Written by Andrei Salimi
Starmer’s long-awaited Brexit reset deal is now being held up by one key point of contention: tuition fees at British universities. Specifically, EU officials want Britain to reduce tuition fees for EU students to home fee levels, or at least an intermediate EU price well below current international tuition fees. For reference, 2026/2027 academic year undergraduate programmes at LSE have tuition fees capped at £9,790 for Home students, while they can reach up to £39,900 per year for international students. EU fee status could change as soon as the next academic year if Brussels’ demands are met.
To reach a wider Brexit reset deal, a cornerstone of Labour’s election pledges, Starmer needs to reconcile the EU’s desire to greatly increase people-to-people connections via Europe’s youth with his own party’s desire to reintegrate certain sectors of the economy, without seeming like he is rejoining the single market and bringing back freedom of movement entirely. Accordingly, the three UK-EU agreements still under negotiation concern carbon emissions, food, agricultural trade, and youth mobility, which includes tuition fee talks. The former two are progressing well; However, the latter has proven to be a sticking point.
UK officials also need to consider the effects that lowering EU tuition rates would have on the university sector, which is already experiencing a financial crunch and, therefore, generally opposes such a move. The Treasury and Department for Education are still working on analysing the potential cost of lowering tuition rates for EU students, but if they were to be equalised, universities would lose an estimated £140 million a year in income. For such a deal to go through, financial incentives for the UK government would have to be great in other aspects of negotiations.
Brussels has been quick to point out that before Brexit, EU students made up 27% of British university students, though only 5% of incoming 2026/2027 students come from the EU. A similar phenomenon, though much less extreme, can be observed at LSE. During the 2020/2021 academic year, the last year EU students paid home tuition fees, EU students made up 17% of students. In the 2024/2025 academic year, they made up 13.5% of students, with the largest decrease coming from Central and Eastern European countries in particular. In the event of a tuition fee reduction, a marked increase in EU students, especially from the East, could be expected, bringing their percentage of the student body closer to pre-Brexit levels.
The outcome of current talks, including the final decision regarding tuition fees, is set to be announced at a UK-EU summit in Brussels in late June or early July.
