UNIVERSITIES will be forced to reveal all its spending as low as £500, to persuade would-be students that their tuition fees are not being squandered.

A long-awaited shake-up of higher education proposes that institutions be required to provide the sort of material that local councils offer to demonstrate that council tax is well-spent.

Those rules require all spending decisions above £500 to be made public. A government source said the figure for universities had not yet been set, but added: "We are talking about the same concept as affects councils."

The data would be revealed as part of a course-by-course "key information set" to give students paying annual fees of up to £9,000 a clearer choice of degree.

This would include:

The proportion of students in a full-time “graduate” job, six months after completing their course – and their average salary;

Time spent with academic staff in lectures and tutorials, plus assessment methods used;

Accommodation costs, alongside bursaries and scholarships available;

Online student surveys of the quality of lectures and courses, plus library and IT resources.

But Aaron Porter, the president of the National Union of Students (NUS), immediately warned the proposals would fail to calm the anger of students who face a near-tripling of fees from next year.