Higher Education Policy Institute. The impact on demand of the Government’s reforms of higher education. 2013. Pages: 50

The report conducted by John Thompson and Bahram Bekhradnia assesses the impact of policy changes with regard to student support and fee levels in the UK since 2012. The report distinguishes between part-time and full-time students and by doing so it presents interesting findings which happen to be contrary to the original intentions of policy changes introduced in 2012. Loans became available for part-time students for the first time one year ago only with the prospect of benefiting approximately 175 000 part-time students. Yet, general restrictions on loan eligibility – such as not possessing a higher education qualification – general fee increases in the UK, a stronger interest in recruiting full-time students rather than part-time students and other factors might have contributed to a lower number of part-time entrants to higher education. The report underlines, however, that it is not clear whether this change is to be attributed to a decrease in demand, supply or both but describes the overall transformations which entailed the slump in total numbers of part-time students. The report also gives an update related to full-time students’ demand in comparison to last year’s report and concludes with suggestions on the current loan and fees system.

HEPI - Report