Undergraduate students will be spared a rise in tuition fees for at least five years, in a move that will relieve middle-class families.

Ministers are under pressure from universities to raise the inflation-linked cap on university tuition fees, currently at £3,145, when the system is reviewed next year. Vice-chancellors claim that they need the extra income to compete with leading universities around the world.

David Eastwood, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), urged universities to dampen their expectations. Speaking at the council’s annual general meeting in London, he said: “Institutions would be foolish to plan on the assumption that there will be an early rise in the fee cap. I think it’s inconceivable that the cap will rise significantly before 2013.”

The National Union of Students estimates that those graduating under the new fee regime will owe an average of £20,000 once they complete their studies.

However, a survey for NatWest bank has calculated that the actual cost of completing a degree is much higher, at about £33,500. This includes fees, rent, food and luxuries such as alcohol and cigarettes.

Students from families whose parents earn just over the upper limit of £60,000 for receiving financial aid may find themselves hit hardest by any increase in fees, because they do not qualify for the assistance that is available to those from low-income households.

From next year the number of students not receiving any financial assistance will increase. John Denham, the Universities Secretary, has reduced partial grants for middle-income families, raising the upper income limit to £50,000 for students starting next year.

Top-up tuition fees of £3,000 a year were introduced in 2006 and almost all of England’s universities charge the full amount.

Some leading research universities have said that the fees should be increased to £5,000 to £8,000 a year, with charges varying between courses and institutions.

Because raising the cap would require students to take out bigger student loans, this could result in a considerable extra cost to the Government because it subsidises the loans by pegging them to inflation.

The London School of Economics has estimated that if tuition fees and student loans were raised to £5,000 a year, the projected cost to the Treasury of subsidising student loans would increase to £1.5 billion. Fees of £8,000 would push the cost to £2 billion.

Professor Eastwood’s comments suggest that the Government would be unable to afford any extra subsidies while the conditions of the financial crisis remain. “Wider constraints make it unlikely that the cap would be raised in the near future,” he said. His comments provide the strongest suggestion yet that the 2009 review of tuition fees is unlikely to report until after the next general election, possibly in 2010. That would give the Government another three years to consult on and introduce legislation to increase fees by 2013.

The effect will be to remove the highly contentious topic of higher university fees from any election debates, depriving the electorate of an opportunity to give either party a mandate for action on the issue.

Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University, said that it would be unrealistic for universities to expect an increase in fee or other income in the current economic climate. “We must expect our income to flatten. In the past 12 years, income has risen by 10 per cent a year annually. Now we will have a situation where it will flatten, but we will still have the same cost base,” he said.

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