A report commissioned by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), entitled ‘Awareness, take-up and impact of institutional bursaries and scholarships in England’, found that “non-means-tested scholarships were worth slightly more on average than financial support targeted exclusively at low-income students”.
NUS also expressed its concern that the report had aligned OFFA’s ‘philosophy’ with the fact that “students with the same financial needs have access to very different amounts of financial support depending on where they study”.
Average bursaries for poorer students at Russell Group universities are more than double those at post-1992 institutions (£1,500 compared with £700). Scholarships are typically worth £1,000.
NUS President Wes Streeting said:
“It is unacceptable that, under current financial support system, students are helped more if they are clever than if they are poor. It is also astonishing that an organisation set up to safeguard fair access to higher education should admit that its ‘philosophy’ is to support a system which facilitates a market in higher education.
“Russell Group universities have the worst records of widening participation from poorer students, yet other universities are only able to offer less than half the amount of financial support. OFFA should be working to redress this imbalance, not openly supporting it.
“When universities were told that they could charge top up fees, they were also told that in return they would have to significantly improve their bursaries and outreach programmes for poorer students. This didn’t happen. Last year, universities spent £24 million less than they had promised.
“We cannot trust universities to provide for poorer students any longer. We need a national bursary scheme now, so that financial support is based on how much a student needs it, not where they happen to be studying.”
The report also found that “a proliferation of different bursary and scholarship schemes, each with their own eligibility criteria” was “(adding) to the complexity of the student financial support system”, with well over half of parents (55%) and HE advisors in schools and colleges (59%) and 40% of students believing that “bursaries are too complex”.
NUS President Wes Streeting added:
“It is no wonder that students, parents and teachers are baffled by the multitude of different schemes offered by universities. How can we expect a poorer student to have a fair chance of choosing the right course to suit their interests and abilities when the system is so complex?”
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