19 June 2013 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
The 1994 Group is aiming to get their teeth into Post-graduate funding over the next few weeks, following the publication of their latest HE Briefing, which examines the historical and policy background to taught post-graduate education. The group will publish a number of annexes to the briefing that look at some of the options to improving the availability of funding, including government backed student loans for Masters students, more affordable commercial financing, relaxing restrictions on integrated ‘3+1 Masters courses’, more lending by HEIs for high-flying students, and closer collaboration with business.
The first annex has already been published and looks at the options for extending government loans to post-graduates, and compares these with private financing. In particular it looks at a proposal put forward by the CentreForum think-tank, in which the government would extend £10,000 loan to post-graduates, to be reclaimed later as income-contingent payments via the tax system; re-payable once the graduate earns more than £15,000. The annex finds that “a scheme along the lines proposed by CentreForum would appear to be financially viable. Whether this scheme could be strictly cost-neutral would depend on how successfully it could be targeted at the best and brightest students”. They make it clear however that under certain conditions the scheme “could be effected with no aggregate cost to the taxpayer”
There is a good summary in the 1994 Group’s weekly ‘HE Insight’ bulletin which, as well as post-graduate funding, includes an interview with Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive of the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) on the graduate recruitment market.
