MPs call for £5,000 student grants
MPs have called for students from poorer backgrounds to receive grants of up to £5,000 a year.
A report from the Commons Education Select Committee argued that poorer students should be helped by increasing the interest rates on loans to those from more affluent backgrounds and using this to increase grants by to up to five times the planned rate of £1000.
The report also says that plans to cap top up fees at £3,000 a year on their introduction in 2006 will not work because too many universities will charge the maximum amount. A wider range of charges will be required to create a genuine market in higher education they say.
Most universities have indicated that they will charge the full £3,000 and the Committee suggested that if the range was wider and extended to £5,000 universities would introduce a range of charges. This would mean that redbrick universities such as Oxbridge could charge the highest amount and former polytechnics much less, perhaps more fairly reflecting the value of their degrees on graduation.
However, many MPs are against the fees in general and specifically a higher cap on them. Ian Gibson said he was strongly against the higher fees. ‘This is what we have always suspected, there is a hidden agenda. The fees will open the door: they will argue for a higher cap and extract ever more money from students,’ he told The Times.
The Committee also called for an independent university access regulator after recent controversy over universities such as Bristol discriminating against students from private schools and concern over the low numbers of students from poorer families going to university.
