Scots students press to restore grant

Scottish students are calling for the abolition of tuition fees and the restoration of means-tested maintenance grants in the anticipated shake-up of student support north of the border.

Today is the deadline for written submissions to Scotland's independent committee of inquiry into student finance. The National Union of Students Scotland says students' basic subsistence needs are comparable to other citizens'. Calculations for support should therefore be based on the social security system, currently Pounds 40.70 a week for under-25s and Pounds 51.40 for 25s and over. Rent, averaging Pounds 45 a week in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, must be added to living costs.

The gap between income and total living costs should be covered by an "education maintenance allowance", a means-tested grant, says NUS Scotland. It also wants to see a mature students' allowance and a childcare allowance.

A separate Scottish Sabbaticals submission, involving both NUS and non-NUS students' associations, says students have the right to quality higher education that is free at the point of use.

But it acknowledges that higher education funding "remains at a critical level" and that any changes must safeguard funding. It wants institutions to guarantee that they will not charge top-up fees or "hidden" course costs. Further education bursaries should be flexible enough to meet local needs, but also ensure fairness and a degree of entitlement rather than being discretionary, the Sabbaticals' paper says.

The Scottish Postgraduate Information Network fears accumulated undergraduate debt, estimated at Pounds 14,500 for a four-year honours degree, will be a "significant deterrent" to further study.

"With a burden of debt so large, only the most dedicated or the richest students would seriously consider another few years of study on a minimal stipend as a postgraduate," it says. This could have a knock-on effect on the next generation of lecturers and professors, particularly those in the arts, where postgraduates tend to fund themselves, SPIN says.

The inquiry offers a "golden opportunity" to reduce students' need to work part-time, write Newman Smith, a sociology lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, and Phil Taylor, a lecturer in industrial relations at Stirling University, in the latest issue of Scottish Affairs.

Surveys of third-year students at Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian universities show 52 per cent and 79 per cent work part-time. The key reason is financial and students expect to graduate with an average debt of Pounds 5,300. The majority earn less than Pounds 4 an hour and almost 70 per cent at Glasgow and 80 per cent at GCU say academic work has suffered.