Warwick introduces postgraduate grants

Warwick University has recently made individual grants of £10,000 available to postgraduate students, amid ever-rising living costs and tuition fees.

The funding for this is partly provided by the University and partly by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

In all, 125 scholarships will be handed out from a fund totalling £1.2 million.

More often than not, postgraduates are expected to rely on their own funds. For those lucky enough, grants and scholarships can be attained under the Warwick Taught Masters Scholarship Scheme.

In 2014, the University allocated over £28 million in scholarship funding to postgraduate students, which aimed to help a wide range of people.

These grants are available to those from low-income backgrounds, as well as to those who have other financial commitments, such as paying bills and supporting families.

First-year Politics student, Victor Beaume, was positive about the extra funding. He told the Boar that it was “a good way of helping mature students get back into education”.

But the decision has raised questions among undergraduates as to why more grants are not available for their living costs.

Rusika Chohdha, a first-year Modern Languages student, said: “It’s good that they [postgraduates] are being helped, although I would like more support as an undergraduate; maybe they should charge us less, then it wouldn’t be such a big issue.”

Even so, undergraduates are entitled to tuition fee loans and a minimum living cost loan of £3,610.

In addition, several grants are available for undergraduate students from both the University itself and HEFCE.