The education minister Margaret Hodge has called on students and their families to see a university education as an investment.

Her comments come as the government prepares for the publication next month of a white paper on the future of student funding.

Students are worried the government is set to allow universities to raise tuition fees, currently limited to �1,100.

Demonstrations have been held by students across England, who say any increase would deter poorer pupils from applying to university.

Graduate benefits

Margaret Hodge, in an interview on BBC Radio Four's Today programme, refused to rule out an increase in tuition fees.

She said money spent on a child's university education should be seen not as cost but as an investment.

"The extra money you get from being a graduate is still very high - about �400,000 over a lifetime," she said.

"The cost to the individual should be seen as an investment in their future."

Universities say they desperately need extra funds to keep afloat and to pay for the expansion in student numbers the government wants to see.

Earlier this month, Imperial College London passed a plan for means-tested fees of up to �10,500 a year.

Most universities want it now

Colin Campbell, vice-chancellor, Nottingham University

In practice, the university will not be able to impose the higher fees unless the government changes the law to lift the cap on fees.

But other universities are thinking along the same lines.

Colin Campbell, the vice-chancellor of Nottingham University, said: "Deregulation of fees is desirable and the only way forward.

"I think it's most universities, of all different hues that want it now."

Cambridge University's vice-chancellor, Sir Alec Broers, said the institution's position as one of world's leading universities was in peril because of a lack of funding.

But he said the university had not taken a decision to introduce top up fees and would "prefer not to go down that route".

Cambridge's students' union is telling the university's graduates not to donate money to the institution in protest at what it called the privatisation of the sector.