Tuition Fee Cuts In England

England : The Office for Fair Access (Offa), the government's higher educationaccess watchdog, said 24 universities and one further education college had reduced the fees they intended to charge.

The cuts bring the average cost of courses starting next year to £8,354, falling to £8,071 when fee waivers – a scheme under which universities forgo a year or more of fees to help or encourage clever or less well-off students – are included.

London South Bank, Aston, Nottingham Trent, St Mary's, Teesside, Wolverhampton, Cumbria and Southampton Solent universities are among those who have cut their fees to £7,500 or less when fee waivers and bursaries are taken into account. The other universities to reduce their fees include Chester, Chichester, Hertfordshire, Huddersfield, Leeds Trinity and the University of West London.

In July, the watchdog said the average annual fee across all universities and colleges would be £8,393. At the time 47 universities said they intended to charge the maximum – £9,000 – as their standard fee.

The last-minute changes are in response to the coalition's announcement that universities and colleges would receive incentives if they dropped their fees. Ministers published a white paper that said institutions could bid for a share of 20,000 full-time undergraduate places that have been set aside for next year only if they dropped their fees to £7,500 or less.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, said the figure of 20,000 would increase in the future. The late timing of the white paper and universities' decision to change their fees in response to it is likely to cause confusion for hundreds of thousands of students, many of whom have already sent off their applications for university courses, unaware that the institutions they have applied to will have changed their fees and the financial support available to them.

Offa said universities and colleges that changed their packages would have to contact all students who had already applied to let them know of the changes by Wednesday. This would give applicants the opportunity to decide whether to apply elsewhere before the deadline of 15 January, the watchdog said.

The National Union of Students (NUS) expressed anger that universities and colleges had cut their fees by increasing the number of fee waivers they offered, rather than raising the amount of bursaries available to students. Liam Burns, president of the NUS, said fee waivers were a "con trick" because they reduced a loan that some students may not need to repay in full if they never earned enough to pay off their student loan. Bursaries, on the other hand, assisted students while they studied.

"Fee waivers help the Treasury, who have to spend less on loans, but are of no benefit to students whatsoever," Burns said. " "The perverse incentives of the government's changes mean that poorer pupils are encouraged towards courses and universities that have less funding – a complete reverse of the 'pupil premium' that Nick Clegg has championed for younger learners."

Martin Lewis, who is leading an independent taskforce to improve the nation's understanding of the new university fees system, agreed with Burns and said low to mid-earning graduates would receive no gain from fee waivers. "They lose out on the real cash they could've got in the form of bursaries," he said. "In financial terms, the real winners from switching bursaries to fee waivers are those who can afford to pay upfront, higher-earning graduates and of course the government debt book."

Sir Martin Harris, Offa's director, said it was not yet known whether bursaries or fee waivers made more of a difference to student drop-out rates. He said the watchdog would be conducting research into this area.

Every institution seeking to charge above £6,000 a year has had to set out how it intends to ensure disadvantaged students are not put off applying through financial packages of bursaries, scholarships and fee waivers. Universities and colleges have had to have these plans approved by the watchdog.

Offa said no institution had been allowed to change its targets for widening access. The watchdog also said a further 10 further education colleges had also changed their fees and now intend to charge more than £6,000.