Why I... think we need to know how student support can increase access

One of the biggest omissions from the select committee's report on access to higher education is any discussion of student financial support. Yet reforms to the student funding system herald some of the most radical changes in higher education policy that this government has introduced.

The select committee's main recommendations shift the onus of responsibility for access and widening participation away from the government and primarily onto institutions and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The recommendations would help to widen participation. But as important are the government's student funding policies over which it has direct control.

The select committee has reserved its investigation into student finances to the second part of its inquiry into student retention, arguing that access and retention and student finances are inter-linked. But are they? Surely we have to get students through universities' doors before worrying about them dropping out?

Research from the United States shows that student financial support has a positive impact on enrolment, especially for low-income groups. The research gives insights into which types of student support are most effective for attracting certain groups. It demonstrates that student support arrangements have much more influence on initial access than on non-completion, which occurs as a result of a complex interaction of factors.

In Britain, we do not have the information to answer basic questions about the impact of the changes in student funding and their effects on enrolment and completion. No large-scale research has been conducted specifically on this. There are good reasons. To undertake such research, we need longitudinal data to track people's behaviour over time - from school days until after graduation. These should include those who participate in higher education as well as those who do not, and those who complete their studies as well as those who drop out.

Implicit in studies focusing solely on non-participants (or dropouts) is the assumption that they are a distinctive group with specific characteristics and experiences. This may not be the case. Moreover, by concentrating only on non-participants, it is impossible to isolate the factors that are particular to them.

We already have some longitudinal data sets such as the Youth Cohort Study, which tracks young people's education and career paths over time. But it is limited as regards higher education. Hefce has also conducted an imaginative analysis of data from student records to try to understand the problem of non-completion. Neither include even rudimentary information on student finances, such as whether students have taken out a student loan. Social class can be used as a proxy for household income, but it does not measure an individual's family's economic and financial assets, which affect the support the student receives.

Detailed investigation into student finances has been left to the Department for Education and Employment's student income and expenditure survey, which I conducted recently (and in 1995-96), but they include only current students and exclude non-participants and non-completers. They give insights into aspects of the replacement of student grants and the introduction of tuition fees, but they cannot assess the impact of these changes on access and completion. We have no idea about the income, expenditure, or financial worries and hardship of non-participants and non-completers. So how can we explore the influence of these on the decisions that prospective and current students have to make and what types of financial aid packages will encourage widened participation?

If the government and other political parties are committed to evidence-based policy, rather than just to scoring points in the lead-up to an election, hard evidence is vital.

By Claire Callender, Professor of social policy South Bank University and author of Changing Student Finances , a DFEE-commissioned study on student finances.