The Department for Education plans to actively review the student loan system operated by Student Finance England, the OfS Strategic Priorities Grant (direct funding that largely goes to support strategically important subjects), and its policy on international students.

That’s quite the policy portfolio – and you could be the one to take it on. DfE is advertising for a “Deputy Director of Future Student Finance, Funding, and International Students” on a permanent basis.

The Department already has numerous Deputy Director roles covering higher education issues. We have a:

• Higher Education Strategy and Portfolio Deputy Director
• Higher Education Analysis Deputy Director (quite new in post)
• Access Participation and Admissions Deputy Director
• Higher Education Quality and Regulation Deputy Director
• Student Funding Policy Deputy Director

Other than the access team (which reports into Hannah Sheehan’s Skills Journey team) all these teams answer to the Director of Higher Education Oversight – Patrick Curry – within Julia Kinniburgh’s Skills Directorate.

What’s on offer here seems to be a development of the Student Funding Policy role – outgoing incumbent Samir Prakash is off to a new job in delivery at the Department for Science Innovation and Technology. Prakash’s 18-strong team already had responsibility for funding, finance, and international students – so rather than a new role the new opportunity looks to be an evolution of work already underway. The outgoing post-holder describes the role as “one of the most intellectually stimulating roles in British education policy”.

The language of the job advert focuses on “reform” – giving the impression that change is at least on the cards across some of the portfolio. The loans end of things, for instance covers: tuition fees (I assume levels and caps), fee loans, student support (maintenance) loans, and repayments. This feels like a lot for a department where the minister has already been clear that there will be no fundamental reforms. Kinniburgh has overall responsibility for the relationship with the Student Loans Company but it would be reasonable to expect, with SLC relationship manager Courtney Brightwell sitting within their team, the new post-holder here to be making the running.

Another fun responsibility of this deputy director will be bringing together the Office for Students grant letter – a lengthy process that involves negotiation between other DfE teams, ministers, and the OfS itself. Though the bulk of this concerns strategically important subjects (and innovations like degree apprenticeships and higher technical qualifications) alongside the whole world of OfS capital, one interesting knot to unpick will be the various student premiums – supposed to be used for meeting the needs of non-traditional students they have in recent years been the means by which the failing maintenance system is propped up by hardship grants.

Elsewhere, fans of post-2010 higher education policy will delight to note that this role will have responsibility to fix alternative student finance. For more than a decade various ministers have been promising a Sharia-compliant alternative to the student loan system – with the most recent promise being that it is being considered alongside the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE). The fact that the LLE and the alternative student finance offer will be in the hands of two different people (and two different teams) suggest that these plans may have changed.

It is quite the job – and one that will play a key role in the financial future of the sector, and of students, in the years to come.