Universities are set to offer two-year degrees costing £11k a year starting this September

Students will be able to choose to study an accelerated two year degree, paying £11,000 per year in tuition fees, from September 2019.

Legislation was approved by MPs last night, which could save people 20 per cent on tuition fees, around £5,500 in total, compared with studying a full, three year degree. These new, shorter degrees will cost more per year, £11,000 compared to £9,250, but will work out cheaper overall than a traditional course.

This could prove advantageous for students who don’t have the time or desire to be at uni for three years. They will also save people a year’s worth of maintenance costs.

Concerns have been raised that students would lose some of the "university experience" as first year would no longer be used to settle in, with academic achievement regularly not being counted towards your final degree mark.

The same amount of content would be crammed into two years and is likely to mean that breaks are cut short, with some degrees continuing into August rather than finishing in early June like most courses currently do.

The new degree structure is set to maximise choices and flexibility and is thought to lead to a large uptake from mature students, along with other underrepresented groups.

This movement will allow people to enter work a year earlier and could be extremely valuable for careers following degrees such as Law and Business Management, where grad schemes could be accessed by people as young as 20.

Chris Skidmore, the government's Minister for Universities, said the passing of this legislation is: "One of the great modern-day milestones for students and breaks the mould of a one-size-fits all system for people wanting to study in higher education.

"For thousands of future students wanting a faster pace of learning and a faster route into the workplace at a lower overall cost, to-year degrees will transform their choices."

Two year degrees are already offered at some universities, such as Buckingham, Angela Ruskin and Staffordshire.

Serena, a masters student at UCL, told The Tab: "If the government actually cared about making degrees cheaper, more accessible, better value they'd cap student numbers again and reduce fees."

Featured image credit: Philip Halling