Fee waivers do the less privileged no favours

Cuts of £13.8 million to universities' bursary and scholarship budgets could disadvantage less wealthy students during their time in higher education. The cuts were designed to prevent such a situation by allocating more money to tuition fee discounts and waivers, but the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) of the Law Society has challenged the wisdom of this, claiming that students from less privileged backgrounds need money for expenses during their studies rather than a future fee discount.

As reported in The Times, many low-to-mid earning graduates will never pay back their full loans, as repayments are based on earnings. Many graduates could therefore never benefit from fee waivers, or would not do so until years after their studies - when the employment making them eligible for loan repayment would also indicate reasonable financial self-sufficiency. The JLD has been joined by other voices, such as the National Union of Students, in arguing that economically less privileged students would benefit far more from bursaries and scholarships, which provide cash in hand during the years of invariably expensive and hard-strapped study.

Camilla Graham Wood, a JLD committee member, said: "Waivers reduce the size of the loan that a student has to take out, which may seem like good news. However, the negatives are clear: with fee waivers rather than bursaries, you will have less money up front for those bills that you can’t get out of - like legal textbooks that cost more than £100."