Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said that maintenance grants will return for some university students in England by 2029 as part of the Government’s Plan for Change.
Grants differ from loans in that they do not accrue interest or have to be paid back.
The Government says new grants will be means-tested and help “to ensure that cost is not a barrier to accessing higher education.”
The University of Edinburgh is regarded as one of the least affordable universities in the UK, resulting in a disproportionately large cohort of students from high income and private school backgrounds.
Maintenance grants were abolished in 2015 by then-Chancellor George Osborne who claimed the change would save the taxpayer nearly £1.5 bn a year and corrected a “basic unfairness”, where regular people funded the lives of those “likely to earn a lot more than them” in the future.
Grants will be funded by a levy aimed at international students studying at English universities.
While the details are unknown, the Higher Education Policy Institute says a 6 per cent levy could cost English universities £600m a year and force them to cut staff numbers or reduce the quality of teaching. They say this could damage the long term competitiveness of the sector.
The Scottish Government, who are in charge of setting education policy north of the English border, have not released any plans to impose a tax on overseas students.
Any changes would impact the University of Edinburgh significantly, where more than one in three students come from outside the UK.
The University College Union have described the plans as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, with General Secretary Jo Grady saying the plans amount to “treating international students as cash cows” and that institutions need “huge public investment” to combat financial pressures.
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits University College London East as part of the AI Opportunities Action Plan.” by Department for Science, Innovation & Technology is licensed under CC BY 2.0.