Category: cost of living

  • How cost of living is influencing UK student mobility

    How cost of living is influencing UK student mobility

    Drive along any motorway in September and you will see car after car full of duvets, pots and pans, and clothes as students head off to pastures new. I remember my own experience, crossing the Severn Bridge with the bedding on the front seat of my Fiesta muffling Oasis’ Definitely Maybe.

    This stereotypical view of a literal journey into higher education isn’t the case for everyone, however. In fact, far more students live at home during their studies than you may think.

    The UCAS application asks students about whether they intend to live at home. In 2024, 30 per cent of UK 18-year-olds said they planned to live at home during their studies – up from 25 per cent in 2019 and just 21 per cent in 2015.

    However, when we look beyond the headline numbers, over half of the most disadvantaged students (IMD Q1) live at home during their studies, compared to fewer than one in five of the least disadvantaged (IMD Q5). Regional distribution will have an impact here, particularly London.

    Scottish students are more likely to live at home during their studies. On a recent visit to Edinburgh, all the students I met spoke with excitement about their plans to study at their chosen university within the city. By contrast, Welsh domiciled students are the least likely to live at home during their studies.

    In London, 52 per cent of 18-year-olds progress to HE – with around half of those students staying in London, making it unsurprising that the capital sees the highest proportion of live at home students in England.

    Cost of living pressures

    Cost of living is undoubtedly influencing student choice. At the January equal consideration deadline, UCAS saw a 2.1 per cent increase in the number of UK 18-year-old applicants – a record high. However, regular readers of Wonkhe will know this also represents a decline in the application rate – the proportion of the 18-year-old population applying to HE, and UCAS insight increasingly points to the cost of living playing a role.

    Our latest survey insight suggests that 43 per cent of pre-applicants feel they are less likely to progress to HE due to cost-of-living pressures, up from 24 per cent in 2023 – although their commitment to going to university remains high.

    Financial support is also of growing importance to students when it comes to deciding where to study. While finding the perfect course content was the most important factor when shortlisting universities (49 per cent), the financial support available while studying (such as a scholarship or bursary) was a close second (46 per cent). Specific cost-of-living support offered by universities was third (34 per cent).

    The availability of support with the cost of living has risen in relative importance as a factor when shortlisting universities from 12th in 2022 to 3rd in 2024 – a significant shift, which suggests a change in student mindset. There have also been large changes in rank importance of “universities that are close to home” from 9th to 4th, “universities with low-cost accommodation” from 13th to 7th and “universities I can attend but still live with my parents” from 16th to 11th.

    Source: Potential applicants for 2025 entry, 1,023 UK respondents, Dec 2024–Jan 2025

    It isn’t just at the point of application where we see the cost of living impacting choice. In 2024, UCAS saw 43,000 students decline the place they were holding in favour of an alternative institution or subject – making this the largest group of students using Clearing.

    This is not a spur of the moment decision, with 52 per cent having already decided to do this prior to receiving their results and a further one in five considering it based on their results.

    When asked what drove their decision, 23 per cent told us they had a change in personal circumstances and 17 per cent wanted to live somewhere cheaper. We also know this impacts on all cohorts of students – 19 per cent of international students that don’t accept a university offer through UCAS tell us they have found a more attractive financial offer elsewhere.

    However, the primary reason that students use Decline My Place is linked to the course, with 31 per cent changing their mind about the subject they wish to study.

    Support measures

    It’s clear that cost of living and financial support is a key factor influencing student choice and so we must ensure this information is easily accessible and understood by students.

    Students tell us they’d like more practical information about student discounts, financial support packages or bursaries/scholarships. UCAS will shortly be launching a scholarships and bursary tool to promote these opportunities to students.

    Around half of offer holders in 2024 recalled receiving information about cost of living support. This presents a timely opportunity for any university staff working in marketing, recruitment or admissions to ensure information about financial support is easy to find on their website, along with information about timetabling to help students understand how they may be able to balance work and study commitments.

    There will be certain groups of students that are even more acutely impacted by cost of living challenges. Last cycle saw a record number of students in receipt of Free School Meals – 19.9 per cent – enter HE. Whilst it is only a small part of the puzzle, UCAS has removed the application fee for these students.

    Cost of living pressures are likely to persist, with students continuing to assess the value of HE in this context. The sector should continue to highlight the benefits of university study as a vehicle for social mobility, along with the graduate premium – the higher earnings they typically earn compared to non-graduate peers. But we also need to make it clearer how HE of all forms remains accessible – from funds for travel to open days, to in study commuter breakfasts, hardship funds, cost of living support, and high-quality careers guidance to support graduate employability.

    This article is published in association with UCAS. It forms part of our ongoing series on commuter students – you can read the whole series here

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  • Hawaiʻi’s Working Families Need More Support – The 74

    Hawaiʻi’s Working Families Need More Support – The 74


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    Sarah Osofsky returned to school last year to earn her master’s degree in social work, hoping to give back to her community and find a job that would pay enough to survive Hawaiʻi’s high cost of living.

    Now, less than two weeks away from graduation, the mother of two is struggling to find a position that can sustain her family.

    Most social work jobs she’s seen in recent months offer salaries of $60,000 or less — enough to disqualify her from safety net programs like food stamps, but not enough to comfortably provide for her kids. She’s considered moving back to California where she has family who could support her, but she wants to stay in Hawaiʻi so her children can be near their dad.

    “What I’m balancing right now is, do I take a low, low paying job that then I’ll qualify for services like food stamps and Medicaid,” Osofsky said, “or do I hold out and try to find those few and far between really good jobs that will make enough so I don’t qualify but I don’t need it.”

    Osofsky’s struggle is a familiar one for working families in Hawaiʻi. In 2024, nearly 30% of Hawaiʻi households were living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling to afford basic necessities like housing, child care and food, according to an annual count of the state’s ALICE families — an acronym for people who are asset limited, income constrained, and employed.

    Like Osofsky, roughly 40% of these families considered leaving the state over the past year, according to a study from Aloha United Way.

    While some reports indicate that more locals have been returning to Hawaiʻi in the last few years, the state’s high cost of living continues to drive some families away, straining the public education system and economy.

    Earlier this year, the Department of Education said its kindergarten enrollment dropped from 13,000 in 2019 to nearly 10,800 this year, citing estimates that 20% of people leaving Hawaiʻi are school-aged kids. The department is now starting the process of consolidating small schools, although it hasn’t yet identified which campuses are at risk of closure.

    A few years ago, state lawmakers grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic proposed a bold slate of reforms to improve the plight of working families: free school meals for all, universal access to preschool and paid family leave. But the state’s big plans for progress have resulted in incremental steps, and some families and advocates say change isn’t happening quickly enough.

    Lawmakers this session created a working group to study paid family leave but failed to turn the yearslong proposal into law. The state expanded eligibility for preschool tuition subsidies and funded preschool construction but failed to address the ongoing shortage of early learning educators. And Senate Bill 1300 — considered one of the biggest wins for students this year — expanded access to free school meals but stopped short of providing them for all kids.

    At the same time, uncertainty looms around the future of programs that rely on federal dollars to support working families, including school meals and early learning centers.

    Amid the upheaval, state lawmakers were hesitant to pass big spending measures this year, opting instead to set aside $200 million to help Hawaiʻi prepare for federal funding cuts. But some advocates say now is exactly the time for the state to make a bigger investment in families.

    “The state Legislature, and frankly, the counties, should be thinking, ‘Bad stuff is coming,’” said Deborah Zysman, executive director of Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network. “We don’t quite know what yet, but we should be thinking about how to take care of our own people.”

    An Urgent Need For Child Care

    During the Covid-19 pandemic, Osofsky worried about the social development of her son, who was just turning 2 when lockdown restrictions began. But when he began attending the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa Children’s Center later that year, Osofsky said, he received services for his speech delay and became comfortable making friends and recognizing letters.

    But paying for preschool was a challenge, Osofsky said. The Preschool Open Doors program provides a state subsidy to help cover tuition, but her son was ineligible when he started because the program only covered 4-year-olds at the time. The program expanded to include 3-year-olds last year.

    Hawaiʻi has pledged to offer preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds by 2032. The Ready Keiki initiative, led by Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, currently estimates the state needs to add more than 330 classrooms in the next seven years to provide preschool to an additional 6,700 children.

    While lawmakers successfully expanded access to tuition subsidies and funded more preschool construction this year, progress toward the state’s ambitious goal has slowed on other fronts.

    One successful bill this session expands eligibility for preschool subsidies by including 2-year-olds and repealing the requirement that families must use the subsidy at a nationally accredited provider, which has created financial and administrative barriers for smaller programs in the past, Zysman said.

    But the Department of Human Services is on track to spend only $20 million of its $50 million budget for preschool subsidies this year, said Scott Morishige, administrator of the department’s Benefit, Employment and Support Services Division.

    To ramp up its spending, DHS is considering expanding the income eligibility to 500% of the federal poverty line. If DHS adopts the rules this summer, Morishige said, a family of four could make up to $184,000 annually and still be eligible for assistance, compared to the past income limit of $110,000.

    The state budget sets aside $20 million to build more public preschool classrooms over the next three years. The state plans on opening 25 public preschool classrooms this fall and an additional 25 classrooms the following year, far less than previous estimates that Hawaiʻi could build 40-50 classrooms annually.

    While the state would like to take a more aggressive approach to opening public preschool classrooms moving forward, Luke said, the Ready Keiki initiative is also relying on private providers and charter schools to help expand access. The state is starting larger construction projects, like standalone preschool centers, that could add seats more rapidly as they open in the next few years.

    “There is an urgency for us to open as many preschool seats as we can,” she said.

    But families’ demand for preschool could grow beyond what the state has anticipated if the federal government stops funding its own child care programs. Head Start, which relies on federal funding and serves roughly 2,800 children and pregnant mothers, is currently Hawaiʻi’s largest provider of early learning services, said Ryan Kusumoto, president and CEO of the nonprofit Parents And Children Together.

    The Trump administration has previously threatened to cut funding entirely for Head Start, although the most recent version of the federal budget keeps program funding intact. Some Hawaiʻi Head Start programs are still waiting to receive confirmation for next year’s funding, and the recent closure of some regional offices could create backlogs in awarding this money, said Ben Naki, president of the Head Start Association of Hawaiʻi.

    “There’s no existing infrastructure that can pick up those 2,800 kids,” Kusumoto said. “And we’re talking about kids who don’t have any other resources.”

    First Steps For Free Meals

    Since September, Christine Russo said paying for meals has become a greater challenge for her family as her twins joined her 10-year-old in attending school every day. She sets aside roughly $180 each month so her kids can purchase breakfast and lunch at school — a challenge for the public school teacher, whose husband is a retail store manager.

    Russo’s kids don’t qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, but she said her family could still benefit from the ongoing push to bring back a pandemic-era program that made meals free for all students.

    Lawmakers stopped short of funding a universal free meals program this year but took incremental steps by passing Senate Bill 1300. Starting next year, the state will provide free school meals to students who currently qualify for reduced-price lunch. The following year, eligibility for free school meals would be expanded to families making up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or roughly $110,000 for a family of four.

    The bill appropriates $565,000 to provide more free school meals next year and an additional $3.4 million for the program’s expansion the following year. More than 68,000 students in the Department of Education qualified for free meals this year, and 10,000 qualified for reduced-price meals.

    The bill also requires schools feed students who don’t have enough money to purchase lunch or already have meal debt. Students have accrued more than $105,000 in meal debt this school year, DOE communications director Nanea Ching said.

    At Castle High School, junior Tayli Kahoopii said she receives free meals, but some of her friends don’t qualify. When someone doesn’t have enough money in their account to purchase lunch, the register makes a buzzing sound — loud enough to embarrass students and, in one instance, deter Kahoopii’s friend from trying to purchase meals for a week.

    “On a daily basis, you see kids getting their food taken away, and there’s really nothing that they can do about it,” Kahoopii said, adding that it’s difficult for students to learn and focus when they don’t have access to food during the school day.

    Rep. Scot Matayoshi, who has introduced bills for the past three years proposing free school meals, said SB1300 is an important step. But he still plans on advocating for universal free school meals in the coming years, especially since it would reduce the administrative barriers schools and families face in determining who qualifies for free meals.

    Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at Hawaiʻi Appleseed, said providing all students with free school meals could also become more important with federal funding on the line. Proposed federal cuts to a program allowing schools in low-income areas to provide free meals to all children could impact 52 schools and more than 27,000 kids in Hawaiʻi, according to estimates from the Food Research and Action Center.

    “It should be a staple for our schools to have free school lunch,” said Castle junior Haliʻa Tom-Jardine, who will begin qualifying for free school meals next year. “It should be a right.”

    ‘Bad Things Are Coming’

    During the pandemic, people saw lawmakers step up and meet the needs of working families through federal initiatives like the child tax credit and free school meals, said Kayla Keehu-Alexander, vice president of community impact at Aloha United Way. Now, she said, state lawmakers need to do the same during times of uncertainty.

    “If we don’t start making some big policy changes around the cost of living, around housing, we could potentially be looking at a larger out-migration than we’ve had in the past,” she said.

    Hawaiʻi is already starting to see the possible impacts of out-migration on its schools and economy. While some people are coming back to Hawaiʻi to raise families, Keehu-Alexander said, it’s unclear if they’re joining the workforce in areas with the worst staffing shortages, like education or healthcare.

    Looking ahead to next year, Zysman said she would like to see a successful bill establishing paid family leave in Hawaiʻi, which would provide caregivers paid time off to care for their loved ones. Lawmakers have failed to pass a bill for several years, although they did approve a resolution last month establishing a working group that will study how to implement paid family leave over the next year.

    Zysman added that she’s concerned about the long-term impacts of the historic tax cut lawmakers passed last year. While she supports cuts that can make it more affordable for people to stay in Hawaiʻi, she said, she’s worried that tax breaks for the wealthiest will make it harder for the state to fund programs that can keep working families afloat.

    “In my gut, I feel like bad things are coming,” Zysman said, “and we should have acted more preemptively.”

    This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.


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  • A proper review of student maintenance is now long overdue

    A proper review of student maintenance is now long overdue

    Elsewhere on the site, Esther Stimpson, Dave Phoenix and Tony Moss explain an obvious injustice.

    Universal Credit (UC) reduces by 55p for every £1 earned as income – unless you’re one of the few students entitled to UC, where instead it is reduced by £1 for every £1 you are loaned for maintenance.

    To be fair, when Universal Credit was introduced, the income disregards in the old systems that recognised that students spend out on books, equipment and travel were rolled into a single figure of £110 a month.

    Taper rates were introduced to prevent “benefit traps” where increasing earnings led to disproportionately high reductions in support – and have gone from 65p initially, then to 67p, and now to 55p.

    But for students, there’s never been a taper rate – and that £110 for the costs of books, equipment and travel hasn’t been uprated in over 13 years. Lifelong learning my eye.

    The olden days

    The student finance system in England is full of these problems – probably the most vexing of which is the parental earnings threshold over which the system expects parents to top up to the maximum.

    It’s been set at £25,000 since 2008 – despite significant growth in nominal earnings across the economy since then. IFS says that if the threshold had been uprated since 2008, it would now be around £36,500 (46 per cent higher) in 2023/24.

    That explains how John Denham came to estimate that a third of English domiciled students would get the maximum maintenance package back in 2007. We’re now down to about 1 in 5.

    Add in the fact that the maximums available have failed to increase by inflation – especially during the post-pandemic cost of living spikes – and there’s now a huge problem.

    It’s a particular issue for what politics used to call a “squeezed middle” – the parents of students whose families would have been earning £25,000 in 2007 now have £4,000 more a year to find in today’s money.

    And thanks to the increases in the minimum wage, the problem is set to grow again – when the Student Loans Company comes to assess the income of a single parent family in full time (40 hours) work, given that’s over the £25,000 threshold, it will soon calculate that even that family has to make a parental contribution to the loan too.

    It’s not even as if the means test actually works, either.

    Principles

    How much should students get? Over twenty years ago now, the higher education minister charged by Tony Blair with getting “top-up fees” through Parliament established two policy principles on maintenance.

    The first was Charles Clarke’s aspiration to move to a position where the maintenance loan was no-longer means tested, and made available in full to all full-time undergraduates – so that students would be treated as financially independent from the age of 18.

    That was never achieved – unless you count its revival and subsequent implementation in the Diamond review in Wales some twelve years later.

    Having just received results from the Student Income and Expenditure Survey (SIES) the previous December, Clarke’s second big announcement was that from September 2006, maintenance loans would be raised to the median level of students’ basic living costs –

    The principle of the decision will ensure that students have enough money to meet their basic living costs while studying.

    If we look at the last DfE-commissioned Student Income and Expenditure Survey – run in 2021 for the first time in eight years – median living and participation costs for full-time students were £15,561, so would be £18,888 today if we used CPI as a measure.

    The maximum maintenance loan today is £10,227.

    The third policy principle that tends to emerge from student finance reviews – in Scotland, Wales and even in the Augar review of Post-18 review of education and funding – is that the value of student financial support should be linked somehow to the minimum wage.

    Augar argued that students ought to expect to combine earning with learning – suggesting that full-time students should expect to be unable to work for 37.5 hours a week during term time, and should therefore be loaned the difference (albeit with a parental contribution on a means test and assuming that PT work is possible for all students on all courses, which it plainly isn’t).

    As of September, the National Living Wage at 37.5 hours a week x 30 weeks will be £13,376 – some £2,832 more than most students will be able to borrow, and more even than students in London will be able to borrow.

    And because the Treasury centrally manages the outlay and subsidies for student loans in the devolved nations for overall “equivalence” on costs, both Scotland and Wales have now had to abandon their minimum wage anchors too.

    Diversity

    Augar thought that someone ought to look at London weighting – having not managed to do so in the several years that his project ran for, the review called London a “subject worthy of further enquiry”.

    Given that the last government failed to even respond to his chapter on maintenance, it means that no such further work has been carried out – leaving the uprating of the basic for London (+25 per cent) and the downrating for those living at home (-20 per cent) at the same level as they were in the Education (Student Loans) Regulations 1997.

    Augar also thought student parents worthy of further work – presumably not the subject of actual work because it was DfE officials, not those from the DWP, who supported his review. Why on earth, wonder policymakers, are people putting off having kids, causing a coming crisis in the working age/pensionable age ratio? It’s a mystery.

    Commuters, too. The review supported the principle that the away/home differential should be based on the different cost of living for those living at home but it “suggested a detailed study of the characteristics and in-study experience of commuter students and how to support them better.” It’s never been done. Our series would be a good place to start.

    Things are worse for postgraduates, of course. Not only does a loan originally designed to cover both now go nowhere near the cost of tuition and maintenance, the annually updated memo from the DWP (buried somewhere in the secondary legislation) on how PG loans should be treated viz a vis the benefits system still pretends that thirty per cent of the loan should be treated as maintenance “income” for the purposes of calculating benefits, and the rest considered tuition spend.

    (Just to put that into context – thirty per cent of the current master’s loan of £12,471 is £3,741. 90 credits is supposed to represent 1800 notional hours that a student is spending on studying rather than participating in the labour market. The maintenance component is worth £2.08 an hour – ie the loan is £16,851 short on maintenance alone for a year which by definition involves less vacation time).

    Carer’s Allowance is available if you provide at least 35 hours of care a week – as long as you’re not a full-time student. Free childcare for children under fives? Only if you’re not a full-time student. Pretty much all of the support available from both central government and local authorities during Covid? Full-time students excluded.

    When ministers outside of DfE give answers on any of this, they tell MPs that “the principle” is that the benefits system does not normally support full-time students, and that instead, “they are supported by the educational maintenance system.” What DWP minister Stephen Timms really means, of course, is thank god our department doesn’t have to find money for them too – a problem that will only get worse throughout the spending review.

    Whose problem?

    Back in 2004, something else was introduced in the package of concessions designed to get top-up fees through.

    As was also the case later in 2012, the government naively thought that £3,000 fees would act as an upper limit rather than a target – so Clarke announced that he would maintain fee remission at around £1,200, raise the new “Higher Education grant” for those from poorer backgrounds to £1,500 a year, and would require universities to offer bursaries to students from the poorest backgrounds to make up the difference.

    It was the thin end of a wedge. By the end of the decade, the nudging and cajoling of universities to take some of their additional “tuition” fee income and give it back to students by way of fee waivers, bursaries or scholarships had resulted in almost £200m million being spent on financial support students from lower income and other underrepresented groups – with more than 70 per cent of that figure spent on those with a household income of less than £17,910. By 2020-21 – the last time OfS bothered publishing the spend – that had doubled to £406m.

    It may not last. The principle is pretty much gone and the funding is in freefall. When I looked at this last year (via an FOI request), cash help per student had almost halved in five years – and in emerging Access and Participation Plans, providers were cutting financial support in the name of “better targeting”.

    You can’t blame them. Budgets are tight, the idea of redistributing “additional” fee income a lost concept, and the “student premium” funding given to universities to underpin that sort of support has been tumbling in value for years – from, for example, £174 per disabled student in 2018/19 to just £129 now.

    All while the responsibility for the costs to enable disabled students to access their education glide more and more onto university budgets – first via a big cut in the last decade, and now via slices of salami that see pressure piled on to staff who get the blame, but don’t have the funding to claim any credit.

    Pound in the pocket

    What about comparisons? By European standards, our core system of maintenance looks fairly generous – in this comparison of monthly student incomes via Eurostudent, for example, we’re not far off top out of 20 countries:

    But those figures in Euros are deceptive. Our students – both UG and PG – spend fewer years as full time students than in almost every other country. Students’ costs are distorted by a high proportion studying away from home – something that subject and campus rationalisation will exacerbate rather than relieve.

    And anyway, look at what happens to the chart when we adjust for purchasing power:

    How are students doing financially three years on? The Student Income and Expenditure Survey (SIES) has not been recommissioned, so even if we wanted to, we’d have no data to supply to the above exercise. The Labour Force Survey fails to capture students in (any) halls, and collects some data through parents. Households Below Average Income – the key dataset on poverty – counts tuition fee loans as income, despite my annual email to officials pointing out the preposterousness of that. How are students doing financially? We don’t really know.

    And on costs, the problems persist too. There’s no reliable data on the cost of student accommodation – although what there is always suggests that it is rising faster than headline rates of inflation. The basket of goods in CPI and RPI can’t be the same as for a typical student – but aside from individual institutional studies, the work has never been done.

    Even on things like the evaluation of the bus fare cap, published recently by the Department for Transport, students weren’t set up as a flag by the department – so are unlikely to be a focus of what’s left from that pot after the spending review. See also health, housing, work – students are always DfE’s problem.

    Student discounts are all but dead – too many people see students as people to profit from, rather than subsidise. No government department is willing to look at housing – passed between MHCLG and DfE like a hot potato while those they’d love to devolve to “other” students as economic units or nuisances, but never citizens.

    The business department is barely aware that students work part-time, and the Home Office seems to think that international students will be able to live on the figure that nobody thinks home students can live on. DfE must have done work, you suppose they suppose.

    In health, we pretend that student nurses and midwives are “supernumerary” to get them to pay us (!) to prop up our creaking NHS. And that split between departments, where DfE loans money to students for four years max, still means that we expect medical students in their final two years – the most demanding in terms of academic content and travelling full time to placements – to live on £7,500 a year. Thank god, in a way, that so few poor kids get in.

    It’s not even like we warn them. UK higher education is a £43.9 billion sector educating almost 3m students a year, professes to be interested in access and participation, and says it offers a “world-class student” experience. And yet it can’t even get its act together to work out and tell applicants how much it costs to participate in it – even in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

    Because reasons

    Why are we like this? It’s partly about statecraft. There was an obvious split between education and other departments when students were all young, middle class and carefree, and devolution gave the split a sharper edge – education funding (devolved) and benefits (reserved).

    It’s partly about participation. It’s very tempting for all involved to only judge student financial support on whether it appears to be causing (or at least correlates with) overall enrolment, participation and completion – missing all of the impacts on the quality of that participation in the process.

    Do we know what the long-term impacts are on our human capital of “full-time” students being increasingly anxious, lonely, hungry, burdened and, well, part-time? We don’t.

    Efficiency in provider budgets is about getting more students to share cheaper things – management, space, operating costs and even academics. Efficiency for students doesn’t work like that – it just means spending less and less time on being a student.

    The participation issue is also about the principal – we’ve now spent decades paying for participation expansion ambitions by pushing more and more of the long-run run cost onto graduates – so much so that there’s now little subsidy in the system left.

    And now that the cost of borrowing the money to lend to students is through the roof, increases in the outlay look increasingly impossible.

    Lifelong moaning

    But something will have to give soon. Some five years after Boris Johnson gave a speech at Exeter College announcing his new Lifetime Skills Guarantee, there’s still no news on maintenance – only ever a vague “maintenance loan to cover living costs for courses with in-person attendance” to accompany the detailed tables of credits that get chunked down from the FT £9,535.

    The LLE was partly a product of Augar (more on that on Wonk Corner) – who said that maintenance support should be reserved for those studying at a minimum level of intensity – 25 per cent (15 ECTS a year), and then scaled by credit.

    But think about that for a moment, setting aside that increasingly arbitrary distance learning differential. Why would a student studying for 45 credits only get 3/4 of an already inadequate loan? Will students studying on one of those accelerated degrees get 1.5 x the loan?

    The centrality of credit to the LLE – and its potential use in determining the level of student financial support for their living and participation costs – is fascinating partly because of the way in which a row between the UK and other member states played out back in 2008.

    When ECTS was being developed, we (ie the UK) argued that the concept focused too heavily on workload as the primary factor for assigning credits. We said that credits should be awarded based on the actual achievement of learning outcomes, rather than simply the estimated workload.

    That was partly because the UK’s estimate at the time of 1,200 notional learning hours (derived from an estimate of 40 hours’ notional learner effort a week, multiplied by 30 weeks) was the lowest in Europe, and much lower than the 1,500-1,800 hours that everyone else in Europe was estimating.

    Annex D of 2006’s Proposals for national arrangements for the use of academic credit in higher education in England: The Final report of the Burgess Group put that down to the UK having shorter teaching terms and not clocking what students do in their breaks:

    It could be argued that considerably more learner effort takes place during the extended vacations and that this is not taken into account in the total NLH for an academic year.

    Those were the days.

    In the end an EU fudge was found allowing the UK to retain its 20 notional hours – with a stress that “how this is applied to a range of learning experiences at a modular or course level will differ according to types of delivery, subject content and student cohorts” and the inclusion of “time spent in class, directed learning, independent study and assessment.”

    A bit like with fees and efficiency, if in the mid noughties it was more likely that students were loaned enough to live on, were posh, had plenty of spare time and had carefree summers, that inherent flex meant that a student whose credit was more demanding than the notional hours could eat into their free time to achieve the learning outcomes.

    But once you’ve got a much more diverse cohort of students who are much more likely to need to be earning while learning, you can’t really afford to be as flexible – partly because if you end up with a student whose characteristics and workload demand, say, 50 hours a week, and a funding system that demands 35 hours’ work a week, once you sleep for 8 hours a night you’re left with less than 4 hours a day to do literally anything else at all.

    Think of it this way. If it turns out that in order to access the full maintenance loan, you have to enrol onto 60 ECTS a year (the current “full-time” position), we are saying to students that you must enrol onto credits theoretically totalling at the very very least 1,200 hours of work a year. We then loan them – as a maximum – £8.52 an hour (outside London, away from home). No wonder they’re using AI – they need to eat.

    If it then turns out that you end up needing to repeat a module or even a year, the LLE will be saying “we’ve based the whole thing on dodgy averages from two decades ago – and if you need to take longer or need more goes at it, you’ll end up in more debt, and lose some of your 4 years’ entitlement in the process”. Charming.

    A credit system whose design estimated notional learning hours around students two decades ago, assumed that students have the luxury of doing lots of stuff over the summer, and fessed up that it’s an unreliable way of measuring workload is not in any world a sensible way to work out how much maintenance and participation cost support to loan to a student.

    Pretty much every other European country – if they operate loans, grants or other entitlements for students – regards anyone studying more than 60 (or in some cases, 75) credits as studying “full-time”.

    That allows students to experience setbacks, to accumulate credit for longer, to take time out for a bereavement or a project or a volunteering opportunity – all without the hard cliff edges of “dropping out”, switching to “part-time” or “coming back in September”. Will our student finance system ever get there? Don’t bet on it.

    If the work (on workload) isn’t done, we’ll be left with definitions of “full-time” and “part-time” student that are decades old – such that a full-time student at the OU can’t get a maintenance loan, while an FT UG at a brick university that barely attends in-person can – that pretty much requires students to study for more credit than they can afford to succeed in.

    Oh – and if the loan is chunked down for a 30 credit module, how will the government prevent fraud?

    Via an FOI request, the SLC tells me that last year, almost 13,000 students FT students in England and Wales managed to pull down installment 1 of their loan without their provider pulling down installment 1 of the fee loan. Anyone that thinks that’s all employer funding will shortly be getting my brochure on bridges.

    Maintenance of a problem

    Our system for student living and participation costs may, by comparison with other systems, appear to be a generous one – especially if you ignore the low number of years that students are in it, and how much they eventually pay back. But make no mistake – our student finance system is completely broken – set up for a different sector with different students that has no contemporary basis in need, ambition or impact.

    Its complexity could not be less helpful for driving opportunity, its paucity is likely to be choking our stock of human (and social) capital (and resultant economic growth), and its immediate impacts have normalised food banks on campus – real poverty that universities neither can nor should be expected to alleviate with other students’ fees and debt.

    The signals and signs are of danger ahead – a minister keen to stress that the “fundamentals” of the system we have for funding higher education won’t change reminds us both of a lack of money and a bandwidth issue. It’s one whose solution requires real research, cross-departmental and nations working, and a proper sense of what we want students to be, experience and learn. Sadly, that also sounds like a solution that lends itself to long grass.

    Given everything else going on in the world right now, maybe that’s inevitable. But decade after decade, every time we put off a proper review, or over-prioritise university rather than student funding in the debates, we dodge the difficult questions – because they’re too complex, because the data isn’t there, because it’s another department’s problem, because reasons.

    If Bridget Phillipson is serious about “fixing the foundations” to “secure the future of higher education” so that “students can benefit from a world-class education for generations to come”, she needs to commission a dedicated student maintenance review. Now.

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  • Curtain call on traditional time-intensive drama training

    Curtain call on traditional time-intensive drama training

    Recent closures of renowned actor training courses, including the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s undergraduate provision and the abrupt collapse of the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, have laid bare a crisis in drama training. This isn’t only about funding shortfalls; it’s about the very structures and traditions of training, which risk shutting out those able to succeed.

    The financial strain on institutions is undeniable. The historical freeze in undergraduate tuition fees and the high-intensity delivery required in drama and other forms of intensive arts training like dance and music education have made traditional models almost unsustainable. Specialist institutions, unable to cross-subsidise, have stretched themselves to the limit – expanding course offerings, increasing intakes, internationalisation and growing postgraduate provision, where costs can be better covered. Meanwhile, government support through welcome specialist funding streams such as Institution Specific Funding have proven insufficient to address the root challenges.

    These efforts, while necessary, have unintended consequences. Over-speedy expansion creates great challenges for the quality of the learning experience, while institutional survival strategies rarely address the deeper, systemic issues at play. The question is not just how to survive in this increasingly precarious environment, but how to rethink the system entirely.

    The hidden barrier of time poverty

    The financial barriers to entering drama training are well-documented, but there is a more insidious form of exclusion that demands urgent attention: time-poverty.

    As highlighted in a recent Unipol and HEPI report, the average cost of student rent in London now exceeds the maximum maintenance loan, leaving students struggling to make ends meet. This financial reality forces many to take on part-time work, but the intensive nature of traditional actor training – 30-40 hours a week, often with irregular schedules – leaves little room for paid employment. The result? Only those who can afford not to work can afford to train.

    Traditional training models require high levels of physical presence and stamina. While these methods have been celebrated for their rigour, they exclude those with caring responsibilities, disabilities requiring time flexibility, or the need to support themselves financially. This isn’t just a financial issue – it’s a fundamental inequity in how time is valued in training.

    Addressing time-poverty isn’t about making marginal adjustments; it requires a paradigm shift. Drama schools must reimagine training models to prioritise accessibility and sustainability without compromising quality. Flexible delivery methods, guaranteed non-contact periods for work or rest, and rethinking the necessity of long, traditional schedules are all potential starting points. If we are to be equitable in the way almost all drama schools claim as a value, we must redesign what “intensity” in training means for excellent students who do not arrive with the economic means required. The current system is exclusionary.

    Some institutions are already leading the way. Identity School and Access All Areas have successfully adapted their training processes to accommodate a broader range of students. The Collective Acting Studio excels at balancing time pressures with rigorous training, redefining how intensity can be delivered. These organisations boast impressive alumni who are actively working successfully in the industry. Notably, Sally Ann Gritton, Principal of Mountview, emphasises in her book, The Independent Actor, that long, gruelling days are neither effective nor beneficial for students. These examples prove that change isn’t just possible – it’s essential if we want the arts to become more inclusive.

    Why it matters

    The stakes couldn’t be higher. The creative industries contribute over £100 billion to the UK economy annually, with drama training forming the backbone of the talent pipeline. Rose Bruford College alumna like Jessica Gunning, who recently won Emmy and Golden Globe awards, or Sara Huxley, whose work on Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office catalysed governmental action, exemplify the global impact of British arts education.

    However, the arts are more than an economic driver – they shape how we see ourselves, societal narratives, build empathy, and are key in defining our cultural identity. If access to training is restricted to the privileged, the stories we tell become narrower and less representative. Equity in the arts is not just an educational issue; it is a societal imperative.

    Nearly a decade ago, calls for greater class diversity in the arts sparked important conversations. In 2016, a report from the London School of Economics revealed that only 27 per cent of actors came from working-class backgrounds. While this discussion was absorbed into the broader issue of societal inequality, solutions remained vague and largely limited to the idea of increased funding. Today, with budgets tighter than ever, this approach feels increasingly out of reach.

    In recent years, established actors, including household names like Julie Walters and Christopher Eccleston have voiced concerns that they would no longer be able to afford the cost of training. Their warnings highlight a system where financial barriers stifle talent, despite the well-meaning calls for bursaries and other competitive financial support. The result? A cycle where potential is lost, and the arts grow less accessible.

    We need bold leadership across the sector. Institutions must collaborate to share best practice, experiment with alternative training models, and advocate for systemic support. There are innovative models, and we must deal with the friction preventing them from spreading. Policymakers and trainers must recognise that funding is only one part of the equation; addressing time-poverty is critical to ensuring a truly inclusive arts education.

    The arts are at their best when they reflect the richness of society. It’s time to move beyond tradition and reimagine drama training for a new generation—one where potential, not privilege, determines success.

    Anyone interested in being part of this conversation is welcome to contact the authors directly.

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  • Higher education should lift students out of poverty – not trap them within it

    Higher education should lift students out of poverty – not trap them within it

    As a former student who benefited from welfare payments, I’ve long been consumed with the educational struggle of students on free school meals (FSM) —the official marker we have of relative poverty.

    That’s why I found recent newspaper headlines in autumn 2024 celebrating “record numbers” of poorer students entering university so troubling. On the face of it, this sounded like welcome progress. But this “record” in fact reflected a grim reality: rising numbers of pupils qualifying for free school meals in a growing bulge of 18-year-olds in the population.

    The government’s framing of the latest university admissions figures as good news was unwittingly celebrating rising levels of poverty. A pupil is eligible for free school meals (FSM) if their parent or guardian receives benefits or earns an annual gross income of £16,190 or less. As of January 2024, a quarter (24.6 per cent) of school pupils in England were on FSM – up from 18 per cent in 2018. This rapid rise meant that in the 2022–23 university intake, around 57,000 FSM students were enrolled (alongside 300,000 non-FSM students).

    The 2022–23 academic year will be remembered for an ignominious distinction – the university progression rate for FSM students declined for the first time since records began in 2005–06. The gap in degree enrolment between FSM and non-FSM students widened to a record-breaking 20.8 percentage points (29 per cent versus 49.8 per cent). A meagre 6.1 per cent of FSM pupils secured places at the UK’s most selective universities.

    These statistics are a damning indictment of our collective failure to uphold the principle that university should be open to all, regardless of background.

    Heating and eating

    This year’s Blackbullion Student Money & Wellbeing Survey, now in its fifth year, brings with it more alarming data, shining a harsh light on the lived realities of these university students. The findings are based on 1200 students, surveyed across the UK. This year they are also categorised by measures of disadvantage, including whether students have been eligible for FSM at any point during their school years.

    Almost three-quarters (72.94 per cent) of FSM students said they’d been too hungry to study or concentrate, compared with 47.32 per cent of their non-FSM peers. Nearly seven in ten (67.82 per cent) said they’d been too cold to focus, avoiding heating their homes because they couldn’t afford it (compared with 42.39 per cent of non-FSM students). They are also much more likely to report not being able to study because they are unable to purchase books. Just under half worry that work commitments get in the way of their study. More than eight in ten worry their final degree grade will be harmed by their lack of money.

    These latest findings lay bare the inequities that scar our higher education system—a system that should lift students out of poverty, not trap them within it. As someone who benefitted from a full maintenance grant during my own time at university, these reports of hunger, cold, and financial stress are heartbreaking. I know what a lifeline financial support can be. My termly cheques were a godsend, enabling me to focus on my studies without having to worry about affording the next meal or keeping the heater on in my room. Shorn of basic support, it’s been little surprise to me that recent waves of FSM students have been far less likely to complete their degrees compared with their better-off counterparts.

    Failure to maintain

    It’s time to reintroduce maintenance grants for FSM students in England as part of the new financial arrangements for universities being considered by the Labour government. The removal of grants in 2016 has meant that FSM students are graduating with the largest loan debts. This could understandably be putting many off applying to higher education in the first place.

    At the same time, maintenance loans should increase with inflation, building on the 3.1 per cent rise already announced for 2025–26, going some way to help all students facing immediate hardship while at university. This would be a fair settlement and mirror similar arrangements in Scotland.

    As education officials brace themselves for the toughest of government spending reviews, I don’t underestimate how hard it will be to fund such a reform. But to fail in this task would be a national travesty, betraying not only these students but also the very principle that a university education should be accessible to all, no matter their background or economic circumstances.

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