After dramatic changes to student finances seen at undergraduate level in 2012, the beginnings of an analogous upheaval for postgraduates might be at the cards in 2013.
Concerns had been growing in regards to the knock-on effects of this year’s leap in undergraduate tuition fees to as much as £9,000, with the government’s social mobility adviser, Alan Milburn, warning that it might probably prove “a social mobility time-bomb”. He predicts that many could be unwilling to tackle more debt for postgraduate study.
Already, the percentage of British students progressing to postgraduate level within two years of completing a primary degree is one of the lowest in Europe, ranked with Kazakhstan and Andorra.
But it’s also difficult to gauge what precisely the effects of upper undergraduate fees should be. Mark Ormerod, pro-vice-chancellor (research and enterprise) at Keele University, says: “In a single sense students have less of a debt because they don’t seem to be paying up front. So one doesn’t understand how people will respond. What is going to also happen is postgraduate courses will attract a more robust desirability – a more robust premium in relation to having added value above only a standard degree.”
Certainly, the worth of a postgraduate degree hasn’t ever been higher. A report in October by the upper Education Commission, a cross party group of MPs and representatives from business and academia, found that postgraduate qualifications were increasingly becoming a demand for most professions, while such higher-level skills and data were now recognised as necessary to a country’s competitiveness.
As a result, the commission recommended introducing a loan scheme for postgraduates. A month later, the National Union of scholars published plans for a scheme during which the coed Loan Company would make available as much as £6,000 a year for postgraduates, repayable in keeping with income. The better Education Funding Council for England can also be looking into the prices of postgraduate taught master’s programmes and considering new the way to fund them from 2015, with an initial report due out in April.
Meanwhile, most graduates are forced to fund further studies through personal or family savings and part-time work. Some receive backing from one of many UK’s seven Research Councils, which supply a limited collection of studentships across more than a few subjects. Those studying teacher training, social work or most medical or healthcare courses would be eligible for presidency bursaries and a number of grants and scholarships also are available through charities, trusts or even individual sponsors. Furthermore, many universities provide their very own bursaries, often to compete for the very best graduates.
Newcastle University offers about 150 awards for international postgraduate students, starting from £1,500 to £9,000, and has noticed a considerable increase in applications for these scholarships this year. All self-funded postgraduates who’ve already studied for an undergraduate degree at Newcastle also are eligible for a 20% fee discount.
While the university doesn’t yet offer scholarships specifically for home students, this may soon change. Emma Hope, student financial adviser at Newcastle University, says discussions are actually underway about identifying possible sources of funding for non-research based “taught” postgraduate students for 2014. “There’s an acknowledgement that there’s a difficult funding position for these postgraduates,” she says.
Keele offers all its undergraduates who decide to go directly to do a taught postgraduate course on the institution £1,000 off the costs, as long as they aren’t on a course for which other financial support is out there. It also offers lots of bursaries for research postgraduates and has seen numbers of analysis postgraduates soar to that end.
A competitive market
“As a research-led university we wish to have a colourful postgraduate population and what we’ve in place appears working rather well for us,” says Keele’s Ormerod. “Recruitment of home postgraduates is amazingly a competitive market, especially with government caps on home undergraduates.”
At Kingston, as much as eight postgraduate scholarships are offered annually to UK and EU students. These award 50% off the costs of a one-year full-time or two-year part-time master’s programme, or £3,000, whichever is bigger.
Rachel Ellis, who’s completing an MA in Human Rights and Genocide Studies, says the award has enabled her to hide among the extra expenses of living abroad that her degree entailed, in addition to allowing her to make valuable contacts through meeting donors and alumni.
Had she not had the scholarship, she says, things would has been tough since the intensity of postgraduate study makes it difficult to do paid work mutually.
“i used to be definitely even more aware going into undergraduate study of the prices from the start,” she says. “For postgraduates it’s a lot more ad hoc, and so tougher.”
