Student preferences over fees, grants and loans

Publication type

Report

Authors

Publication date

September 15, 2018

Summary:

Undergraduate students in England are charged tuition fees and receive support for living costs primarily through a complex system of income-contingent loans. The Department for Education is currently conducting a review of Post-18 education and funding, with a view to reforming this system for new undergraduates. It is however unclear what changes to the system students would favour and what type of trade-offs they would be willing to accept if the system were to change in a fiscal neutral way, as the current Government seems to suggest would be the outcome of the current review. We sampled an entire cohort of undergraduate students at one UK Higher Education institution in order to test their knowledge and understanding of the current system and then elicit their preference over different scenarios presented in five hypothetical policy changes. In our conclusions we briefly describe a form of ‘time-limited and income-linked graduate contribution’ system that would respond to the main preferences expressed by students through this study.

Subjects

Link

- https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/misoc/reports/explainers/student-fees-preferences-report.pdf


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