Students attending University College Falmouth will face tuition fees of £9,000K from September 2012.

The university made the announcement this afternoon.

It says the fees will be set at the maximum rate to allw it to offer a world-class student experience in art, design, media, performance and writing, while allowing it to invest in new areas including computer gaming, software design and social media.

The university has also promised to more than double what it spends on outreach work and financial assistance for students from disadvantaged backgrounds as a condition of being able to charge £9,000.

Due to changes in the way the UK Government funds Higher Education (HE), UCF is expecting to lose its entire teaching grant next year, amounting to more than half its per student income, or more than £13 million per annum.

UCF’s Rector & Chief Executive, Professor Anne Carlisle, said: “University College Falmouth enjoys a growing international reputation for the quality of its teaching and we will not compromise on that quality.

"Students and employers rightly expect the very highest standards, and those expectations will be raised by the Government’s new fees regime.

“More than £220 million of European and Government funding has been invested in improving Higher Education in Cornwall in the last 10 years.

"We want to protect the legacy of that investment by continuing to cultivate highly employable graduates and investing in new courses and facilities to make UCF one of the top five specialist multi-arts universities in the world.”