The Report of the Augar Review investigating the future of post-18 education funding has finally been published. The Review was motivated by two factors. On the one hand, this was Theresa May’s desperate response to Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to scrap university tuition fees and to bring back the Education Maintenance Allowance that David Cameron and George Osborne abolished in 2010. On the other hand, it was an attempt to address the growing impact of student loans on government finances given that they now account for almost £120 billion worth of debt.
Augar’s proposals are bad news for the sector even though they have been dressed up as progressive in some ways - lowering tuition fees for students to £7500 from the current £9250, calling for better funding for Further Education, providing a “lifelong learning loan allowance” of some £30,000, reducing interest rates for loans while studying (but not afterwards) and re-introducing a maintenance grant for the most disadvantaged students. But they are far from progressive and will do nothing fundamentally to address rising levels of student debt and to overcome the barriers for the most disadvantaged to access Higher Education.
First, the proposals lower the threshold at which students start paying back their tuition fee loans (from nearly £26k to £23k) and extend the repayment term from 30 to 40 years. If you're rich and can pay it off all at once, then no problem; for most people, however, this simply means that, even with lower fees, they could well be paying more over the lifetime of the loan. This is the very definition of a regressive move.
