Vice-chancellor calls for review into student loans for those without A-levels | Higher education

A leading vice-chancellor has questioned whether students without A-levels will be eligible for state-backed student loans as part of an effort to solve England’s university funding crisis.

Adam Tickell, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, said universities were facing an “almost existential challenge” and declining public support requiring a radical review of higher education funding.

Tickell told a conference in London: “We have a system where more government money is coming in, students are more indebted and universities are on the verge of failure.

“From the taxpayer’s perspective, the provider’s perspective and the student’s perspective, the system is not working… I don’t think adjusting the margins is really going to solve the problems.”

Tickell said the review should take into account the qualifications students need to successfully obtain an undergraduate degree, such as A levels or equivalent, and that credit should not be given to those who do not have the qualifications required to complete their coursework.

“We’re giving students who don’t have a single A-level or equivalent access to the student loan book,” Tickell said, adding: “We’re putting a lot of money into people who might not actually graduate.”

Tickell is the first senior figure in higher education to publicly question the policy of giving domestic students automatic access to state-backed loans, which currently average £53,000 per graduate.

Any student coming to the UK for the first time will be accepted by a university. Eligible for a loan to pay tuition fees and care, around a third of school leavers go directly to university. But successive governments have allowed tuition fees to be eroded by inflation, causing universities to incur significant losses in teaching domestic undergraduates.

Since 2012 the system of student and care loans has also faced backlash from graduates shouldering mounting debts as the government adjusted repayment conditions amid a stagnant labor market.

Speaking at the British Academy conference, Tickell said: “Now is the time to ask: What do the public want from universities? How do we want to fund it? How many people do we want to go to university? And I think those are really tough questions because it’s tough enough as providers.”

Universities have tried to repair their budgets by admitting more international students and using higher fees to support domestic teaching and research. But government visa restrictions have made it difficult to attract international students, creating further financial hardship.

Tickell said: “We could have a government that is very hostile to the industry and if we don’t have some answers we could be in real trouble.”

Philip Augar, who led the 2019 review of England’s higher education funding, told the conference that teaching costs should be split between students and the government, as was planned in 2012 when undergraduate fees were first increased to £9,000 a year.

Augar called the situation “unfair and wrong” and said, “Some graduates are now paying 70 percent of the loans, some 83 percent; this is not 50-50, it is the privatization of university teaching.”

But Vivienne Stern, chief executive of the Universities UK vice-chancellors group, said she did not want a review of higher education funding given the government’s recent white paper on post-16 education.

Stern said: “It’s very hot and unpredictable to open Pandora’s box without knowing what we want… If we’re going to end with a review, then the focus must be tightly limited.”