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Students: Finance

Volume 472: debated on Wednesday 5 March 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills (1) what the (a) course fee per annum paid by and (b) unit of public funding paid for the teaching of a full-time undergraduate student studying for an equal or lower qualification was in 2007-08; (175785)

(2) pursuant to his request to the Higher Education Funding Council for England of 7 September on funding for equivalent and lower qualifications (ELQs) as additional degrees, what forecasts he has made of fees to be charged to non-exempt full-time undergraduate ELQ students;

(3) further to his request to the Higher Education Funding Council for England of 7 September on funding for equivalent and lower qualifications as additional degrees, which professional higher level qualifications will no longer receive funding;

(4) whether he consulted (a) the Confederation of British Industry and (b) professional bodies before making his request to the Higher Education Funding Council for England on 7 September on funding for equivalent and lower qualifications as additional degrees.

We took this decision first and foremost as a matter of principle on grounds of fairness and social justice. But it will also benefit employers and professional bodies by expanding the supply, to a greater degree than would otherwise be possible, of highly skilled, more productive workers with higher level qualifications. We consulted on the details and no-one has seriously challenged the priority of putting first-time students first. All professional higher level qualifications will continue to attract institutional funding as now when studied by students either entering HE for the first time or progressing to a higher level qualification to ones already obtained.

The level of institutional grant paid by HEFCE in 2007-08 to teach full-time undergraduate students, whether studying for equivalent or lower level qualifications or not, varies according to the cost of teaching different subjects. Funding ranges from over £14,000 for medicine and dentistry, which are exempt subjects under the ELQ policy, to around £2,600 for the least costly subjects to teach. However, there is no necessary connection between these figures and fee levels. Tuition fees for students studying equivalent and lower level qualifications are already and will continue to be unregulated, subject only to the forces of supply and demand. Each HE provider will need to continue to set tuition fees at a level which remains competitive in a system in which there are over 250 HE providers.

To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills what activities were recently undertaken as part of Student Finance week; and what the cost was of each. (186612)

The information is as follows:

Student Finance Week 2007/08 was a week long programme of PR activity.

The aim of the activity was to make the target audience aware of and direct them to view the new Student Finance DVD. The DVD contains detailed information on the package of financial support available for students entering higher education from September 2008.

The activity was aimed at young people aged 16-19 and their parents.

The breakdown of activity for Student Finance Week 2008 is set out in the following table

£

Coverage in national and regional press to announce the launch of the campaign

1,455

Coverage in The Sun newspaper featuring an exclusive giveaway of the DVD

1,100

Coverage in the regional press featuring exclusive DVD giveaways

1,340

Radio morning with Bill Rammell

5,010

Nick Grimshaw vodcast placed on a variety of youth websites

14,450

Martin Lewis ‘Cash Classroom’ vodcast placed on a variety of websites

2,220

Coverage in personal finance pages of national titles

4,205

Coverage of celebrity graduate champions

2,940

Coverage featuring Ed Byrnes (one of the stars of the DVD) on various websites

1,205

The total cost of activity

33,925

To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills what proportion of undergraduates enrolling on a higher education course received a bursary in (a) 2006-07 and (b) 2007-08; and if he will make a statement. (188036)

It is not possible to say what proportion of students overall received a bursary. However, we know that the Student Loans made 81,000 payments in 2006-07 via the Higher Education Bursary Scholarship System (HEBSS) that they manage. HEBSS allows students to apply for a bursary via the Local Authority at the same time as they apply for financial support. It is also important to note that 38 out of 125 institutions do not use this system, so we do not hold data on the number of payments they made. Nevertheless, OFFA report that no student who was eligible and applied for bursaries failed to receive one.

To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how much the average bursary awarded to an undergraduate student was in (a) 2006-07 and (b) 2007-08; and if he will make a statement. (188037)

The data held indicates that a typical bursary for a student on full state support for 2006-07 and 2007-08 is around £1,000, although the exact sum each student receives will vary according to the institution's access agreement. It is not possible to create a meaningful overall average bursary because of the variance in institution's threshold above the full state support threshold.