Postgrad fees a glass ceiling for poorer students

The increased cost of undergraduate tuition fees could be putting students off taking postgraduate courses, a recent study from the Sutton Trust suggested.

The charity warned that the cost of the postgraduate courses themselves could also become an “extra obstacle to social mobility”.

It is believed that poorer students could be priced out of further education and where postgraduate courses are required to get ahead in a tough job market, wealthier students could have the advantage.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “Postgraduate study is becoming increasingly the preserve of the better off student, both from home and abroad.

“Graduates facing debts in excess of £40,000 through undergraduate student loans are likely to see the prospect of funding a further £20,000 a year in fees and living costs, without having access to student loans, truly daunting.”

The study discovered that people with a postgraduate degree earn on average £5,000 more per year than those with just an undergraduate degree.

Laura Jones, first-year Maths student, commented: “I probably wouldn’t have done a postgraduate course anyway considering how expensive they are, but the increased undergraduate fees that I am paying makes it even less likely.”

First-year English Literature undergraduate, Lillian Hingley, also voiced her worries: “Personally, postgraduate education is something that I’m really quite interested in looking into.

“However, I think that the financial difficulties of funding another degree seem to inflame the worries at the back of my mind of what implications money has on my learning already – I have to be a lot more realistic about my future.”

Anna Chowcat, postgraduate officer at the Students’ Union, said: “Whilst it’s still a bit too early to tell (given that students with the increased amount of debt won’t graduate until 2015) I definitely think it will be a deterrent to paying up-front fees of around £8000.

“I believe that the University, as well as the government, should look into providing more financial support for the postgraduate students who are the worst off as postgraduate education is the new frontier of widening participation and risks becoming a luxury inaccessible to most students.”

On the other hand, Peter Dunn, head of communications at Warwick, said that figures show students are not deterred by the prices: “Warwick has a plan to double the number of postgraduate research students it has between 2007 and 2015. We are well on course to do so, therefore the prices of undergraduate degrees have not affected us.”

The Sutton Trust believes there should be a better system for providing financial support to students wanting to go on to study at postgraduate level.

To help provide such a system, the University recently invested an extra £700,000 into scholarships for postgraduate courses. It also lengthened the duration of the scholarships to three and a half years, instead of three years.