THE prospect of higher tuition fees in England has led to a surge in the number of pupils thinking about studying in America and fears of an undergraduate “brain drain”.

Figures showing a fivefold increase in the number of inquiries about courses in the US will confirm fears voiced privately by Gordon Brown — and dismissed by Tony Blair — that higher fees could destabilise British universities.

The Fulbright Commission, which advises Britons on access to American education, said that it received more than 340,000 hits on its information website last month, compared with a normal monthly tally of 66,000.

The rise coincided with publication of the higher education White Paper, which paves the way for fees of up to £3,000 a year from 2006.

The commission suggests that those pupils who will form the first cohort of students to pay the fees — now starting their GCSE courses — are already researching the possibility of studying abroad.

Recruitment officers for American universities said that the demand was also being stimulated by independent school teachers who fear that some British universities are discriminating against their pupils to meet targets for working-class recruits.

Some schools have appointed careers advisers who specialise in applications to the Ivy League.

More than 8,400 British students are now studying in America, about half of them undergraduates.

Numbers were boosted by the case of Laura Spence, the Tyneside comprehensive pupil who went to Harvard in 2000 after having been rejected by Oxford.

Paul Kelly, her former head teacher, said yesterday that she was flourishing.

“She is doing very well academically, even by Harvard standards. She is the first woman to row for the university, and her crew is the best in the country.”

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