Funding student mobility: report for HEPI

My report  Whose to Lose?: Citizens, institutions and the ownership of higher education funding in a devolved UK  has just been published by the Higher Education Policy Institute.   The report takes the debate about the Welsh portable fee grant as it starting point, but moves on to ask wider questions about the funding of student of mobility, within UK and Europe, and to reflect on how the post war commitment to student mobility is being affected by devolution.   It identifies for a number of policy issues for each of the devolved nations and for the UK as whole.

For Scotland the report highlights that this is currently the only part of UK piloting portability of grant and loan to the EU, but that take up  of this scheme has so far been very low (7 students out of provision for 500).  It notes that the flat-rate SAAS fee of £1,820 is not currently portable out of Scotland and suggests that this is looked at again, so that low-income students leaving Scotland to study elsewhere in the UK are no longer faced with the highest debt of any group of UK students.

Some coverage here so far: THES,  WonkHE.