Looking at the Guardian university league table, it might seem obvious why many universities at the top are planning to charge the maximum £9000 from 2012. But head to the other end and, in many cases, the fees aren't much (or at all) lower.

London Met, ranked at the bottom, is planning to charge £9,000 for some courses – although some will be less. The University of East London, one place above, is also planning to charge £9,000, as are Middlesex and Liverpool John Moores. Others close to the bottom of the table are planning to charge slightly less than the maximum – London South Bank is charging £8,450 (not for all courses) and Bolton is charging £8,400.

All this appears to blow David Willetts' theory of on fee charging out of the water. Broadly speaking, it is that, based on their performance, the serried ranks of academia would organise themselves into something approaching a football league of fees, with the grey stone medieval quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge in the premiership; the 19th century redbrick of the likes of Leeds and Sheffields in the championship; and the 1960s concrete carbuncles of the former polys in division one.

But that hasn't happened. Students will apparently find the real bargains mid-table, rather than at the bottom end: Chichester will charge £8,500, as will Sunderland - some courses at £7,800. Huddersfield, just below Sunderland, asks £7,950, while Derby between £7,995 and £6,995.

London Met says there are several factors that determine what it charges. Vice chancellor Malcolm Gillies says: "It's down to a matrix that consists of four areas: cost, demand, employability and affordability."

But for London Met at least, presenting itself as the Tesco Value of universities isn't an option – when asked if he thinks universities charging less might draw students away from London Met, Gillies says: "There's an equal chance universities charging more will too." He also makes it clear that London Met is only charging £9,000 for certain courses, mostly medicine-related.

The university's website mentions that it is paying a £36.5m penalty for student data irregularities, which no doubt also played a part in deciding what it would charge.

In an interview, Graham Henderson, vice chancellor of Teesside University also mentions cost. "A Teesside University degree is very valuable and we wanted to make sure our price was affordable and accessible to students.

"Our students have been checking we are not charging the bottom of the spectrum because they don't want it to be seen as second rate." In other words, the less you charge, the lower the quality of your university appears to be.

UCP Marjon is charging £7,800. Principal Margaret Noble writes on its website: "To charge less would negatively affect quality, to charge more would be adding unnecessary financial barriers to students."

So, if quality is the issue for both the top and bottom-rated universities, with many charging the maximum, why charge less?

Sunderland points out that it is only charging its highest rate of £8,500 for some pharmacy courses, charging less is a matter of "widening participation".

The university says that because parts of the north east of England are economically deprived, Sunderland didn't feel that, given many of its potential local students' circumstances, it was right to charge more.

Deputy vice chancellor of Huddersfield Peter Slee says: "We do not support the change to funding HE teaching. We believe it may discriminate against many of the least advantaged in our society. We are among the top 10 English HEI's for widening participation. More than 40% of our students are from groups who are generally under-represented in HE."

"The government is removing 90% of our teaching funding – this is almost £50m over three years from 2012/3. We therefore have no choice but to increase fees to at least partially compensate for the loss of support."

He adds that Huddersfield is charging the minimum it can afford: "In deciding our fee we took as a core principle, in discussion with our own student body that we would not charge more than it costs us on average to deliver our programmes and the core support our students need.

"We are a well managed university with no historic debt, and with a sufficient operating surplus to invest in outstanding facilities. So students will only pay for what they receive."

At University of Chichester, vice-chancellor Clive Behagg disputes the idea that higher price means better courses: "I reject the mechanistic equating of price and quality. We offer courses and an experience that makes us valued by students.

"We have acted in a socially responsible manner in developing our fees package, which hits the government's three targets of 'headline fee under £9000' (we are £8,500), 'average fee under £7,500' (our average fee is £7,200) and 'the poorest pay no more than £6,000' (with our student support package the poorest pay £6000).

"If the whole sector had done this, the government would have been able to achieve its objectives."

The mid-table universities seem to be taking a different approach from those at the bottom. Some at the bottom end of the table appear to be charging the same as or close to the fees of the Russell Group universities as a means of proving their quality. However, for others, charging close to the maximum is necessary to balance their budgets.

But for Huddersfield and Sunderland, to charge more than is necessary would disenfranchise their local community – in the case of Huddersfield, it regrets having to raise its fees at all. Similarly, for Chichester, not charging the maximum is "socially responsible".

Peter Dolton, an economist at Royal Holloway, has predicted there will be a slump in demand for the bottom 20 or so universities in the coming years. Slee agrees: "Students applying to the lower league universities need to ask themselves what they're getting when those institutions are charging the same as Oxford and Cambridge."

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