Banks should “step as much as the plate” and offer more loans to postgraduate students, the colleges minister has told a better education summit in London.
Expanding student loans for postgraduate study was not conceivable, David Willetts told the Guardian’s Way forward for Higher Education conference. He said professional and career development loans were the “classic device” for funding postgraduate study.
“There can’t be a universal loans system, and that i don’t need to discover us inadvertently ending up with student number controls for postgrads therefore,” Willetts said.
Career development loans of as much as £10,000 come in to students taking courses to be able to boost their job progression. The federal government pays interest while students are learning, and repayments start once the coed has completed their course.
Last year, banks gave career development loans to 44% of the 22,716 individuals who applied. Willetts said banks should “improve the spread” of loans available.
Funding opportunities for college kids shrank this year when research councils announced they might now not support those on taught master’s courses. Financial support for those on research master’s and PhD courses is to be cut severely.
Last month the Sutton Trust, an education charity, warned that postgraduate study was “the hot frontier of social mobility”. It recommended the introduction of targeted, state-backed loans to aid students from poorer or middle income backgrounds. The NUS, the Centre Forum (pdf) and university groups have also recommend proposals.
Willetts said students should see tuition fees as “a flow of payments via the tax system instead of doing speculative calculations about calculations of debt”. Postgraduate application rates may be monitored to evaluate the impact of cuts to analyze council grants.
Willetts said universities should work to enhance the standard in their teaching as opposed to focusing exclusively on research. “There are various committed teachers, and plenty students have good experiences at universities, but from the national student survey it’s clear that feedback is the realm where students are less satisfied.”
However, the drive to enhance student experience was at odds with academics’ priorities, he suggested. “Whilst you examine academics’ perception of what drives promotion, they do not feel teaching is being promoted in same way as research, and that’s something i need to vary.”
