STUDENTS have welcomed a move by a North-East university to lower its tuition fees – allowing it to bid for extra places and provide undergraduates a potential £1,000-a-year discount.

The decision by Teesside University means hundreds of students who have already applied to start next year could find their fees reduced.

The university has also announced 350 new scholarships giving discounts – known as fee waivers – of £1,500 a year.

Teesside is one of 24 universities in England, plus one further education college, to have had plans to lower fees approved by the Office for Fair Access (Offa).

A sliding scale of fees introduced by the university means students studying courses such as history, law and English will pay £7,450 a year.

Computing, sport and media students will be charged £7,950, while those on courses with a large amount of laboratory work, such as engineering, design and computer graphics, will pay £8,450.

Teesside’s reduced average fee, including fee waivers, is now estimated at £7,290.

The changes were last night welcomed by Lori Wheatman, president of Teesside University Students’ Union.

She said: “We know from having been closely involved in the discussions that Teesside University is committed to doing everything it can to keep higher education affordable and accessible so I’m not surprised, but of course very pleased to see that some fees will be set at a lower rate than originally announced.

“Throughout the past year, the Students’ Union has urged prospective students not to be put off coming to university and I would repeat that message again.”

The university had an intake of about 2,500 full-time students in 2011-12.

Bosses hope that by being allowed to bid for the extra places, it can increase that figure by several hundred.

Welcoming the approval of its revised access agreements, vice-chancellor Professor Graham Henderson said: “Our revised agreement strengthens still further our ability to ensure that higher education at Teesside University remains accessible and affordable.

“The future success of our economy is dependent on people having much higher levels of skills than in the past and I am delighted to be able to say, that as a result of the revisions that we have made, we are hopeful that we will be able to provide even more higher education opportunities than we do at the present time.”

Announcing its original £8,500 tuition fee for full-time courses in April, Prof Henderson said students would not want the university to be seen as “second rate” by charging less.

Elsewhere in the region, York St John University has also had its plans for lower fees approved, with its estimated average fee, including fee waivers, now £7,440.

A spokesman said: “This agreement demonstrates our strong commitment to widening participation, supported by an excellent package of outreach and retention activities, as well as fee waivers.”

Other universities in the region have not lowered their fees, with Durham, Newcastle and York universities among many in the country charging the maximum £9,000.

Plans to allow universities to triple fees were approved by MPs last December.

Universities planning to charge more than £6,000 had to submit access agreements to Offa, setting out how they planned to support students and ensure those from poorer homes were not priced out.

But in a White Paper published this summer, ministers announced that universities which charged average fees of £7,500 or lower would be able to bid for a share of 20,000 socalled margin places.

The decision was widely seen as an attempt by ministers to keep fees low after it began to emerge that many universities would charge at, or close to, the maximum.

To qualify for the places, universities had to have average fees of £7,500 or less after fee waivers had been taken into account.

The National Union of Students has raised concerns that universities have moved money out of bursaries to pay for fee waivers. However, Teesside University said it had not done this and was still offering 200 national scholarships, which included a fee waiver of £3,000, plus a cash bursary of £1,000.

Collectively, the 25 institutions will be investing an extra £37.4m in fee waivers, but £13.8m less in bursaries and scholarships, and £2.1m less in measures to recruit and retain students, Offa said.