Postgraduate funding dogged by dearth of bank loan applications

Prospective postgraduate students can take out loans of up to £10,000 from commercial banks to fund their studies.

But data from one of the final reports produced by the recently disbanded 1994 Group – Increasing Postgraduate Opportunities: Proposals for Funding – suggest that far fewer students are now considering such loans.

The number of bank loans offered and taken up remained largely unchanged over the same period.

In 2012-13, £9,000 undergraduate tuition fees were introduced.

A recent report by John Perkins, chief scientific adviser to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, calls for banks to work more closely with universities on the issue of postgraduate funding, particularly in engineering.

Source: 1994 Group, Increasing Postgraduate Opportunities: Proposals for Funding

holly.else@tsleducation.com