STUDENT leaders fear young people will be forced to pick degree courses because of price rather than quality if universities are given powers to hike up tuition fees - despite a package of concessions designed to ease the financial pressure.

Yesterday Education Secretary Charles Clarke published the Higher Education Bill, which is set to give universities the power to increase tuition fees to a maximum of £3,000-a-year from 2006.

And alongside the plans to increase fees, it emerged the controversial Bill also included measures designed to relieve the financial burden of study for students from poorer backgrounds.

The bill includes an increase in the level of student grant and bursaries to the poorest students.

Fees and loans will only be repayable once graduates are earning more than £15,000 a year and Mr Clarke pledged to write off outstanding loans for low paid graduates after 25 years.

Prof Sir Martin Harris, vice chancellor at Manchester University, has been among leading higher education bosses to say they would be keen to levy the higher charge as long as bursaries were adequately high.

But dozens of Labour MPs along with student leaders are opposed to the introduction of variable tuition fees.

Seb Dance, communications officer for Manchester University Students' Union, said: "We welcome these apparently more generous measures to combat the impact on people on lower incomes. But I think people without money will be forced to choose which course to take based on financial considerations, because of how much debt they will have rather than what courses are best for them."

NUS president Mandy Telford believes the bill will be a disaster for the future of higher education. She said: "Students from poorer backgrounds will be put off going to more expensive courses."

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