Students want more flexibility. Here’s some tweaks to deliver it
Jim is an Associate Editor at Wonkhe
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As Michael Salmon points out elsewhere on the site, all sorts of people have been telling the previous government that there are also no incentives for universities – there’s a set of fixed costs per student however many modules they’re on that are ignored in the policy’s design.
A lack of demand on the supply side and a lack of demand on the demand side means it feels like a huge waste of everyone’s time right now.
And there’s not even a proper maintenance proposal. Fees are to be chunked down by credit, but no such proposal has been made on maintenance.
The irony is, though, is that there is plenty of demand for all sorts of things that the LLE and a couple of associated tweaks could fix overnight.
Student enrols. A parent falls ill. The student wants to go from 60 credits this semester down to 45 so they can find time to go home more often. System says no – they’d lose maintenance as they’re no longer “full time”.
Student enrols. Runs out of money. Wants to go from 60 credits this semester down to 45 so they can find time to earn money to eat. System says no – they’d lose maintenance as no longer “full time”.
Student enrols. Disabled. Finds the intensity a bit much as the adjustments aren’t really in place. Wants to go from 60 credits this semester down to 45 so they can cope with it all. System says no – they’d lose maintenance as they’re no longer “full time”.
Student graduates. Wants to do a PGT, but can’t afford to go full-time and the time out from employment to go part-time isn’t sufficiently supported by the loan. System says no – and the LLE policy has always incongruously ignored PG.
Student enrols. Becomes a course rep. Passionate about connecting other students and building community on their course, but has a 20 hour a week job and a long commute. Wants to go from 60 credits this semester down to 45 so they can ace the role. System says no – they’d lose maintenance as they’re no longer “full time”.
Student enrols. Has a housemate with significant mental health problems. Takes it upon themselves to go above and beyond on support because the university service is slow and the NHS is nowhere to be seen. Wants to go from 60 credits this semester down to 45 so they can juggle it all. System says no – they’d lose maintenance as they’re no longer “full time”.
Student enrols. Fails a module because of illness. Can’t progress to Level 5, and can’t just resit. Can’t afford to do one module on its own for a whole year without any maintenance support. System says no.
Student enrols. Wants to do distance learning for a term so they can support their brother who’s ill. Distance learning attracts no maintenance support unless the student is disabled themselves. System says no.
Student enrols. Wants out into the labour market fast – has saved up a lot of money. Wants to go from 60 credits up to 75 this semester and next so they can take up a part-time internship next year. System says no – too many credits at once. System says no.
Student enrols on an Engineering degree. Has a passion for music. Wants to take a 15 credit module in it this year. System says no. The department was closed because its programme wasn’t attracting enough “market share”.
Student enrols. Wants to run a project on peer-delivered study skills. Has a part-time job and caring responsibilities. They can’t fit it all in. Needs academic credit – counting towards full-time attendance for maintenance purposes – for the learning they’d get from the project so they could. System says no.
There’s any number of fairly instant rapid fixes that could go in. The first and most obvious isn’t LLE-related at all – the government could write to the Student Loans Company and define “full time student” for maintenance purposes as enrolled on 90 credits a year (or 45 a semester) or more.
That requires no legislative change at all. It’s just a letter. Wales, Scotland and NI could do it too. Now.
Then with some secondary legislation tweaks, the government could put “some” maintenance in place for less than 90 credits.
Next, with much of the LLE legislation and SLC infrastructure in place, it would be fairly straightforward to charge fees and accrue fee “debt” not by year but by credit. Once in place, that would feel more normal.
With some tweaks, PGT funding should work in the same way as UG – opening up all sorts of possibilities.
And then, inside universities, we should want to see much more effort going into credit accumulation and transfer, majors and minors, joint degrees and such forth. Universities aren’t big schools, and the evidence suggests that students (and employers) crave more diversity and interdisciplinarity, not less.
We ought also to see much more effort going into giving academic credit (and crucially, therefore, time) for the learning students obtain through service to others, whether other students or out in the local community.
And at the very least, if a PSRB won’t allow it, or an elite university gets snooty about it counting, students should be able to get extra credit for it – and for it to count towards the “full-time” they need to pull down maintenance.
Yes, when students slow down completion in many of the scenarios above, they’d end up with more maintenance debt. That’s not fair. But that can be addressed in a wider review later on.
The support costs that are attributable to ramming undergraduates and PGTs through in the minimum possible time, the pressure to go at exactly the same pace as everyone else, and the subtle pressure to not fail students who aren’t quite up to it would all start to all evaporate – all because many of the above scenarios count as “drop out” or “struggle on”.
It wouldn’t even be especially expensive – because students in the scenarios above would likely enjoy better labour market outcomes, and so command less long term loan subsidy.
As I say, we do need a proper review on maintenance – ideally not caught up in a wider review of sector funding.
But for now, we just need to start offering some scaffolding that fits around the diversity of students. Not the other way around.
The article makes an excellent point about the potential flexibility benefits of the LLE beyond the introduction of funding for standalone modular study.
The introduction of credit-based fee caps – with a fee cap for a standard undergraduate degree set at £27,750 at current prices regardless of how a student decides to study – would be a significant improvement by allowing the system to flex around how students want to study instead of forcing students to commit to full-time study patterns or part-time study patterns and expecting that they will stick to these for the whole of their studies.
An increasing number of students want the flexibility to be able to easily change their study patterns over their qualification – studying at full-time or even accelerated degree pace when circumstances allow in the interests of completing their qualification as quickly as possible, while having the flexibility to slow things down to accommodate the demands of their work and family life and their health. This flexibility is hard for providers to offer when ‘accelerated part-time students’ are subject to the part-time fee cap of £6,935 regardless of how many credits they study. The binary distinction between full-time courses and part-time courses does not fit with how many students want to study.
There would seem to be few reasons why The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Act 2023 cannot be brought into force in advance of the module-by-module funding aspects of the LLE to resolve this issue.
(A slight correction on the maintenance situation for distance learners: only disabled students whose disability is deemed to be severe enough to prevent them from studying at a face-to-face provider are eligible for support, which is a small minority of disabled students on distance learning courses – around 1,500 students in England receive maintenance support via this exemption)
Within the current system there is scope to allow students to vary the level of study and still retain full time support, defined as studying part time on a full time course and is often used for students repeating and sometimes for students who have disabilities or other obstacles to doing a full 120 credits.