Students condemn the scrapping of maintenance grants
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Version 0 of 1. Chancellor George Osborne has announced that the current maintenance grant is to be scrapped and replaced by a loans system. The changes will only affect students starting in September 2016, so if you are currently at university, or are planning to start later this year, you will still qualify for the current grant. The amount available to students as a loan will be higher than the grant, at £8,200, and you won’t have to pay it back until you are earning £21,000 a year. But with tuition fees also now set to rise in line with inflation, could this additional lump of debt be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and puts poorer students off going to university? We spoke to current university students as well as those set to become the most debt-laden graduates in Britain, to find out what they make of the reforms, and the importance of the maintenance grant. The message it sends is that you’re not welcome, and only the rich can go to university ‘Without a maintenance loan I wouldn’t have been able to go to uni’ Emilia Bona, 21, studying politics at Edinburgh University, is in her final year and says she could not have gone to university without a maintenance grant. She says: “If I didn’t have the maintenance loan I wouldn’t have been able to go to university. I don’t know what else I would have done, because it’s not like the alternatives are any good either. I’m studying politics and there’s no real apprenticeships or schemes that exist as an alternative. “I would have been denied the opportunity to better myself in the way I wanted to. You’ve got to weigh up the benefit of the degree, against the years of debt. And if I’d have had to pay back the maintenance loan as well I could not have done it. “It’s based on a philosophy that says if you’re poor you don’t deserve better. If I wanted to obtain something to increase my social mobility, I now can’t. The kicker for me is that if you’re in the group that qualifies for a maintenance loan it’s already difficult to go to university – and now it’s even harder.” ‘I might not be able to afford to go to university now’ Jade Dagwell-Douglas, 18, is in Northbrook College, had been hoping to study art at university. She says: “I feel gutted! It’s ridiculous the amount of money I’m going to end up owing. I still want to go to uni but now I’ll have to see if I can afford it. I might have to take a year off and try and get a full time job to save. “I think it’s completely unfair. I can’t help my situation and I can’t help that I’m in a low income family. I deserve the same chances that someone with a more privileged family gets. I haven’t got a set career in my head so uni would help me to figure that out, and give me more time and opportunities. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t go.” ‘Without a maintenance grant I would have had to stay at home’ Daisy-Mae Greenaway, 20, has just finished her second year studying journalism at the University of Westminster. She says: “I have the full maintenance grant and also a zero-hour contract job. There’s no way I could have done it without it, especially living in London. My loan wouldn’t have even covered the rent. My grant helps with rent, food, bills, everything. A lot of my friend’s loans don’t cover the rent either, but luckily their families can help cover the costs for them. “I definitely wouldn’t have been able to afford to go away to uni, I would have had to stay in Portsmouth. And even then my family wouldn’t have been able to support me, I’d have had to go straight into work. And that’s not what I wanted to do at all. It definitely makes me feel angry. I don’t think the value of my degree would have been worth that much debt.” Related: I relied on a maintenance grant at university. Its abolition is a distressing defeat | Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff ‘The message it sends is that you’re not welcome, and only the rich can go’ Freya Jeffries, 20, going into her third year studying English at Southampton University, has the full grant. She says: “My maintenance grant takes the stress away: worrying about money would really affect my studies and make me really stressed during term-time. I would have had to have work more and have more stress without it. I probably would have felt really distant from friends without it so it would have affected my social life as well. “The message it sends is that you’re not welcome, and only the rich can go. My younger brother may have to stay at a local university and stay at home if there are no maintenance grants.” ‘I’m a twin so there are two of us going to university. Expecting our parents to help us out wasn’t feasible’ Abbie Button, 20, about to go into her third year studying sociology at Warwick University, has a full maintenance grant. She says: “My maintenance grant has given me more security. I’m a twin so there are two of us going to university. Expecting our parents to help us out wasn’t really feasible. I moved away to university and I might have thought differently about where I went if I didn’t have the grant. Scrapping maintenance grants is taxing the poor. People will look at it and think they can’t afford to go to university.” ‘I lose sleep at night because of the stress of money’ Ellis Mallett, 20, is a second year history/international politics student at Manchester Metropolitan University. She says: Related: Don't rob working-class students like me of our grants “One of the main reasons I lose sleep at night is because of the stress of money and that’s with the maintenance grant. I can try and ignore the scale of the loans while at university, however it will come back to haunt me when I have a large amount of debt to pay back. My mum is always telling me that money should not be the cause of my stress, but I can’t help it. I have two more years of an undergraduate degree left. Prior to the election, the Conservatives didn’t mention plans to scrap the maintenance grant. It’s going to limit the ability for poorer teenagers to succeed.” Keep up with the latest on Guardian Students: follow us on Twitter at @GdnStudents – and become a member to receive exclusive benefits and our weekly newsletter. |