House of Commons Library on student financial support

We’re huge fans of the House of Commons Library team, especially when it releases data alongside a particularly historically focused report.

Data on higher education student support finances going back to the days of Anderson and Robbins is incredibly hard to come by, so the chance not only to see a time series but also to have it indexed (to September 2024 prices) is not to be missed.

These represent the maximum full time undergraduate support (as a grant through to the early nineties and various combinations of grant and loan thereafter) available to a full time undergraduate student living away from home outside London. After devolution of student support in the 1990s it refers solely to the English system.

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As well as being a handy single source of references for the various convolutions that student support has passed through, this release also acts as a document of the wider context the changes. For instance, students could access benefits during most vacations up to 1986, and lost all entitlements (including to benefit support during the longer summer break) by 1990, which was the point at which grants declined and (mortgage-style) loans increased to compensate.

This was a big deal – 60 per cent of students claimed benefits during the summer in 1982-83. Without these changes baked in it looks as if the system suddenly became much more generous in 1990 – it did not.

Another trend has been increasingly stringent means testing based on parental household income. As the thresholds have remained static since 2012 the broadly stable value of the maximum package disguises the fact that less students were eligible for what is shown here, as both medium incomes and the minimum wage rose sharply during this period.

There are detailed charts within this publication covering the changing value of the assumed parental contribution, and how that differs from actual parental contributions. A part of this is because the maximum loan has never been linked directly to actual student living costs, not least because of the range of living options open to students, but this hides the fact that 29 per cent of students in 2021-22 received no income from parents or relatives, with just under half of the remainder receiving less than £1,000.

The publication notes:

“The cost of living has increased rapidly over the past year and while the government has provided measures to support the general population, many do not directly benefit students as they go to households on means tested benefits, pensioners and those who pay energy bills directly

And reminds us that the costs of living as a student have often grown faster than the more commonly understood cost of living: between 2011-12 and 2018-19 the cost of a room in purpose built student accommodation rose by 31 per cent, well above the 13 per cent inflation during this period.

It’s not the role of the Commons Library to make policy recommendations – it provides background information to inform parliamentary debates and committee hearings. But it is difficult to imagine that anyone could read this document and conclude that students are adequately supported.