One of the first questions at this evening’s Big, Big Debate with young people in Glasgow broadcast on the BBC was about tuition fees.
Much of the subsequent discussion turned on general public finances. However, Patrick Harvie MSP made a strong statement on fees, pinning his political credibility on never voting for tuition fees in the future. He expressed his support for free tuition and his dismay at the prospect that students could face “£20,000, £30,000 or £40,000” in debt in order to do a degree. He described that as “a scandal”.
Ruth Davidson MSP argued that reductions in college places was a consequence of maintaining free tuition. However, as ever, grants were absent from the discussion. [Update: the BBC have released the results of a questionnaire filled in beforehand, in which tuition fees were identified by the audience as the most important issue for 16 and 17 year olds. 97% mentioned these. However, this looks very possibly to have been from a list provided to them, so young people may have been pushed towards tuition fees as the only vehicle for expressing concern about student funding more generally. In the absence of knowing if student debt or grants was on the list, we cannot be sure.]
Yet with Scotland now offering much the lowest level of student grant in the UK, those young people at the SSE Hydro this evening who come from families in the bottom third or so of the income distribution are now expected by the Scottish government to incur well over £20,000 in student loan debt, in order to do a degree. This is more than is expected of those further up the income scale, many of whom will in practice be able to leave university with little or no debt at all.
As debt goes, student loans with their subsidised interest, earnings-related repayments and 35 year write-off (in Scotland – it is lower in the other nations) are pretty much as good as it gets. But anyone defending the current system needs to realise that a country cannot issue over £400 million in student loans each year without many of its students borrowing large amounts and to acknowledge that we have decided in Scotland, as in no other part of the UK, that this borrowing should fall disproportionately on those who start out from the poorest homes.
Further evidence that free tuition continues to dominate any discussion of student funding in Scotland comes from the report of a BBC-organised panel debate today.
The broadcast is not yet available, but the BBC reports that
Scotland’s deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she will never support bringing in tuition fees for Scottish university students.
The SNP politician said her party would “always protect free education because it is one of the most important things any government can ever protect”.
As ever, fees are the issue and there does not appear to have been any parallel commitment to restoring grants at low incomes, on the lines of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech of 2006 (emphasis added):
Our higher education system, today, is predicated on the accumulation of debt. … In 1999, average student loan debt was £2,500. Bad enough you might think. But, today, the average debt owed to the government is more than £11,000 and rising. Why is that a problem? Firstly, because it impedes access to education. For many people in Scotland – particularly those from low income backgrounds – the very idea of incurring debts of that magnitude is a reason not to go to university. …a system that prices anyone out of education in that way is simply not acceptable. … you don’t have to stop and think for very long to realise that a graduate with £11,000 or more of debt will find it much harder than one without to buy a home, start a business or save for their retirement. The fact that a young person’s freedom of choice can be restricted by debts owed to the government for their education is anathema to our belief in free education. … …Firstly, we will get rid of the graduate endowment …An SNP government will abolish tuition fees. Secondly, we will introduce grants to replace loans. The support that government gives to students to help them with their living costs should not be repayable in the same way as a credit card debt or bank loan.…. [Thirdly] An SNP government will write off the accumulated debt still owing to the Student Loans Company by Scottish domiciled students.”
Since 2006, as detailed elsewhere, grants have been considerably reduced from the levels inherited by the SNP administration in 2007 (see here), while total student loan debt in Scotland is set roughly to have trebled over the period since 2008-09 (see figure 1: here). Expected debt levels for poorer students graduating from university are now more than double the £11,000 quoted above.
So this evening’s debate was a missed chance, because the point that someone with a large student debt will find life financially harder than someone with little or no debt remains a good one: yet the Scottish system uniquely now expects those from the lowest income homes to leave university with the highest debts.
This post argued that there was evidence that the Scottish Government’s frequent use of the phrase “ability to learn, not ability to pay” to identify what is distinctive about the Scottish system was leaving people with the false impression that students elsewhere in the UK have, in effect, to scrape their fee money together with no state help, before they can get through the door of a university. In passing, that impression is reflected in a recent household leaflet associated with the referendum campaign: the leaflet is not available on-line, but draws largely on the text of this website.
Although the implication of the phrase has been clear, the Scottish Government has stopped short of saying in terms that entry to higher education in other UK jurisdictions relies on “ability to pay”.
However, this has now changed. On BBC Scotland on 19 August, the Cabinet Secretary is reported to have said (emphasis added):
Scotland is the only country in the UK to ensure young people, our workforce of the future, can go to university based on ability, not the ability to pay.
Yet students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Wales can all take out a government student loan for the full cost of their fees. Yes, they will have to pay the money back, if they earn enough later, so “willingness to borrow” is an issue – but “ability to pay” implies the ability to … well, pay in the first place. All across the UK the state takes care of that. Indeed that’s why for students in England there is such concern about the long-term viability of the new arrangements, as the Scottish Government ministers have been known to point out.
Further, the most recent UCAS statistics show Scotland with the slowest growth since 2010 in the “entry rate” for students from “POLAR2 Quintile 1”, the group UCAS uses as an indicator of progress in widening access. To anyone following the numbers, that would by itself be a strong indication that “ability to pay” is not an issue in the other parts of the UK, compared to Scotland.
Indeed, ironically, where “ability to pay” does come in – in the amount of upfront help the state offers towards living costs to low/middle income families – Scotland does worse for students living away from home (who face the highest costs) than one or other, and sometimes both, of England and Wales, particularly for those with incomes between £33,000 and around £50,000. More on that is included at page 12 onwards here.
Happily for the Cabinet Secretary, his interviewer didn’t appear to be alert to any of this. Nor, as the previous post argued, does it seem likely it will be challenged after the event by anyone in Scotland with standing in the system.
Perhaps the Welsh Assembly Government may catch it on iPlayer and feel moved to write and point out how its students have full non-means-tested access to government loans for the first £3,685 of their fees and receive grant for all the rest. It could add that its living cost support package for those away from home is more generous for the bottom two-thirds or so of the income distribution than Scotland’s, except for a group with incomes between around £29,000 and £32,999. It might add that its student grant at low incomes is several times more generous, its total debt levels lower for many graduates from the poorest homes and how on the latest UCAS figures,since it has seen a much higher rise in the entry rate for the “POLAR2 Quintile 1” group (37% versus Scotland’s 12%).
On experience to date, that seems marginally more likely than anyone with any kind of formal role in higher education, the media or politics in Scotland feeling the urge to contradict the Cabinet Secretary on this point.
Quick link to an interesting piece analysing data, over time and comparative with England, about attitudes to free tuition in Scotland.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/john-curtice-tuition-fee-policy-far-from-popular-1-3521000
The piece notes
support for the principle of free tuition … according to the most recent reading, taken in 2013, stands at little more than a quarter (26 per cent) – though this represents something of a turnaround after dropping to just 20 per cent in 2010.
The most popular option over various surveys is mean-testing for fees.
It really ought not to be so hard to have a decent debate about all aspects of student funding, not least the disproportionate debt burden on the poor, in Scotland.
Much of the material on this site compares the situation of “poorer students” or “students from low income backgrounds” to that of “students from better off homes”.
Discussing this on-line or face-to-face brings out how subjective people’s definitions are of what it means to be well-off. So, for example, I was asked recently what the typical debt was for a student whose family was “in the middle” of the income distribution, by the parent of a teenager. I realised later that that must be where they felt their family to lie. Knowing their jobs, I can make a reasonable guess that they have a gross annual household income of at least £90,000. In a similar way, recent below the line comments on rising student debt brought out that some at least would regard “poorer” students as including those above the point where grant runs out, ie £34,000: a few such comments are included at the foot of this post.
This post considers what sort of income places a student’s family into, say, poorest quarter to third and what into, say, the top quarter to third of the population.
Free school meals
Free school meals data is one way into this question. 18.8% of children in Scotland qualify for free school meals. This in essence requires families to be on benefits. This means roughly one-fifth of children come from households with incomes which are often likely to be well below £20,000.
Educational Maintenance Allowance
EMA is payable to young people aged 16-19 in full-time education in school or college (excluding HE) who come from households with a gross income of around £20,000 or less (just over £22,000 for families with more than one child). In 2012-13, 35,500 young people claimed EMA. Of all the school pupils aged 16-19 years old in Scotland, 34% (23,335) received an EMA payment in 2012-13. So, to be in the poorest third or so of those at school between 16 and 19 requires a household income below around £20,000 to £22,000.
Student grants
In 2012-13, over two-fifths of Scottish students supported by SAAS came from households which declared an income of less than £30,000. Given that declaring an income was necessary to claim grant, and grant was available up to just below £33,000, the incentive to declare income below that level will have been high. Removing mature students from these figures, to concentrate on the group of students still dependent on their parents, makes a large difference. That suggests one-third of young students come from households below around £30,000.
It is difficult to differentiate the student population by income at higher levels, as the detailed income data becomes too incomplete, but in England and Northern Ireland, which both provide grant up to around £42,000, we know that some 40% of all potentially entitled students are means-tested out of grant, while in Wales, where grant is available up to just over £50,000, 31% are, implying that a household income of just over £50,000 would be enough to place a student into the top 30% of the distribution. If figures for young students alone could be extracted, £50,000 would be more likely to be enough to be in the top 40 to 50%.
General data on income
Other useful information comes from Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland, the most recent version of which was published on 1 July, covering 2012-13. This document is also helpful in allowing an assessment not only of what it means to be a relatively low-income household, but also of how relatively well-off people are, further up the scale.
This useful source of evidence on income distribution shows that the median net household income in Scotland in 2012-13 (ie after deducting any tax and including benefits, and before deducting housing costs) was £23,000. [Note: All the references below use the “before housing cost” figures.] The document adds: “A couple with no children with a combined income of over £35,200 (after tax and benefits) would be in the highest income 20 per cent of the population.”
These figures are based on income information gathered from whole households and show at what income thresholds the population divides into deciles (ie the poorest tenth, the next poorest, up to the richest tenth). To recognise that households vary in size, the analysis provides these figures scaled up or down for different household compositions – so someone living in a single person household, for example, is deemed to be at the median at a lower household income than someone living as part of a couple, or a family.
As a result, we can all get a reasonable estimate of where we sit on the income scale, after taking household size into account. See the full table here. That’s an exercise anyone with an interest in understanding these issues might want to do, for a more metaphorical ice-bucket challenge – remember to use your net income after tax. A bit more work is needed to read the figures for households with a number of children other than two but, briefly, for an extra child under 14 add an additional 20% and an extra adult or child over 14 add an additional 33%. A full explanation of these weightings is given here.
The table below is an extract from the table linked above, for a couple with two children (one under 14, one 14 or over) and for a single parent with the same. It shows in each case what net household income it would take: to fall into the bottom three income deciles of the population; to be at the median; and to be in the top three deciles by income, ie the bottom 30%, the mid-point and the top 30% of of the population by income. The analysis notes that the thirty per cent of the population with the highest incomes account for 51% of total income; the bottom 30% for 14%.
| Single person with children | Couple with children aged 5 and 14 | |||
| aged 5 and 14 | ||||
| Annual net income | Annual net income | |||
| Lowest 10% below | 13,800 | 17,600 | ||
| Lowest 20% below | 17,800 | 22,700 | ||
| Lowest 30% below | 20,900 | 26,600 | ||
| Scottish median income | 27,600 | 35,100 | ||
| Highest 30% above | 35,700 | 45,500 | ||
| Highest 20% above | 42,300 | 53,900 | ||
| Highest 10% above | 53,100 | 67,800 | ||
Source: Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland
The next table shows what happens when these figures are grossed up for tax and national insurance (rough calculations, by this author), to get them onto the same terms as student support thresholds.
The grossing up assumes all income is taxable. For the top deciles, that should be a safe enough assumption. At the median and below, untaxed income through benefit will be more relevant: so the figures are likely to over-estimate how much pre-tax income households typically have who fall into the lower deciles. Those figures are therefore shown below with a “<“. A range is shown for couples. Dual earning couples, both using their full personal allowance, are at the lower end of the range and single earner couples at the higher one.
| Single person with children aged 5 and 14 | Couple with children aged 5 and 14 | |||
| annual est pre-tax income | annual est pre-tax income | |||
| Lowest 10% below | <17,000 | <20-22,000 | ||
| Lowest 20% below | <22,000 | <27-30,000 | ||
| Lowest 30% below | <27,000 | <33-35,000 | ||
| Scottish median income | <37,000 | <46-49,000 | ||
| Highest 30% above | 50,000 | 61-66,000 | ||
| Highest 20% above | 61,000 | 73-81,000 | ||
| Highest 10% above | 80,000 | 93-105,000 | ||
Source: figures in table above, grossed up for tax and NI by author, using 2012-13 rates
Although these are rough estimates, they are good enough to be able to suggest that a couple with two children with a pre-tax income of around £50,000 is in the middle of the income range, while a similar couple with a pre-tax income of £65,000 or more is in the top 30% of the population by income.
To be in the bottom 30% of the population by income requires a pre-tax household income below somewhere round £30,000. There is a broad consistency here with the other data sets discussed above.
How this affects the debate about student support
An unpromoted classroom teacher earns between £25,000 and £34,000. An unpromoted fireman is on £28,000 to £34,000. Many junior civil servants will be on £25,000 plus. The starting salary for a bus driver is around £25,000. Many households with two working parents who both feel themselves to be relatively far down the pay range are nevertheless likely to be well towards the middle of the income distribution, or a bit above it, even if one only works part-time. A household with a single earner in any of these roles is more likely to be in the bottom third or so of the distribution. Meantime, many duel earner households in the top 30%, or even 10% by income, may have little sense of how well-off they are, compared to other people.
So can a family with £50,000 of gross earnings, or around £3,000 net a month, and one or two children, reasonably be described as being among the “not poor” and in that sense “better off”? Objectively, yes: they are in middle of the population by income and to a large minority of Scottish families would look comfortably off. But others relying on that amount to cover the basics of what, to them, is just normal life may still feel their budget is under pressure, particularly once they are paying towards one or more child’s rent and other bills at university. I have spoken to a number of people with a household income likely to be well (well) above this figure who have spontaneously expressed anxiety about money: school fees were relevant in only one case.
Indeed, by raising the minimum loan to £4,750 this year, the Scottish Government has probably done as much to win favour with current students’ families as it has with free tuition, by reducing the immediate call on their household finances. Some of the comments quoted below suggest as much. The irony is that for students living away from home, where it matters most, the systems in England and in Wales both still generally offer more upfront help for those with incomes below £54,000. In Scotland, students’ families’ “ability to pay” upfront is in fact still tested more strongly than anywhere else on the UK mainland (Northern Ireland is not so generous), particularly at incomes between £33,000 and around £45,000. More on that is included at page 12 onwards here.
Conclusion
Perhaps then it is not surprising that it is difficult to make people at middle to high incomes worry about the additional debt faced by poorer students when some, perhaps many, feel relatively stretched themselves (again, as the comments below suggest). The fear of tuition fees – particularly if these are wrongly thought likely to add to the immediate pressure on family budgets, as considered here – then plays into this sense of financial stress.
Indeed, reflecting on the gap between the reality and what appear to be common perceptions of income distribution might help explain why the changes brought in last year have been so uncontroversial.
Arguably, the Scottish Government has devised a system which has managed simultaneously to: use large amounts of student loan to relieve pressure on the public finances; win credit for softening immediate financial pressures, not least at middle to high incomes; generate no substantial resentment at extra borrowing which is seen to be welcome but optional, again not least at middle to high incomes; fuel insecurity at the prospect of any future change; and ensure that the effects of the most unavoidable heavy borrowing will only affect, and be felt only in the long-term by, the minority of students who started from the poorest homes. If the better-off bulk of the population is showing little interest in the situation of that last group, might it be partly because their own financial preoccupations often mean that they have difficulty perceiving themselves as being among the “well off”, in relative terms?
Clever politics in that case would have taken precedence over progressive policy, where the approach taken in Scotland might be reasonably described as relatively poor.
Footnote: Below the line comments about debt from this recent Guardian article, with notes by this author
There were many more comments under the article, but these ones directly considered the effects of the increase in student borrowing reported.
Scots students from poorer families used to take out credit card and bank loans in secret as their parents wouldn’t let them get student loans (debt averse and refused to provide their financial info to SAAS for their child) – the change in policy was designed, I am told, to break the link between parents and students and give all students access to a decent living cost loan.
[Note: withholding income details from SAAS would also prevent a student from receiving means-tested non-repayable grant, involving a counter-productive degree of debt aversion by low-income parents. The “poorer families” the poster describes therefore seem more likely to have come from households with incomes of £33,000 plus, the point at which grant ceases to be relevant, and therefore not from the lowest third of the population by income.]
I think the best explanation for this may be that the loan available to students increased this year. For my first three years at uni I received approx £1000 per year in loan, as this was related to how much my parents earned. For my final year (2013/2014) the system changed and I was instead allowed to take out a maximum of £4500, which I (along with most of my other working class friends) did take out. While it’s meant I’m in more debt, the increased loan allowed me to quit my 20 hour a week job and focus on my studies.
[Note: to be restricted in the previous three years to a student loan of £1000 would have required a household income of at least £61,000, implying that a family towards the top third of the income distribution was not providing enough to prevent their child from having to work the hours quoted. The poster appears to be identifying as working class, suggesting a further complexity: that family occupations and cultural identity may sometimes obscure to people their relative affluence. Debt as a positive choice is also well-illustrated in this case.]
There’s a perfectly simple explanation for this. SAAS has changed its awarding system so that, rather than receiving a prejudged means tested loan, students can choose to receive up to the maximum available if they wish …
[Note: this will only appear true from the perspective of someone above £33,000 – below that figure additional means-tested loan is still available].
… I know several who have taken that option. I’d certainly have liked the option myself, as my paltry living costs loan was near pointless and expected a far larger burden of support than my parents could ever have afforded.
[Note: it’s impossible to know how large this person’s loan was or when they studied, but in 2012-13 living cost loans were still worth at least £3,000 a year at incomes below £47,000, and this pattern had been settled for some time, so the poster seems likely to come from a household in the middle of the income distribution or above.]
My eldest had a reasonable amount of loan/grant given as family income was not great during his first two years. However it went down considerably during his last two years when parental income improved but we still struggled to help him out. My youngest applied to SAAS this year and I was happier that he could ask for a loan and retain some form of independence from his parents.
[Note: a good example of a middle/higher income family comfortable with their children taking on debt, provided it relieves pressure on the family budget, and also of John Hills argument about the effect of withdrawing means-tested support.]
As with a previous article, there were no comments posted which could be identified as being from Scottish students (or their families) falling into the group affected by grant reductions.
A principal argument used by the Scottish Government (and others) in response to criticism, by this author and others, of the effect of its policies on poorer students is that its approach has the support of NUS Scotland: as here. The government has suggested in effect that the support of NUS Scotland means student funding arrangements in Scotland should be regarded as beyond challenge.
As a necessary response to that, this post considers the characteristics of NUS Scotland as an organisation, how these may influence the position it has taken and the implications of that for the debate as a whole. It argues that for purely structural reasons, NUS Scotland should be expected to focus on issues which serve the interest of the majority of its members, particularly those which offer immediate gains, while matters affecting the long-term interests of the poorer minority of students, whether in absolute terms or relative to the better-off majority, are more vulnerable to being overlooked. As will be seen, this is not a new situation or one unique to Scotland, but it is one which those outwith the student movement, in government, the press and elsewhere, ought to bear in mind when using NUS support as conclusive evidence that a policy is right.
Who does NUS Scotland represent?
It is an obvious point to make, if easily overlooked, that NUS Scotland is a body whose members elect its leadership to represent their interests. It is not a pure campaign group such as, say, Save The Children or the Child Poverty Action Group. So the position its leadership takes on any issue needs to represent, or at least not conflict with, the interests of the majority of its members, who are drawn from all students studying in Scotland.
In 2012-13, among the 131,520 full-time, mainly undergraduate, students supported by the Scottish Government in Scotland, and directly affected by its policies on student support, just 37% (48,785) were eligible for one of the two main means-tested bursaries. Some 13,000 EU students are included in the overall total, who are only entitled to fee support. Removing these from the figures increases the percentage of grant holders, but only to 41%. As mature students are disproportionately likely to claim grant, among young full-time Scottish undergraduates the proportion claiming grant is more like one-third. Further, students at university tend to come from higher income homes than those undertaking HE in an FE college. In other words, the majority of full-time Scottish students in higher education are still disproportionately drawn from the better-off parts of the population and this is particularly true of young people and especially young people at university.
A further significant number of Scottish students study part-time. In 2012-13 there were around 80,000 such students in Scottish higher education. It is likely that this group includes relatively few rUK, EU or international students. Scottish part-time students have an interest in fee policy (their fee support is means-tested), but are not eligible for grant. Therefore, among all Scottish students in Scotland, only around a quarter are likely to be affected by changes to grant.
Added to that, while the official statistics do not provide data on the share of total students by domicile, in 2012-13 one-quarter of entrants to HE in Scotland – some 35,000 – were from outside Scotland. Of non-Scots, some are directly affected by Scottish government decisions on fees (some EU and rUK undergraduates) but none by its approach to maintenance funding.
In total there were 278,000 students in higher education in Scotland in 2012-13. Less than one-fifth were affected by reductions to student grants: such reductions are irrelevant to the better-off, post-graduates, part-timers, rest of UK students, EU students and international students.
NUS Scotland membership, particularly its voting members, will not necessarily mirror the student body as a whole. However, even if they come predominantly from Scotland and the rest of the UK, it is very unlikely that grant is relevant to the majority of active NUS members. Curiously, defending the changes in October 2013 NUS noted that only a minority (one-fifth, as it happens) of students were mainly concerned about reducing debt, with the majority more interested in having more to live on. It would have been interesting to have seen that result broken down by income.
NUS Scotland’s priorities
In relation to higher education student support, the issues given priority by NUS Scotland in recent years have been maintaining free tuition and reducing student hardship, that is, improving students’ total immediate spending power, through the combined value of living cost loans and grants.
NUS Scotland has worked hard to raise awareness of the immediate financial pressures facing students. By 2012, the value of total upfront living cost support in Scotland had fallen well behind levels in England and Wales, creating real “ability to pay” problems for low and middle income families, and those students from better off families who, for whatever reason, were not supporting their children. The 2013 changes here saw significant increases in the value of upfront support which in the short-run have benefited almost all Scottish undergraduates, including those at middle and upper incomes. More details here. Campaigning on hardship, in other words, has provided immediate advantages to most of its Scottish members and probably strikes a chord with many non-Scots.
Free tuition also appeals across the income range, particularly when considered in complete isolation from its implications for wider spending on student support. It embraces the interests of:
- Scottish domiciled full-time undergraduates, with free tuition
- non-UK EU undergraduate students, also with free tuition
- part-time undergraduate students, for whom tuition fees are means-tested and where NUS Scotland has successfully lobbied for more students to be brought within the means-test
- undergraduates from the rest of the UK, whose fee levels are also determined by the Scottish Government, albeit that Scottish Ministers have argued they have no alternative but to copy policy south of the border for this group.
NUS Scotland has also expressed concern at the level of fees for overseas students. So this again is a policy with very wide potential appeal. Indeed, at UK level, the NUS has suffered significant challenges to its authority as the voice of students, because of perceptions that it has been too weak on tuition fees. Grants do not have the same rallying effect, as their absence from this recent letter signed by a large number of student representatives from across Scotland and England (though curiously not, at first sight, any from Wales or Northern Ireland) demonstrates, once again.
This sort of observation about NUS is not new. In 1999, Ben Jackson, the former President of the NUS in Cambridge, wrote this piece in the THES, saying:
The proposal to scrap grants, cheerfully accepted by both the Labour party [Note: then in power at Westminster] and the National Union of Students, has largely avoided critical scrutiny, since it has been lost in the brouhaha about tuition fees. The absence of public debate has turned out to be politically convenient for everyone concerned except, that is, for students from poorer backgrounds, who will shortly be £10,000 in debt, nearly £3,000 more than those from middle and higher income groups, despite their much heralded exemption from fees.
As well as questions of how many students are affected by particular policies, there’s a question about when effects are felt. Addressing hardship has an immediate, short-term impact: the loan repayment comes much later. While loan-funded fees have a long-term impact, they are wrongly believed by some (possibly many in Scotland, see here) to have an immediate impact on household finances.
Despite research evidence that school-age pupils, particularly those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, are relatively debt averse, there is evidence from the NUS and others that short-term financial considerations outweigh concern about the longer term effects of student debt, for students actually in higher education. In below the line comments on recent press articles, some students (probably from above the grant line, and therefore from middle to high incomes, on the basis of the details they provide) have welcomed the extra living cost loan, because of the short-term benefits.
These factors are enough by themselves to explain why it would make sense for NUS Scotland to welcome a package of increased living cost support and free tuition, despite the associated reductions in the grant budget. Under the new arrangements, all full-time Scottish undergraduates are short-term winners, while the long-term losers are in the minority and very possibly more concerned at present with their immediate funding. If they are willing to borrow to make up the loss, they will not feel the effects for years and indeed may never realise that they are paying a substantial penalty for having started out poor: it will never be obvious.
This, emphatically, is not intended to suggest that the NUS leadership in Scotland has not been genuinely committed to the policies it has promoted on hardship or fees. The enthusiasm expressed in the communication sent to its members in August 2012 celebrating the changes is no doubt genuine. As the email – emphasis in original – (see here NUS email 22 August 2012) puts it:
These financial increases will come on line from September 2013, and will benefit every Scottish student studying a higher education course in a university or college, that could be over 120,000 of our members, every single year. ….Take some time today to celebrate and reflect on what a huge win this is, one that will fundamentally change the lives of so many of our members. … Today is a great day for the student movement in Scotland, so take some time to savour it.
It did also note:
There is always the potential for us to argue to get more money into students pockets, and for more of this money to come in the form of non-repayable grants.
but was silent on the fact that the changes it described were going to mean less of the money coming in the form of grants for the time being.
Thus, giving priority to issues where it could show its work benefited the majority of students, and concentrating on the short-term implications, led to a point where the replacement of many millions of pounds of grant with loan for those at lower incomes – many of whom were already part-way through their course and saw their grant fall by a thousand pounds or more a year – did not even merit a brief, regretful mention in NUS’s communication with members. The NUS did provide members with the new figures for grants and loans which were absent from the government press notice of the same date and not formally published until some time later (see this article from October that year), although, as the quote above shows, these were described without qualification as representing “financial increases”.
Although NUS Scotland has recently begun to refer more to grants, as here, its statements about these remain relatively cautious, general and aspirational. It has not argued urgently for any specific increase, such as raising overall grant levels enough to mean that poorer students do not have to borrow more than those from better off homes, just to obtain their basic package of support, or simply restoring the most recent round of reductions.
Crucially, NUS Scotland appears to accept that ring-fencing some £900 million a year to fund 100% contribution-free tuition is affordable in the current financial climate, but finding less than £100 million in additional grant in order to avoid basing the system on long-term debt inequality, is not. In theory, it should be possible for NUS to promote decent levels of grant with equal vigour to free tuition, without jeopardising its commitment to either. That it has not chosen to do so suggests that it sees the need to make a choice, and the choice it makes is to regard higher debt for the poorer minority of students as preferable to any of the alternatives.
What this means for the debate about student support
NUS Scotland will always be the most important body outside government to involve in any debate about student support, with an important role to play in policy development. However, its dynamics as an organisation mean that it will not necessarily assign particular priority to protecting the long-term financial interests of the poorest minority of students, particularly if there is any risk at all that doing so might come into conflict with those of the better-off majority of its members.
The position is complicated by many of its better-off members possibly not feeling as though they come from particularly privileged backgrounds. A household income of £50,000 may put you well into the top half of domestic undergraduate students by income and even further up the scale in the population as whole (EMA data brings this point home): but the son or daughter of one full-time and one part-time classroom teacher may well find that hard to believe.
If there are other bodies outside government which are concerned about the skewing of student loan debt towards poorer students, they may be hesitant about contradicting the NUS position. It is equally possible however that there are no such bodies in Scotland. It is still not widely understood that Scotland – uniquely in the UK – has a problem with a regressive distribution of student debt and indeed that many of its poorest students would do better under the sort of lower-fee/high grant system adopted in Wales.
Many still seem content to believe that free tuition, of itself and automatically, offers the best model for social justice in higher education and even that charging fees would cause the numbers going to university from poorer backgrounds to fall (even though the experience from the rest of the UK simply does not support that: the application rate from disadvantaged students is at record levels in all parts of the UK). As long as NUS Scotland itself takes that line (as in this briefing from February 2013 NUS briefing Feb2013: NB the reading of the IFS study quoted is contestable, as discussed here), other bodies will be likely to keep out of the debate.
That leaves the question of who within the structure can be expected to argue against building the Scottish system on – in effect – taxing more heavily the future earnings of the minority of higher education students who started from poorer backgrounds. For the reasons outlined above, it probably is not reasonable to expect NUS Scotland to carry out that role. Opposition parties in Scotland have made the point. However, without a single organised voice from outside the political process – from “civic Scotland” – making the argument for long-term equity, protests in the political arena have tended to have little impact.
In the absence of an effective external lobby group on this point, the responsibility of worrying about long-term distributional equity and unfair effects on the poorer minority might be expected to fall on government. While the Scottish Government presumably understands the effects of what it is doing, its responses so far do not suggest that it regards these as problematic.
So any contrary account of how the Scottish system works continues to be dismissed out of hand because – as one recent below the line poster put it, almost plaintively:
Lucy forgets to add the bit about NUS fully supporting this … And were even involved in developing the policy! It is a fair system!
But it isn’t that simple. Students are not a homogenous group who do not all come from similar financial backgrounds and have the same financial interests. The NUS does a heroic job looking for the common ground, but there are limits to what can be expected of it. As a result and as recent events demonstrate, there is more to assessing the merits of student support policy than establishing whether it has NUS support. Wider recognition of that would be a further step towards achieving a better quality of debate and, more to the point, fairer outcomes in Scotland.
Tomorrow clearing will open for universities in the rest of the UK.
As this previous post notes, opportunities through clearing are now pretty limited for Scots in Scotland.
However, for those willing to take on the extra debt, there will be a far wider range of courses available south of the border [Update: as reported here, for example].
For many, the prospect of high debt for fees will be enough to make these opportunities too unattractive to consider. However, there is evidence that among young Scots and their parents, there is some confusion about the financial implications of going south. This very useful study of young people’s attitudes towards tuition fees and debt by Sarah Minty of Edinburgh University notes,
we found that Scottish interviewees’ understanding of the English tuition fee system was often inaccurate. Pupils in a number of the Scottish schools appeared to view the English tuition fees as an upfront fee, and there were a number of references to their families ‘who would not be able to afford to pay £9,000 a year’.
The Scottish Government’s rhetoric of “ability to learn, not ability to pay” – a phrase absolutely central to its account of what distinguishes the Scottish system and always included in any public statement about student funding – seems to have left the impression on some that the cost of fees outside Scotland has to be met directly from families’ pockets: otherwise, people might reasonably ask, why would “ability to pay” be mentioned? Although the Scottish Government also sometimes refers to high debt for fees, there is nothing in the presentation to prevent this being taken to mean private debt.
The availability to all UK students of dedicated, income-contingent government loan, as is used for funding living costs, to cover the whole upfront cost of fees and, in effect, defer their impact, appears not always to be not clearly understood in Scotland. Anecdote is a poor substitute for proper research, but speaking to others and reading comments on-line, adds to this impression.
That there are also institutional fee waiver schemes and bursaries for low-income students is also rarely mentioned. In addition, discussion of comparative costs usually overlooks that the £27,000 often quoted as the extra cost of fees needs to be set against shorter length courses in many cases, saving a year’s worth of living costs, which Scots will need to fund almost entirely through government loan, earnings, family funds or commercial debt, given their limited (in most cases, nil) access to grant.
A student studying for an honours degree in Scotland who lives away from home will need to fund some £30,000 to £40,000 of living costs over four years from various sources, with little or none of this coming in the form of non-repayable government cash. If they study for three years in the rest of the UK, they will take on government debt of £27,000 for fees (on some courses a little less), but will be likely to save thousands of pounds in living costs. This is before taking into account any access to fee waivers or bursaries provided direct by institutions south of the border to those at lower incomes, which may be worth anything from low thousands to (in the exceptional case of Oxford) over £20,000 in value over the course. [Update: there are also signs that financial benefits offered by some universities in England may be extending to all students: again, see here.] A shorter course also means entering the labour market a year sooner.
Indeed, for those who find the gap between total living costs and available government support hardest to fund, mainly those living away from home from lowish to middle incomes, a high-fee but shorter length course should mean less demand on their family’s immediate ability to pay, even though it increases their total student loan debt and repayments in the long term.
It is not in the interest of anyone in the Scottish system to correct any misunderstandings here. It suits the Scottish Government to portray the system in other parts of the UK in the least flattering terms possible. Universities in Scotland have no interest in encouraging young people to apply to counterparts elsewhere. NUS Scotland represents the interests of students in Scottish institutions: it doesn’t have in its membership prospective students and, given its rigorous opposition to fees, unsurprisingly tends to follow the government line on “ability to pay”, as here. Opposition politicians may well be wary of running any risk of being presented as defending, or harbouring ambitions for, £9,000 fees if they challenge the terms in which the Scottish system is presented, given that that charge has been levelled at them merely for challenging cuts to grants, as here. The Scottish press does not seem to see deconstructing the government rhetoric on this as falling within its remit.
The group most clearly motivated to explain how fee funding works in practice might be guidance teachers and those involved in widening access programmes: but even among this group there may be a hesitancy or discomfort about suggesting higher cost options than are available here, and possibly even sometimes an incomplete understanding of how the numbers work. Universities from England do have an interest in attracting good quality Scottish applicants and have sometimes tried to enter the debate.
It is not particularly helpful that the SAAS website states “If you don’t have the money to pay your fees at the start of your course, you can apply to us for a student loan to pay part or all of your fees.” Though this at least makes it clear that loan is available for fees, it does not clarify that for all those who in Scotland would qualify for free tuition, this loan can cover the full fee, and will be available without means testing. That last point was on the site last year, but for some reason has now been removed, though it is still included in the printed material, eg here.
It is impossible to test how far Scottish Government rhetoric rather than the actual implications of higher fees may have put off some people from applying – either through clearing or directly – to universities elsewhere in the UK. People who fully understand how the system works might well still choose to discount courses outside Scotland, even to the extent of not taking up higher education at all, rather than take on the additional debt. But, particularly given that how far the debt actually has to be repaid in practice will depend on future earnings, it is conceivable that more Scots might be inclined to take advantage of the further opportunities available in the rest of the UK if the funding implications were explained more clearly.
Not least as the number of places available is likely to grow faster south of the border than in Scotland over the next few years, and looking there might for some mean the difference between doing a degree or not going to university at all, it would be a great pity if any Scots were being discouraged from considering opportunities outside Scotland by the rhetoric rather than the reality.
Update: further evidence
Further examples of confusion over the issue of “ability to pay” seen since the piece above was originally posted.
This is Money (13 September 2014)
‘James is doing a five-year masters degree in chemistry at Edinburgh and if the tuition fees weren’t free he would not have been able to afford to follow that dream.’
Household leaflet distributed by Yes Scotland (September 2014):
Last year I met girls in England who want to study medicine, but are relying on scholarships because the fees are so high. I felt awful for them. The amazing thing about free tuition fees is that no matter what your background is, you can go to university and not have to worry about money.
Similar, but longer, text available on the associated website:
I’m so lucky that I can look forward to studying without having to worry about tuition fees. I worked in a respite centre in England last year and met lots of girls who want to study medicine, but because the fees are so expensive they’re relying on winning a scholarship to cover the costs. I felt awful for them.
The amazing thing about free tuition fees is that no matter what your family background, you can go to university and not have to worry about finding the money [emphasis in original]
Compare that to up here where some of my friends from my football club just wouldn’t be able to go to university if they had to pay. The amazing thing about free tuition fees is that no matter what your family background, you can go to university and not have to worry about finding the money.
SAAS has published this useful guide to the rules governing student support in Scotland this year: SAAS guide 2014-15. This version is as downloaded at 10 August 2014.
For anyone interested in a detailed account of how the rules work, this is a good place to look.
The current debate on the future of Scotland is underlining that free tuition continues to be the issue of our times, as far as student funding is concerned, with fees, but not grants or debt, being aired in last week’s televised debate.
Free tuition continues to be presented as a paramount principle, trumping anything else – nothing, not even addressing the heavy skewing of student debt in Scotland towards graduates from the poorest backgrounds, is allowed to be as important, as is clear from recent government responses to specific questions about debt.
The primacy of free tuition is well-established, of course. Invited last year to debate in the Scottish Parliament the impact of grant cuts on poorer students, the Cabinet Secretary preferred instead to discuss the possibility that free tuition would end, with hair-raising consequences:
a massive erosion of the extraordinarily high standing and status of Scottish higher education …. [would] run the very substantial risk of undermining the whole of Scottish higher education… [and] will destroy Scottish higher education. (see here).
In practice, however, free tuition is already not always the over-riding principle in Scotland. It does not apply for:
- overseas students, where the principle of increasing numbers and giving universities the freedom to increase their income by charging fees at the market rate has greater priority – indeed, barriers to that raised by UK immigration policy are central to the higher education section of last year’s White Paper. Charging overseas students fees is common in countries where domestic students are exempt, but it is not universal: Norway and Finland currently charge no fees to overseas students, for example;
- students from the rest of the UK, where the principle of protecting the Scottish system from “fee refugees” takes precedence – again, a strong theme in the White Paper;
- Scottish students who go to study outside Scotland, where the principle of keeping Scottish funds within Scotland matters more than supporting young Scots to study where they choose (some may argue this is a legal issue – though not much attention has been devoted lately to that point);
- students taking most postgraduate degrees, studying for a second undergraduate degree and part-time students with incomes over £25,000, even if it is their first degree, where some other factor (affordability?) means that at best students can borrow for fees, just as they do elsewhere in the UK. A few postgraduate courses (eg teaching) attract full fee funding, but most do not. More on the detailed rules here.
In 2012-13, the Scottish Funding Council recorded that once all the overseas students, rUK students, post-graduates, second-time arounders and part-timers were included, there were 278,765 students in total in higher education in Scotland. That year, the Scottish government paid in full for the fees of 120,495 students, 43% of the total.
Of course, among the remaining 57% some will have been receiving full fee support from research councils, charitable trusts and other private and public sponsors. It is still clear however that charging fees is a thoroughly normal activity for Scottish higher education providers.
This means that in practice in Scotland the principle of free tuition is only over-riding for those students we regard as our own, who stay here and who tread the conventional full-time path, up to the point of achieving a first degree. Indeed, under previous study rules, those who undertook an HN on leaving school and after a break want to return to HE to do an undergraduate degree are not guaranteed support for all of the fee costs involved: it still pays to follow the conventional model, most used by those from more advantaged backgrounds.
This is all consistent with a view of university as an extension of the school system. But while the state school system is genuinely universal and open to all, not everyone wants to go to university and even not all those who do want to, can. A quarter of Scottish-domiciled 18-year olds who applied to university in 2013 were unsuccessful (Table 15 UCAS end of cycle report 2013 (pdf) (2185.6KB)).
Universities are something different from schools. There’s a continuity with education up to 18 and a decent debate to be had about the importance of that – but the analogy has its limits. This is already recognised in wider policy. For all its commitment to attracting fee-paying students from overseas, the White Paper, for example, does not suggest that state schools should be allowed to charge fees to, say, children who are sent from outside the EU to live with relatives here.
“Extension of school” thinking perhaps explains the acceptability of the household income test which applies still for part-time students, who are more likely to be entering HE late and to have started from more disadvantaged or disrupted backgrounds. Interestingly, the Eurostat analysis referred to here distinguishes between countries which provide free tuition only to full-time students and those which cover both types.
The straight-from-school model also perhaps explains why it is seen as unproblematic that postgraduate qualifications essential for entry into certain influential and potentially well-paid professions remain unfunded, a point on which the legal profession has lobbied.
This is relevant to the debate about grants and debt because the existence and apparent inviolability of free tuition is used persistently in Scotland to by-pass or dismiss scrutiny of the wider effects of student support policy and in particular the regressive distribution of student debt here. As long as that continues to be the case, it is fair to highlight that free tuition itself is already selectively applied (ie rationed) and not always the most important principle at stake.
Further, if free tuition is as essential to the ethos of the Scottish higher education sector as suggested by the Cabinet Secretary, with over half its students outwith the Scottish Government’s free tuition regime, the apocalypse outlined in his quote above is surely already hard upon us.
UCAS has published its initial figures for the number of students placed in higher education following the announcement of Scottish Highers results earlier this week. The figures provided by UCAS are for all Scots anywhere in the UK, all students in Scotland from anywhere and Scots in Scotland. From these can be extracted the separate figures for non-Scots in Scotland and Scots in the rest of the UK.
It’s important to stress that at this point in the cycle last year, only around three-quarters of students had been placed. Plenty can still happen. However, there’s an interesting trend apparent at least for now in the acceptance figures.
Amongst the groups for which we have data, the largest growth in accepted applicants is among non-Scottish applicants to Scottish universities (+7.2%) and Scots to the rest of the UK (+6.0%), the two groups subject to fees capped at £9,000 pa (except for non-UK EU students, who are entitled to free tuition, and non-EU overseas, who can pay fees in excess of £9,000). Scots in Scotland, who have free tuition, have increased by 4.4%.
Until the admissions cycle is complete, it can’t be said whether this pattern will hold and – as the table below shows – border crossers are much smaller in number than Scots in Scotland. The Scots in Scotland figure could yet rise and the others fall. At this point, it’s simply an interesting pattern to note, because it runs counter to what many would expect, and would be worth looking at again when the final figures UCAS are available.
Some growth has been built into the Scottish system for this year, but there are in effect now no number controls on the recruitment of non-Scots to Scottish institutions (again, except for non-UK EU students, whose numbers are still controlled) and number controls in England are loosening, although still in place. If this pattern does persist, one of the obvious questions would be how far tighter number controls for Scots (and non-UK EUs) in Scotland are having an influence.
It’s also possible that further growth in non-UK EU students receiving free tuition is contributing to the increase in non-Scots in Scotland, so some of the faster growth in that group could be attributable to the availability of free tuition for that group: the figures in their current form do not however allow that point to be looked at.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that a significant minority of Scottish HE applicants undertake HE courses (mainly HN) in FE colleges which do not use UCAS: this is a distinctive feature of Scottish HE, not found on the same scale in the rest of the UK. So the UCAS data does not give a complete picture of the total change in numbers accepted into HE here. It does though provide a reliable picture of what is happening at degree-level.
Technical note
The percentage change figures are not immediately obvious from the recent UCAS press notice. However, they are straightforwardly calculated from the data in that notice and the equivalent one issued last year. The table below shows the full figures. Those in bold are in this year’s press notice, those in normal type in last year’s and those in italics have been calculated from these by the author.
| 2013 | 2014 | % change | total change | |||
| 1 | All in Scotland | 28900 | 30350 | 5 | ||
| 2 | Scots in UK | 23430 | 24480 | 4 | 1050 | |
| 3 | Scots in Scotland | 22770 | 23780 | 4.4 | ||
| 2 less 3 | Scots in rUK | 660 | 700 | 6.0 | ||
| 1 less 3 | Non-Scots in Scotland | 6130 | 6570 | 7.2 | ||
On a few recent occasions the Scottish Government (SG) has been invited to respond to the findings detailed elsewhere on this site that funding arrangements in Scotland mean that the poorest students here face the highest debts, a situation not found anywhere else in the UK.
It’s worth bringing these statements together, as they form at present the most complete government response to the critique of the present Scottish system as unusually regressive. The most obvious point to make is that the Scottish Government persistently refuses to engage with the substance of the issue, although it never denies it.
The Cabinet Secretary was asked in the Education and Culture Committee on 29 April to comment on a quote, taken from material on this site: ““In Scotland, uniquely in the UK, graduates who started from poorer backgrounds are now expected to leave university with a higher debt, and therefore face a higher de facto tax on their future earnings”.
His response is quoted below in full, but with some notes:
I want to make two points about the latest analysis that has been provided by Lucy Hunter Blackburn, who seems to return to this issue again and again. First of all, it makes a number of very broad assumptions. For example, it assumes that the accrual of debt loan uptake in 2014-15 will be the maximum of each individual Scottish student’s eligibility [Note: I have simply used the same assumption as the SG makes in promoting its student support package, in particular the “minimum income”] which is not normally the case [Note: the SG has told me that it holds no data to support the Minister’s statement that loan uptake is not normally at the maximum: however analysis of the published figures shows that loan up take at lower incomes is relatively high, and higher than it is further up the income scale].
More seriously, the analysis fails to properly recognise the existence of free tuition [Note: the comparative analyses here include all forms of debt, for fees and living costs]. That is a very considerable issue, because it saves all Scottish-domiciled students having to pay sums of up to £9,000 per annum, unlike their counterparts in England, who must pay. That is a debt burden, and with free tuition there is a real saving that does not become a debt. That needs to be factored in.
I note that, in August 2012, the NUS called this
“the best support package in the whole of the UK”,
but Lucy Hunter Blackburn seems to find it difficult to cope with that view. When you take into account the fact that, as part of that package, student fees are not being borrowed, you suddenly realise that it is
“the best support package in the … UK”.
You cannot get round that, and I do not know why some people spend so much time trying to do so. It is a fact. [Note: this claim is analysed, and challenged, in detail here.]
A full response from me addressing the implied criticisms in the Minister’s statement is on the Committee’s website, under the 29 April papers here. The implication that the government should not have to endure any sustained critical analysis of its policy in this area is notable (for those with any interest in my motivation, see here). Most striking, however, is that there is no attempt to deny or defend that it is inherent in the design of current policy that a disproportionate share of student debt falls on poorer students in Scotland.
The SG also commented on the Guardian’s coverage of the regressive redistributional effects over time of SG student support policy. Reporting the SG response, the piece noted:
A Scottish government spokesman did not dispute Hunter Blackburn’s figures but insisted the funding package tried to make the costs of studying “more sustainable and easier to pay back in the longer term” and was the most straightforward of any in the UK.
“This analysis fails to properly recognise the hugely positive impact on students of the Scottish government’s commitment to providing free tuition,” he said. “In England, most students have no choice but to take out loans to cover fees of up to £27,000 over three years.”
A more recent piece on increased student borrowing got this response:
The Scottish government did not dispute Hunter Blackburn’s analysis, but said it was clear that Scottish students still had lower debts on average than others in the UK. A spokesman said the loans offered students more flexibility in how they supported themselves. In addition, 12,175 college students received educational maintenance allowances worth £8.3m in 2011-12.
These responses beg more questions than they answer: “more sustainable” for whom?; “easier to pay back in the longer term” compared to what? (not grant, clearly). In characterising English fee debt as “no choice” but Scottish debt as a form of “flexibility”, there’s a hint that living cost debt is somehow more optional. But that fails to reflect the the reality of borrowing by the poorest, whose behaviour shows much less evidence of “choice” than that of the better off – unsurprisingly.
There are the obligatory cross-border comparisons. The impression is given, not for the first time, that the general comparison with England, in particular, is far more important to government than issues of distribution within Scotland. Though in one case, only England and only fee costs are mentioned, in another (“lower debts on average than others in the UK”) the comparison is more complete: it appears either to be based on the annual borrowing differences cited in the article, which an extra year of study will remove, or on historic final debt, often used by the Scottish Government, a problematic measure the difficulty with which is explained here. There’s also an accurate, but in this context slightly baffling, reference to EMAs, but not to the much more significant spending on FE bursaries, where in fact the SG has a decent story to tell. Perhaps the contrast between bursary-based approach in FE and the loan-based one in HE is regarded as unhelpful.
Most significantly, there is no acknowledgement, but also no denial or defence, of the regressive effect of government policy in Scotland.
The approach already identified elsewhere on this site (“The focus is always on other things – absence of fees, comparisons with England, students’ immediate spending power, UCAS statistics.”) continues to be central to the response.
Nor do these lines appear to have been formulated in the expectation that they would be subject to any thoughtful reading. What does
loans offered students more flexibility in how they supported themselves
mean, on consideration? Selling possessions or taking out a commercial loan both offer “flexibility” compared to having nothing to spend at all. A government loan is a better deal than a commercial one. But compared to a grant, which is what this debate is about, the only flexibility a government loan offers you is the flexibility of spending money now rather than having it to spend later. As Nicola Sturgeon once put it: “a graduate with £11,000 or more of debt will find it much harder than one without to buy a home, start a business or save for their retirement”. Yet this gift of “flexibility” is being given predominantly to those who started poorest and are least likely to have access to family cash in later life. Orwell would have appreciated the turn of phrase.
This blog has just hit 4,000 views since it was set up last summer. A few hundred of these seem more likely to have been bots than real visitors (unless international interest in Scottish student debt is higher than I’d expect). But that’s still a step towards raising the profile of student grant and debt as issues, against the domination of tuition fees as the student funding issue of our time, in Scotland at least.
However, the limited impact of the news that students’ annual borrowing in Scotland has recently risen by well over 50% in a single year suggests that there’s still some way to go before we achieve the better debate hoped for here …
Adventures In Evidence 