English students tend to gravitate towards the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews The Scottish government is expected to confirm that university students face fees of thousands of pounds a year.
But the charge will only affect students from the rest of the UK (RUK).
In an announcement at Holyrood later, Education Secretary Mike Russell is expected to reiterate that Scots will continue to pay no fees at all either before or after graduation.
Charges were among proposals for university funding in an official discussion paper released last year.
But ministers did not advocate this option. Taking inspiration from Burns' poetry, First Minister Alex Salmond said "the rocks will melt with the sun" before he would bring in tuition fees for Scots.
RUK students coming here could face charges of about £6,000 a year under the proposal floated by ministers a few months ago.
Yet the preferred option is to legislate for a capped variable fee.
That option is attractive because English students tend to gravitate towards the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews and to a lesser extent to Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Newer less well known universities such as Queen Margaret in Edinburgh and University of the West of Scotland in Paisley would be unlikely to attract enough RUK students to make a significant difference to their balance sheet.
A key objective of the expected charge is to help buoy the finances of Scottish universities.
There is concern about the future funding gap for Scottish universities as some English universities almost triple their fees to up to £9,000 a year.
A second objective is to stop a potential flood of "fee refugees" to Scotland seeking to escape the university fees in other parts of the UK.
RUK students currently pay almost £1,800 a year in Scotland (more if they are studying medicine).
There is a question mark over how much money the increased charges will raise. South of the border there has been much publicity and resentment in some quarters over the outline plan to charge Scots nothing but charge others thousands of pounds.
This is believed to be one reason why the number of English applicants to Scottish universities slumped by 15% this academic year.
It is uncertain whether as yet the education secretary has established a way of bringing in charges for students resident in the EU outside the UK.
Their numbers have greatly escalated in recent years as word spread that they pay no fees in Scotland.
In his announcement the education secretary may also give more information about the review of university governance which he announced earlier this month.
This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-scotland-13951685
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