could lead to average student debts of £60,000, new survey warns

The survey of 2,800 students predicts that UK students starting university in 2012 are likely to graduate with average debts of £53,400 compared to £26,100 for students starting university in 2011, the last year before the new fee regime. English students are projected to come out the worst, with an average debt of £59,100 when they complete their studies.

UCU said the report was further proof that the government's university funding plans were a 'recipe for disaster'.

The survey comes just a week after it was revealed that more than half of English universities are expecting a fall in undergraduate numbers in the first year of higher fees, with the sector as a whole braced for a drop of almost 2 per cent.

UCU said any decrease in student numbers would have a significant knock-on effect on English universities, already reeling from an 80% cut to their teaching budgets.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Average student debt is already staggeringly high and is now set to get much worse. The government's university funding plans are a recipe for disaster and will lead to people making important life choices on the basis of their ability to pay rather than their ability to learn.

'Erecting punitive financial barriers is not the way to attract the best and the brightest and is bad for the health of the academic sector. It doesn't take a genius to work out that if 2 per cent fewer people apply to university this will lead to significant funding gaps for institutions at a time when teaching budgets have been slashed by 80 per cent.'