The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, has sent a letter to Cambridge alumni and alumnae explaining the University’s decision to charge £9,000 tuition fees and outlining new plans for bursaries.

The move comes after Regent House passed the proposals to charge the increased undergraduate fees from 2012. In the meeting last Friday, over three quarters of the votes were in favour of the plans.

The Vice-Chancellor first explained the increased financial pressures on the University, which led to the decision to charge higher tuition fees. During 2008-9, the Government cut teaching funding to the University by more than £6 million.

The Government is now proposing that the current teaching grant will be cut by a further 80%. From 2012, public funding will instead concentrate on supporting the student loan scheme when higher student fees are introduced.

The Vice-Chancellor argued that the £9,000 fees will barely cover the loss of Government funding.

“The average annual per undergraduate cost in 2010 -11 of providing intensive supervision-based teaching across the Colleges and the Departments is more than £17,000,” he explained. “This means that the University and the Colleges already have to use other sources of income from, for example, endowments and donations to make the books balance.

“A fee lower than £9,000, in these circumstances, would significantly damage our ability to sustain the highest quality of undergraduate education.”

Professor Sir Borysiewicz admitted that there have been “misgivings” about the impact of higher fees on future undergraduates and accepted the need for “generous financial support mechanisms”.

The Cambridge Bursary, a non-repayable grant, will be available on a tapering basis to all students from households with an annual income of less than £42,600, with a maximum of £3,500 per annum for students from a household income below £25,000.

The student can either receive this £3,500 support package as a bursary or as a fee waiver. This choice in how the student uses their bursary is unprecedented.

For students from very poor backgrounds or with special circumstances, such as those on free school meals and those who are severely disabled, an additional fee waiver of £6,000 per annum will be provided.

“There are concerns that fees at this level might deter some of the very best students from applying to Cambridge,” added the Vice-Chancellor. “That is the reason why our proposal for higher fees is accompanied by a commitment from the University and Colleges to a financial support system that will ensure that no UK student should be deterred from applying to Cambridge because of financial considerations”.

However, this letter comes in the wake of questions around the Vice-Chancellor and the University's commitment to such financial support.

The initial proposals would have reduced bursaries from £3,400 to £1,625, with fee-waivers of only £3,000 introduced in an attempt to compensate for the loss in bursary funds.

The Vice-Chancellor then refused to allow Regent House to debate and vote on these proposals, despite receiving 140 signatures from academics.

Only after a protest march on Wednesday 9th March and a ‘protest camp’ on the Senate House lawn the following day, organised by Cambridge Defend Education, did the Vice-Chancellor agree to amend the proposals.

The new proposals not only provide a higher fee-waiver for more disadvantaged students but also maintain larger bursaries, which some students feel are preferable to fee-waivers in the first place.

While fee-waivers benefit students by decreasing the size of the tuition fee loan required to be taken out, bursaries actually support the student while they are at university.

Furthermore, the paying back of tuition fee loans only affects the student after they leave university and is dependent on the size of their salary afterwards.

Bursaries are therefore arguably of greater use to students from deprived backgrounds as they provide support when the student needs it most – while they are attending university.

Despite apparent satisfaction with the decision among the student population and from CUSU, there is still some opposition to the new proposals.

After the vote, Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Dean of Churchill College, said: “This is not just a blow for future generations of students, but also to self-governance which has been profoundly undermined by the way the ballot was conducted.”

However, the Vice-Chancellor remained optimistic in his letter, concluding that “Cambridge cannot stand aloof from the world around it. In responding to the new environment, we remain true to our core values: that we should continue to provide an outstanding undergraduate education within a collegiate environment; and that education should be available to those who can meet our exacting standards, whatever their family and financial background.”