MORE universities have announced they will be charging the maximum £9,000 a year in tuition fees – but Huddersfield University is still to make a final decision.

Leeds University, one of the country’s elite institutions, confirmed yesterday it would set fees at the maximum.

So too, did the University of Bath, which became the latest institution to announce that it plans to charge students £9,000 a year.

A statement on Huddersfield University’s website said: “We are working hard to set our fees at a level that means we can continue to offer our students the excellent education you expect, but not at a rate that will mean we make huge profits at your expense.

“We will have done all the sums by April, 2011, and will publish details of our fees as soon as we can.”

More than 20 English universities have already declared their intended fee levels for next year – with the majority planning to charge the maximum.

Almost all of these are the most selective institutions including Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London, Manchester and Warwick.

MPs voted to raise tuition fees to £6,000 from 2012 at the end of last year, with institutions only allowed to charge up to £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”.

But so far, most universities are clustering around the £9,000 mark, with elite institutions leading the way.

This is set to cause problems for the Government, which has based its future funding of universities on the assumption that most institutions will charge around £7,500.

Ministers have warned universities that if the majority set fees at or close to the maximum £9,000 then more funding for teaching may be lost.

The decision to raise fees has caused widespread anger among would-be students and there was a protest yesterday afternoon in Leeds over the decision to triple fees from £3,000 to £9,000 a year.