Last Friday (16th) marked the deadline for two important government consultations on student funding: one on part-time undergraduate maintenance loans, and the other on postgraduate doctoral loans.
GuildHE was broadly supportive of the introduction of a part-time undergraduate loan, believing that that there will be many positive consequences for students, universities and society as a whole. They will also enable the government to reach their target of everyone accessing higher education. While we understood the need to cap the loans at 59, we asked the government to consider supporting institutions develop and expand online provision to facilitate life-long learning. Furthermore, we asked the government not to means test the loans in order to make them as accessible as possible to the mature learner (who is likely to be more debt adverse).
You can read the full consultation response here.
We also welcome the proposal to introduce a postgraduate doctoral research loan and believe it would increase the domestic uptake of research degrees. It will help to improve the general quality and competitiveness of postgraduate research nationally, as well as the ability of the UK to compete internationally in the areas of research and development, innovation capacity and general economic resilience and sustainability. In our response to the consultation we stress that there should be equal opportunity across the sector. If an institution meets sector expectations for quality of research environment, then they should be able to take students with loans.
You can read the full consultation response here.