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Sir Roy Anderson, the rector of Imperial College London, has called for the top five universities in the UK to become private institutions following the model of the Ivy League in the United States.

It would mean that Imperial College London - along with other Russell Group universities Oxford, Cambridge, University College London and the London School of Economics (LSE) - would form a privatised elite.

Sir Roy is concerned that the UK’s reputation for higher education is at risk because of reduced funding and lack of vision from the government. He thinks that the elite universities should have the authority to charge however much they want for tuition fees. His comments come at a time when ministers are looking to have a review of tuition fees to see if universities should be allowed to charge more than the current £3,000 each year.

Anderson said that, “If you take the top five universities, they have enormous potential to earn income for Britain. How best to do that? My own view would be to privatise them. You don't want to be subject to the mores of government funding or changing educational structures.”

He said that higher education was ‘staggeringly’ important to the UK as it was a multi-billion-pound industry, adding that HE was ‘one of the few things we are world competitive in. The trouble is all British universities are too dependent on Government.'