Domestic Postgraduate fees report

In an environment where home undergraduate fees are frozen and falling in real terms, UK universities have increasingly relied on both international tuition fees and domestic postgraduate tuition fees. We have previously reviewed the growing international fees in the UK, and noted a growing gap in the fees between the Russell Group institutions and Post 92s. In this article, we take a closer look at PGT domestic fees. 

Firstly, we should keep in mind that the postgraduate loan provides UK students with up to £12,167, if their course started after August 2023. This is designed to support students both with tuition fees and the cost of living.

Currently, the average postgraduate taught tuition fee in England is £9,890 and for Post-92s it’s £9,751. However, the UK Russell Group’s average postgraduate fee sits more than £4,000 higher at £13,861 and well over the maximum postgraduate loan available to students. This raises questions around the loan amount available and how the government is supporting widening access to postgraduate education in the UK and with no planned increases to undergraduate fees announced at the time, these fees are only likely to rise further.

The Scottish postgraduate loan offers a maximum of £11,500 and in Wales, eligible students in 2024 to 2025 can apply for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan of up to £18,950, making Wales arguably the most attractive on the basis of funding support available.

It’s important to also flag the variance we see across different subject areas. This variance is more evident for Russell Group universities with the average Business and Administrative Studies postgraduate programmes, with tuition fees averaging £18,721, whilst the Russell Group Humanities and Education course average is significantly lower at less than £10,000.

In contrast, the variance in fees for post-92 universities is relatively small, and we observe a small number of institutions with a single fee for all postgraduate courses, with the exception of a handful of non-standard course fees. It is now generally commonplace for universities to have different pricing tiers, although the strategy around this appears to differ significantly. Some have a small number of tiers based on faculty, whilst others have several tiers related to the subject area, presumably driven by resource delivery cost and demand.

The challenge, of course, is having the resources to manage several fee tiers, as every tier added increases the resource associated with fee benchmarking, website updates, and fee management and collection. However, flexibility in internal fee structures and optimising price points can mean significant increases in revenue without necessarily increasing recruitment volume.

At IDP we hold a complete list of course fees in the market, both domestic and international fees, as well as a list of scholarships. Understanding sector and competitor pricing by subject and course is essential in price-setting strategy, but we also need to understand how price sensitivity differs by each subject area, where is the tipping point? and what is the optimal price point?

IDP Connect IQ is uniquely positioned to support both in provision of fee benchmarking data and provide further consultancy to support fee-setting strategy.

Contact us for more information about how IDP Connect can support your institution with domestic and international fee-setting.