Chris Usher, chief executive of the Jersey International Business School, is worried that increasing tuition fees and a lack of support for less well-off students means that more and more poorer Islanders now see university education as ‘only for the rich’.
A recent poll in the UK, undertaken by research consultants ComRes for the education charity Teach First, found that only 28 per cent of students from lower-income families ‘always knew’ that they would consider a university degree.
Mr Usher said that with education costs even higher for Jersey students, it was likely that an even lower proportion of poorer Islanders were now making plans to go to university.
