A Quiet Revolution: UK Postgraduate Loans in 2017 and Beyond

The unpredictability of UK higher education trends in 2017 is already becoming a predictable refrain.

The Government’s Higher Education and Research Bill presents major reforms to degree awarding powers and new providers, but has encountered obstacles in the Lords.

These must now be surmounted in time for a ‘Brexit Bill’ that could introduce almost as many changes for universities, with concerns over student recruitment heightened by Ministers’ ambiguous (and potentially antagonistic) rhetoric on visa changes.

Yet a quieter – and far more positive – revolution has already taken place across part of the sector.

In August last year, the Government introduced new student loans for postgraduate Masters courses. The first cohort to benefit from this support are now in their second term of study and initial figures suggest that uptake may have been substantial.

The Government’s own initial proposals anticipated that 40,000 students would apply for a masters loan, of which 10,000 would not otherwise have continued to postgraduate study.

The Student Loans Company has now indicated that over 85,000 individuals actually registered to apply for a loan in 2016.

It remains to be seen how many of those applications were successful, or whether the loan will reverse the slight downward trend in postgraduate enrolments seen since 2012/13. But signs are encouraging. And 2017 is set to bring more welcome changes for UK postgraduate recruitment.

The value of the current Masters loans is rising for 2017, from £10,000 to £10,280.

This 2.8% increase may not be earth-shattering, but it sets an encouraging precedent in a time of concern over rising tuition fees at all levels.

The Government has yet to revise its own student-facing web pages, but the Student Loans Company is updating its practitioner resources. FindAUniversity have also confirmed the new amount in meetings with Student Finance England and updated our student resources on FindAMasters.com.

The key points for providers are as follows:

• Loans of £10,280 will be available to students in academic year 2017-18.
• Current eligibility criteria will continue to apply.
• The higher amount will only be available to new applicants in £10,280. Under normal circumstances, 2016-17 applicants will still only be able to borrow up to £10,000.

Another significant change to the 2017-18 loans concerns part-time courses over two years in length. Students on these programmes will now be able to receive loan payments in the third and fourth years of their Masters.

This makes the loans more flexible. However, providers may need to ensure their fee structure is able to accommodate students whose financial support is paid in smaller instalments, spread across an entire programme.

Though these changes are positive, there exists some potential for confusion amongst applicants.

FindAUniversity will continue to provide up-to-date information to students, on our FindAMasters and FindAPhD websites and at our events.

Our team will also be happy to answer questions from university recruitment, admissions or marketing staff and to provide useful resources for your students. Please don’t hesitate to contact our Content Editor, Mark, with any enquiries.

Residency was probably the most contentious eligibility criterion for the 2016-17 loans.

Scottish-, Northern Irish- and Welsh-resident students were unable to apply for postgraduate finance - even when doing so to continue at an English university where they’d studied for three years as undergraduates.

This restriction isn’t being removed for 2017-18, but it may not need to be.

Other parts of the UK have been working on their own postgraduate loan options and it now seems highly likely that support will be available for all UK students, at Masters level, in 2017:

• Scotland has confirmed postgraduate loans of up to £10,000 (divided into £5,500 for fees and £4,500 for living costs) from 2017-18
• Northern Ireland has confirmed postgraduate tuition-fee loans of up to £5,500 from 2017-18
• Wales has confirmed postgraduate loans for 2017-18, offering up to £10,280 on a similar basis to the existing ‘English’ loans.

Some details of these loans are similar: all are for Masters-level courses, are primarily intended for students resident in the appropriate country, and are potentially portable across the UK.

Other details differ quite substantially. Whilst the English and Welsh loans are paid directly to students as a ‘contribution to costs’, the Northern Irish and Scottish loans are wholly or partly intended for tuition fees, with payments made to institutions.

Meanwhile, whilst all four loan options are available for taught Masters degrees, the eligibility of research programmes or of Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma courses varies.

Universities, along with their admissions and finance staff, will also need to understand the varying needs – and means – of a newly segmented postgraduate recruitment market.

Our team will also be happy to provide advice and resources to providers during an interesting year for postgraduate recruitment. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch.