TORY proposals to base university tuition fees on future career prospects will penalise working-class students and deprive courses of much-needed funding, campaigners said today.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds suggested that tuition fees should partly be based on how a degree would benefit a student’s future career.

But National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts activist Ana Oppenheim said the proposal was a “terrible idea that will both deprive courses of the funds they need and push working-class students to settle for less.”

University and College Union (UCU) general secretary Sally Hunt said that adjusting course fees by subject was a “distraction from the fundamental problem that students are taking on hefty debts to study while business gets off the hook on paying for the graduate skills it needs.

“If the government really wants to ensure that higher education works for students and taxpayers, it needs to be bolder and look at genuine alternatives to the current tuition fee system which focus on education as a public good.”

Mr Hinds suggested on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that expensive and high-value science and engineering courses could be state-subsidised to keep costs under control for students, ahead of the launch today of a long-awaited review of higher education funding.

Prime Minister Theresa May will acknowledge that Britain has “one of the most expensive” higher education systems in the world.

Ms Oppenheim blasted Mr Hinds’s proposal, saying: “Education should not be reduced to a financial transaction and students should not be forced into making decisions about their future based on how much they will have to pay.

“The value of a degree can’t be calculated in pounds — education at all levels should be free, funded by taxing the wealthiest in society.

“Cuts in interest rates and other measures to reduce student debt are welcome but not enough.

“We need to abolish all fees, introduce living grants for all, and abolish student debt — and make the rich pay for it.”

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said another review would not “solve the problem of the hike in interest rates which this government has done and the tripling of tuition fees.”

She said: “We have had three announcements of reviews in the last 12 months, and eight years of the Conservatives that have damaged higher education and totally decimated our further education infrastructure.”

But Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, welcomed the review, saying: “Disadvantaged students now leave university with the highest levels of debt which is grossly unfair.”

Mr Hinds also defended the decision to replace maintenance grants with loans, claiming they meant “students get access to more money to help with the cost of living”.

But Ms Rayner pointed out that “most students have said that the removal of maintenance grants is one of the biggest barriers to them at the moment and the government has said nothing on that.”

Mr Lampl said it was “essential” that maintenance grants were restored and that “fees should be cut for most students and means-tested so those from disadvantaged backgrounds pay little or no fees.”

Ms Rayner also criticised the government for the way interest rates on student loans are calculated, following a Commons Treasury committee report which found that high interest rates applied to tuition fee loans were “questionable.”

She said the student loans system was “unsustainable and failing both students and taxpayers,” adding that it “hides the true cost, with taxpayers on the hook as billions of pounds of debt every year is written off.

“The ‘fiscal illusion’ of selling the student loan book achieves nothing but to disguise their shambolic record on public finances.”