Autumn Statement promises student loans for postgraduates

3 Dec 14
Loans of up to £10,000 will be offered to students aged under 30 taking masters' degrees, Chancellor George Osborne has said.

By Mark Smulian | 3 December 2014

Loans of up to £10,000 will be offered to students aged under 30 taking masters' degrees, Chancellor George Osborne has said.

The Autumn Statement said some 40,000 students were expected to take out the loans when they becomeavailable from 2016/17 and would be repaid concurrently with loans the students concerned had taken out for their undergraduate studies.

Loans would be designed so that holders would on average repay them in full, ‘but they will beat commercial rates’, it said.

Until the loans become available, the Higher Education Funding Council for England will allocate £50m to universities to offer bursaries of £10,000 each on a match funded basis.  

Universities UK chief executive Nicola Dandridge said: ‘We support the government’s recognition of the substantial benefits arising from postgraduate taught education, and the need for support to ensure that some students are not priced out of further study.’

Professor Les Ebdon, director of fair access to higher education, also welcomed the loans, which he said could ‘help unlock access for postgraduate study for disadvantaged students’.

He said he hoped they would eventually be extended to those aged over 30.

But the University and College Union trade union said more radical ideas were needed to relieve the mounting debt burden on students of all ages, including the restoration of grants for postgraduate study or a partial write-off of undergraduate debt for those completing postgraduate courses.

General secretary Sally Hunt, said: ‘It’s positive that the government has moved to address the current crisis in postgraduate funding, but encouraging people to accrue more debt is not the best way to attract the best and brightest into further study.’

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