Universities get extra £15m to help students with cost-of-living pressures
Author/Source: Eleanor Busby - Evening Standard | 12/01/2023
Universities will be given an additional £15 million in funding this year to help ease cost-of-living pressures for disadvantaged students.
Tuition fees for degrees in England will be frozen at a maximum level of £9,250 for the next two years and maximum student loans for living costs will rise by 2.8% in 2023/24, the Department for Education (DfE) has said.
But leaders across the university sector, as well as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), have said some students will still be left £1,500 a year worse off.
The announcement from the DfE comes after university leaders had warned that students could abandon their degree courses unless immediate action was taken to offset the cost of living.
Robert Halfon, minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education, said: “The Government recognises the additional cost-of-living pressures that have arisen this year and that have impacted students.
In a written ministerial statement on Wednesday, Mr Halfon added: “Today we are making a one-off reallocation of funding so we can add £15 million to this year’s student premium, enabling extra hardship awards to be made to tens of thousands of disadvantaged students.
This extra funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own, bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes.
Mr Halfon said the maximum level of tuition fees would be frozen for 2023/24 and 2024/25 to keep the cost of higher education down.
Dr Tim Bradshaw, chief executive of the Russell Group, which represents some of the most selective institutions in the UK, welcomed the extra hardship funding, but said additional assistance was urgently needed.
He said: Without it, we are concerned this will have an increasing impact on students’ studies and wider mental health and wellbeing.
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