The scrapping of student grants – what it means & how bad is it?

agarnett

Yes Martin, I sometimes wonder if you remain close enough anymore to the real world situations experienced by lower income family students.

Firstly, I can confirm that extra grants are front-ended first year only in many cases, and that there is habitually great uncertainty about what the university will eventually dish out as support in subsequent years. The second and subsequent course years are usually well started before any figures are confirmed to students for low income support. Lower income family students are more or less forced to get jobs to make ends meet which in many cases do not facilitate their concentration on study. Look how many of them are exploited in our marble lined shopping centres as cheap retail labour. Chances are the manager on duty in the store and many of his or her salespeople are part-time students on minimum wage, zero hours contracts, no pension or benefits, with tiring hours and expected to present themselves in their own smart clothing. Many end up working half the day for nothing because they have to pay the same prices as the rest of us for coffee and sandwiches and often transport too.

Much of the university sponsored, and of the private speculative student accommodation is poor quality and a health and safety hazard. H&S regulation is dire to non-existent. The pricepoints for this cheap and nasty accommodation are designed to extract a large proportion of the maintenance grants and loans from young people least experienced in negotiating a fair rent. It is a deliberately Tory created speculative and lucrative subset of the housing market at its worst.

If a university course is worth starting, especially in the case of STEM students, then courses designed with a year in industry, sometimes Bachelor courses, but often Masters courses, are the preferred choice towards making the student most marketable at the end of the course.

However, therein lies another big question. If a low income student is currently on a year in industry and is supporting themselves and not availing themselves of either SFE loan or grant during that year, are they treated as a brand new 2016 case when they restart their final year ? If so, then this new change may wrongfoot a fair number of students who are in the first cohort for the post 2012 scheme.

Ed-1

agarnett wrote: »

Firstly, I can confirm that extra grants are front-ended first year only themselves in their own smart clothing. Many end up working half the day for nothing because they have to pay the same prices as the rest of us for coffee and sandwiches and often transport too.

However, therein lies another big question. If a low income student is currently on a year in industry and is supporting themselves and not availing themselves of either SFE loan or grant during that year, are they treated as a brand new 2016 case when they restart their final year ? If so, then this new change may wrongfoot a fair number of students who are in the first cohort for the post 2012 scheme.

For many students the 2016+ maintenance loan only system will be better as they have considerably more cash in hand to live off then the combined subsidised loan and grant would've given them every year.

A year in industry still counts as a year of the course. If that course was started prior to Sept 2016 then you are still funded as a pre-2016 cohort student for the duration of that course which means combined loan and grant. However for the reason above that's not necessarily a good thing as you'll have less to live off each year due to the considerably smaller maintenance loan.

The maintenance grant isn't front-ended only. It's available every year for pre-2016 cohort students. The national scholarship programme was front-ended but it was generally followed up in subsequent years through university bursaries. Now universities generally offer bursaries throughout the whole course in addition the student finance subsidised loans.

agarnett

Thanks Ed-1 for the comment on a year in industry - but can you reconfirm if a student does two years as a lower income student and then currently claims no loan and no grant because they get paid for their year in industry, they will still be treated continuously as part of the earlier cohort when they reapply for loan and grant for their final year starting in Autumn 2016?

My complaint about front-ending of grants is based on the fact that only part of the support for low income students comes from directly from SFE - is that not so? In the second and subsequent years, universities fund a great part of the support from their government subsidised autonomous pot.

That has resulted in students receiving four figures less in year two onwards in total support grants/bursaries. SFE have little part in ensuring proper grant support after the first year, and the universities then plead difficulty in having to spread their pot too thinly.

Some universities do better than others. Some universities simultaneously reduce tuition fees by as much as £3,000pa and at the same time might dish out £3,000 in lower income support grant/bursary to a student. In some Inner City universities there's obviously heavy call on support funds by a majority of lower income undergraduates. Tuition fee reductions are not common - the unis believe they deserve to keep it all. The support grants and bursaries might typically not exceed £1,500 for a lower income student.

I don't think enough is established about these different groups of student (each city or campus is different in terms of campus location / campus facilities as well as the wealth spectrum of the students attending. More attention should have been paid to actual lives shaped by some students real need to scrabble around in order to struggle to meet living expenses. It must be very depressing for those who don't have naturally outgoing personalities or have little mental and knowledgeable support and direction from their families.

The number of undergraduates manning retail stores at all hours in shopping malls like Westfield is a national embarrassment when you consider they are primarily supposed to be studying, not exploited as cheap labour doing all the overtime they can get every night of the week including for sharp end heavy customer service / supervisor roles by major retailers. Many finish work at 2230 and then go to the university library to study or labs to finish projects. No wonder some never break out of the retail job pattern once they start whilst at uni. Sure, these are likely to be the ones who never pay back their student loans. Is it their fault? I say no. it is our shortsightedness in not demanding a far better education support structure for our kids that takes them well into their twenties as the fresh crop of standalone adults with a support need the country should be massively investing in.

When those let-down students get stuck in that part-time retail job rut, and then get a flavour for working overtime (at zero hours rates of course!) and spending the money just on convenience retail coffee and burgers and full fare public transport because they are given no kettle or time to make tea, and have no time to cook or ride a bike, they kid themselves they have proper jobs, but they are performing beneath the ability and potential they'd have if they had full support and more study time at university.

Only a special few can gain something from these type of retail excursions whilst students and know when to step of that particular merry-go-round and ensure they get good degrees . I fear most just become indoctrinated as wage slaves early, get mediocre degrees, take the easy route ("come and work for us full time - we'll pay you and extra £2 an hour over minimum wage") and they are then destined never to break out afterwards.

And whilst all that type of worker is employed at young people's minimum wage (a disgraceful pittance) then they are denying the real workforce those same jobs.

But that's a highly political aim of course - the dumbing down of the workforce. Disenfranchising large chunks of it, taking huge numbers right out of tax so they don't even have a stake in what the tax is spent on! ... and calling the less intelligent jobless, lazy scroungers!

I'll tell you what the tax certainly isn't spent on - education education education!

The short-sightedness of such low-wage low tax politics is breathtaking in its stupidity.

Freddie_Goodwin

The very first question is incorrect. It says loans when it should say grants.

agarnett

Freddie_Goodwin wrote: »

The very first question is incorrect. It says loans when it should say grants.

Congrats FG - you scored a pointless answer! You say there's a first question somewhere that mixes up grants with loans but the net result of your post is surely pointless until you bother to properly link it and explain.

I think you posted a single sentence which 99.9% of readers might look at and say "Pardon - what the hell is new poster FG getting at - what's 'very first question' is he on about? That's a millisecond before they shake their heads and turn off! Or was that your intent?

Edit: In trying to give you the benefit of the doubt I have discovered what you are on about - you want to point out a typo in Martin's original blog
The typo you are referring to (badly) says:

Q. I’m at university now, the scrapping of student loans is a nightmare, what do I do?

Nothing. Student grants have only been scrapped for those starting university in 2016 – if you are at university and get a grant you will continue to do so.

Congrats again! Blindingly well spotted :rotfl: