Notices

Calendar

9 November, Sunday. Michaelmas Term divides.

24 November, Monday. Ballot of the Regent House, voting opens at 10 a.m.

29 November, Saturday. Congregation of the Regent House at 10 a.m. End of third quarter of Michaelmas Term.

Discussions (Tuesdays at 2 p.m.)	Congregations (at 10 a.m. unless otherwise stated)
9 December	29 November

Sir Robert Rede’s Lecture

The Vice-Chancellor gives notice that the next Rede Lecture will be given by Professor Lorraine Daston, Director Emerita, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago.

The lecture, entitled ‘Reason versus rationality: A history’, will take place on Tuesday, 17 March 2026 at 5.30 p.m. in Queens’ College. All are welcome but entry will be by ticket only. Tickets will be free of charge and further details including application for tickets will be published in due course.

University Composition Fees

23 October 2025

The Council is publishing information about two matters: the approval process for government-regulated fees for 2026–27; and a proposal to cease publishing an annual assessment of the cost of an undergraduate education. The General Board has been consulted in the drafting of this Notice.

Setting fees for 2026–27

Each year, the government announces the maximum fees universities can charge under the terms of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The Council then proposes a Grace for the approval of the fees to be charged to Home undergraduate students in the next academic year.1 In January each year, the Colleges send offer letters to undergraduate applicants, confirming the fees payable in their first year of study. The letters are based on a template provided by Student Admissions and Access in early December.

In recent years, the Department for Education has confirmed the maximum fees just after the autumn budget statement, with the fee cap for the 2025–26 academic year announced on 5 November 2024 after the delivery of the autumn budget statement on 30 October 2024. The approval of the Grace for the 2025–26 fees on 10 January 2025 meant that there was an uncomfortably short period in which to send out the offer letters.

This year, the autumn budget statement is scheduled to take place on 26 November, pushing the probable date for announcing the fee cap into early December. If the timeline is as anticipated, there will be a much shorter period than usual between the announcement of the fee cap and the deadline for sending offer letters.

To assist with planning, the Council has agreed that if the fee cap is announced in December or later without any other changes to the arrangements for government-regulated fees, the Grace proposing fees for 2026–27 will require a decision urgently and therefore will be submitted for approval at a Congregation.2 In that scenario, notice of the additional Congregation and the Grace will be published in the Reporter at least two days before that Congregation takes place.

The cost of an undergraduate education

In 2011, as part of new arrangements for determining undergraduate tuition fees following the introduction of the fee cap, the Council agreed to carry out an exercise each year to provide an analysis of the costs of an undergraduate education.1 As the Council explained at the time, the analysis was intended to ‘provide the information needed to inform the setting of fees’ by the Regent House. Every year since then, the exercise has indicated that the University and College costs of providing tuition far exceed the government’s maximum fee. However, there has been no differentiation in the level of fees set by higher education institutions, as had been the government’s expectation in 2011. Instead, the University and its peers have adopted the maximum fee as the level of their own tuition fees. The annual exercise therefore does not serve the purpose for which it was devised. It also does not provide useful data for the University and the Colleges, and the resource used to support it could be more usefully applied elsewhere. The Council is therefore proposing that the provision in Ordinance requiring the exercise to take place annually be removed (Grace 1, p. 103). The Council will continue to provide reasons for the proposed level of the fees when submitting a Grace for their approval.

Publication of Faculty membership lists

Further to the Notices on the new process for the publication of Faculty membership lists (Reporter: 6795, 2024–25, p. 779; 6797, 2025–26, p. 21), the final list for each Faculty will be promulgated by the Secretary of the Faculty Board by tomorrow, 6 November 2025.

Links to the lists on Faculty webpages will be available on the Reporter website at https://www.reporter.admin.cam.ac.uk/faculty-membership-lists.