Perran Moon

Thanks, Jim. The higher education funding settlement is currently failing both universities and young people in Cornwall. Institutions such as Falmouth University, based largely in my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency, are central to our local economy and our skills base, yet they are increasingly being asked to educate students at a loss. Delivering a full-time degree costs more than £12,000 a year, so even when the maximum tuition fee rises past £10,000 next year, it will still fall well short. No sector can remain sustainable if growth depends on losses, and the funding gap is particularly acute for regional and specialist institutions. Universities, therefore, are forced to compete for short-term grants and rely on international student income to balance the books. But when that income falls, courses and jobs are at risk. We have seen that play out over the summer at the University of Exeter’s Tremough campus, also in my constituency, with voluntary redundancies and the closure of its geography course. The system is not working for students either, especially those from lower-income backgrounds. In my constituency, less than 23% of 18-year-olds went to university in 2025, compared with 51% in London. That is not because young people in Cornwall lack talent or ambition; it is because in one of the poorest regions of northern Europe, the costs of pursuing a degree with the associated debt are too great to even consider. The barriers to higher education are simply too high. Even students who remain in Cornwall but rightly want to live on campus find that the rent for a single room consumes almost their entire maintenance loan before they have spent a penny on food, travel or other essentials. The loan system does not make things any better. Those from wealthier families may avoid taking out a loan altogether, while low-income students have no such option. A low-income student on a three-year course could be left with a £67,000 debt the moment they graduate. The interest on the debt often accumulates faster than repayments, leaving poorer graduates paying a higher effective rate for their entire careers. Higher education should expand opportunity and drive growth in places such as Cornwall. Instead, we have a system that asks universities to do more with less while operating a student loan system that, for all intents and purposes, functions as a regressive graduate tax. We cannot build a fairer, more productive country on that foundation. I ask the Minister: what steps are the Government taking to make higher education funding fairer for students and more sustainable for universities?