Maintenance Grants Research Articles

Student debt of UK dental students and recent graduates.

Introduction Studies conducted in 2013 estimated the total average debt of UK dental students in their final year. Student tuition fees in the UK have increased over time and maintenance grants abolished. With the current landscape changing, it's important to understand the effect on dental students and the current total debt upon graduation.Aims Quantify the level of debt among dental students graduating in 2021/2022 and the two years prior, understand the impact of debt, and investigate socioeconomic differences.Materials and methods An online survey with final year UK dental students and recent graduates was conducted, resulting in 103 valid responses. The survey design was adapted from a validated British Dental Association (BDA) survey conducted in 2013.Results The mean total debt among respondents was £52,922.12, a substantial increase compared to the BDA data reported in 2013, with commercial and informal loans doubling from 2013 to 2022. Three-in-five (60.2%) experienced financial difficulties during their studies. Significant differences were found among socioeconomic groups.Conclusion Findings from this study show that dental student debt continues to grow, having detrimental impacts on students and their studies, specifically those from lower income households. Interventions should focus on addressing these issues.

Improving Service Delivery: A Namibian Local Authority Case Study

Local government assumes a fundamental role in the life of every citizen by providing services classified as physiological needs. Deficiencies in the delivery of such services to the citizens is viewed as a contravention of their fundamental human rights. The consequences of such deficiencies trigger frustration and unrest in the citizens, exhibited in political instability, damage to state property, and at its pinnacle the loss of lives. This research study investigated the concerning levels of organizational performance at the Arandis Town Council in the Erongo region of Namibia. The investigation was motivated by a need to determine the factors that affect service delivery, with the objectives to provide recommendations to improve service delivery and organizational performance. We employed a quantitative research method to collect the primary data for the study. An illustrative logical research configuration was selected, and data were gathered with the primary purpose to obtain a quantitative understanding on the topic. The data were processed utilizing SPSS version 25 statistical software to present the data in graphical format. In a bid to reduce inefficiencies in service delivery, certain recommendations are made to the town council for consideration. These include implementing a risk register, compiling a maintenance plan, applying for maintenance grants, providing training programs to its employees, commercializing the servicing of land and the development of affordable housing, developing additional revenue streams, and prioritizing the creation of employment.

Women, feminism, and art schools: The UK experience

In this paper, the author analyses the relationship between women, feminism, and UK art schools. The narrative of this relationship is usually told from an American perspective, grounded in the 1970s American women's art movement, and connected with particular programmes. However, the relationship is specific to local conditions and national educational legislation. The 1970s UK experience was different from that of the USA, with distinct educational structures – maintenance grants and single honours degrees – leading to different feminist art pedagogies and practices. Today, a system of fees, loans, debt, and institutional audit, gives another distinctive background to recent relationships between feminism and art. The discussion will be grounded first in the history and context of the UK experience, contrasted with the USA. It will explore the situation today, drawing upon publicly available data. It will explore the history of the feminist educational environment. Finally, it will propose some feminist pedagogical strategies.

Charging for Higher Education: Estimating the Impact on Inequality and Student Outcomes

Abstract Over the last two decades, undergraduate university education in England moved from being state-funded and free for students, to costing all students substantial amounts in tuition fees. In this paper, using detailed administrative longitudinal microdata that follow all students attending state schools in England (approximately 95% of student population), we causally show that, despite the substantial reforms, enrollment fell only by 0.5 percentage points, where the effect is largely borne by those in wealthier groups, reducing the enrolment gap across socio-economic groups. Since tuition fees were introduced in conjunction with the government offering generous means-tested maintenance (cash) grants, as well as loans, our results highlight the importance of reducing financing constraints. Beyond enrollment, we find that the reforms have limited impact on students’ higher education choices, such as relocation decisions, university choice, and field of study. Finally, by tracking the students after graduation, we show similarly small effects on labor market outcomes.

Social Identification, Widening Participation and Higher Education: Experiencing Similarity and Difference in an English Red Brick University

In 2012, the UK government introduced the National Scholarship Programme – a scheme that aimed to ensure that young people from families with low household incomes would not be discouraged from entry into higher education by increases in tuition fees. Drawing on longitudinal evidence in the form of 80 semi-structured interviews conducted in an English Red Brick University over a 3-year period, this article uses Jenkins’ work on social identification to examine the processes by which these post-2012 undergraduates used and experienced the financial support made available to them as part of the Programme. The article explores how the initially categorical label associated with being a student in receipt of financial assistance was variously understood and experienced as they moved through their degree. Not only did the additional finance allow students to avoid excessive part-time work, recipients also felt increasingly valued by the institution when they began to recognise how their financial circumstances differed from their peers, and that the university had made this provision for them. It remains to be seen whether these, more intangible, benefits of non-repayable financial support will transfer to the system of ‘enhanced’ loans that have subsequently replaced maintenance grants and the National Scholarship Programme.

Mothers’ Pensions and the ‘Civilised’ Black Poor: The Racialised Provision of Child Maintenance Grants in South Africa, 1921–1940

This article discusses the origins and early 20th-century administration of child maintenance grants, first introduced in South Africa in 1921 as an amendment to the Children’s Protection Act of 1913 and popularly known as ‘mothers’ pensions’. The grants were patently racialised: in the 1920s, government officials administered the grants so as to exclude people categorised as ‘native’ and as ‘Asian’. This article traces how, from the late 1920s, liberal members of the self-styled ‘Child Welfare Movement’ (which had established a country-wide network of local branches after the First World War) began advocating the extension of maintenance grants to African communities. During this period, mission-educated African women were also becoming increasingly involved in questions of social welfare. From the mid 1930s, growing numbers of Child Welfare Societies, along with some sympathetic magistrates, were advocating the extension of mothers’ pensions to indigent African mothers and children. In this context, senior bureaucrats in the national departments of Native Affairs and Social Welfare sought to clarify the social responsibilities of the state towards its impoverished ‘native’ subjects. The article considers the collaboration and the escalating contestation between organisations active in child welfare, civil servants and ministers of state. The qualified extension of maintenance grants resulted in a policy of limited social assistance to impoverished African families living in towns and cities throughout South Africa. The child welfare movement and its allies were partly successful in their attempts to limit racialised application of the Children’s Protection Act from the 1940s until the late 1950s. The powerful officials in the national departments of Native Affairs and Social Welfare were fully convinced that the demands of segregation must determine how the state should intervene in questions of state social assistance and parental responsibility. In principle, they had little or no sympathy with representations that the state should provide social assistance to impoverished African mothers and African children in need of care. In 1940 – in response to pressures from the child welfare coalition – they reluctantly included the urban-based African poor as recipients of child maintenance grants. This marginal assistance took place within a social welfare system designed to protect ‘civilised’ (defined as ‘European’) labour and to complement policies of segregation. In fact, the policy revision involved continued official commitment to the gendered geography of racial segregation and delimitation of civic access to state resources that placed ‘native’ families in the reserves and on white-owned farms beyond governmental regimes of child welfare.

Higher Education Funding Reforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of Educational and Labor Market Outcomes in England

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the funding of higher education in England on students' choices and outcomes. Over the last two decades - through three major reforms in 1998, 2006 and 2012 - undergraduate university education in public universities moved from being free to students and state funded to charging substantial tuition fees to all students. This was done in conjunction with the government offering generous means-tested maintenance grants and loans. Using detailed longitudinal micro-data that follows all students attending state schools in England (more than 90 percent of all school-aged children) from lower education to higher education, we document the socio-economic distributional effects of the 2006 and 2012 policy reforms on a comprehensive set of outcomes, including enrolment, relocation decisions, selection of institution, program of study, and performance within university. For a subset of students, we track them after completing higher education, allowing us to study the labor market effects of the policy reforms. Despite the substantial higher education funding reforms, we do not find large aggregate effect on student enrolment or on other margins. Moreover, the small negative impacts found on the enrolment were largely borne on those in higher parts of the wealth distribution â?“ reducing the enrolment gap across socio-economic groups.

Deserving Poor: Are Higher Education Bursaries Going to the Right Students?

After the abolition of student maintenance grants in 2016, higher education bursaries will be the major source of non-repayable aid for poor students in England, with £300 m spent per year. The aims of the bursary system were never explicitly laid out by government, making it challenging to evaluate this unique form of aid. In this paper, I examine the bursary system on the grounds of equity and efficiency, using a unique dataset collected from 22 universities. I show that the bursary system is inequitable; as a direct consequence of the decentralized nature of the system, there are vast inequalities in aid receipt among poor students. Nevertheless, I find that the poorest, most able students tend to receive the most bursary aid, suggesting the system could be seen as efficient. Clearer guidance from government on the purpose of bursaries is required in order to understand whether the system is meeting its aims, and how it could be improved.

Putting Business at the Heart of Higher Education: On Neoliberal Interventionism and Audit Culture in UK Universities

Neoliberalism is a form of interventionism that seeks to pursue elite – corporate – interests. This means constructing a market rationality and constructing markets to better meet what the state takes to be elite interests. In the first phase of neoliberal interventionism in English higher education maintenance grants were replaced with loans, the National Student Survey was introduced to measure ‘satisfaction’, and the inadvertent creation of a £9000 fee-norm all helped to construct a market rationality in students. The second phase, which concerns the proposed reconstruction of the higher education market, started in November 2015 with the publication of the ‘Fulfilling our Potential’ Green Paper. This proposes to make it less bureaucratically cumbersome for ‘for-profits’ to enter the market. In terms of audit culture, a Teaching Excellence Framework is proposed, which would include representatives from employers and professional groups, along with academic experts on teaching, and students, on the assessment panels. Further, universities need to be ‘open to involving employers and learned societies representing professions in curriculum design [and developing] a positive work ethic, so [graduates] can contribute more effectively to our efforts to boost the productivity of UK economy’ (BIS, 2015(a): 11). The Green Paper also holds that ‘at least 20% of graduates are not working in high skilled employment three and a half years after graduation and most employers of STEM graduates are concerned about shortages of high quality applicants’ (BIS 2015(a): 10–11). This contributes to prior messages from the Conservatives that non-STEM subjects are less useful for employment.

Going Dutch: higher education in the Netherlands

This article outlines some of the policy issues currently faced by research-based universities in the Netherlands. The focus is on four leading universities (University of Amsterdam: UvA; Free University of Amsterdam: VU; Leiden University; and Delft University of Technology: TUD). The author visited these institutions as part of a Study Tour undertaken by members of the Association of University Administrators (AUA) in November 2015. Following an introduction to Dutch Higher Education (HE) and the historical context, this article discusses: political issues (including the phasing out of maintenance grants and replacement by student loans, and the ‘occupation’ in 2015 of a part of UvA), institutional partnership, academic research (including the status of PhD students), student admissions and the use of English by Dutch HE. Whilst many of the questions being considered in the Netherlands and the UK are similar, some of the answers are very different. In general, the UK has a more market-driven system that fosters competition rather than collaboration. Internationalisation of HE is a pervasive theme of this article. Perhaps because, in the UK, university leaders are so concerned to address the internationalisation of HE by looking beyond Europe, they seem to forget the advantages of working with European institutions. Co-operation within Europe is very much part of the internationalisation agenda for Dutch HE. The most important conclusion from the Study Tour is that all four universities see competitive advantage arising from collaborative partnership.

Replacing grants with loans will narrow access to medicine, BMA warns

Government plans to replace university maintenance grants with a loans system will dissuade disadvantaged students from entering a career in medicine, the BMA has warned. Presenting the Budget for 2015 in the House of Commons on Wednesday, George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, said that student maintenance grants had become unaffordable. He said, “From the 2016-17 academic year we will replace maintenance grants with loans for new students—loans that only have to be paid back once they earn over £21 000 a year. And to …

Accessing Social Rights in the EU - Report on Denmark

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the Danish system relating to immigration and welfare rights in order to identify the various barriers to the free movement of Union citizens and their family members. This report addresses the legal and cultural framework, how it works in practice, and the attitude of main actors, such as the media and political parties. It thus looks both at theory and practice. EU-based migration to Denmark is still relatively low, and is essentially exercised by workers and students. Apart from Scandinavians, the most representative EU-citizens actually living in Denmark are in decreasing order Polish, German and British nationals.Debates among politicians reflected in the media have since the enlargement of the EU to 10 new Member States in 2004 focused on and off on the issue of access by migrants to social benefits and the issue of social tourism. The debate and discussions intensified in the spring 2013 as a result of the CJEU’s ruling in the LN case (case C-46/12) ensuring access to student maintenance grants for Union citizens working in Denmark besides studying there. Discussions got very virulent in the summer 2013 and up to the elections of the European Parliament in May 2014. The reason for that is the government’s change of practice in administrating family benefits, granting them to all Union citizens lawfully residing in Denmark without any requirement of prior residence in the country. This change was the result of a request from the European Commission’s emphasizing that the existing law was incompatible with EU law, especially with Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security schemes.While Denmark praises itself for being a good pupil in faithfully respecting and applying EU law, reality is another where EU law is seen as a threat to the welfare State. As a result politicians, public opinion and the media all attempt to protect the national system from the ‘intruder’. This might partly be due to the fact that the Danish welfare system is quite generous and essentially financed through general taxes. Another reason could also be the successful attempt of the Eurosceptic right wing party, The Danish People’s Party, to draw attention to migrant Union citizens and circumvent their social rights (like it did in the case of family benefits).Finally, while the Danish system is at the outset protective of the social rights of non-nationals with its focus on equal treatment of all living in Denmark, the picture is at times more blurred upon a closer look with the imposition at times of residence requirements and obstacles in practice as a result of a rather formalistic approach. In a similar vein, the cases of health care and student maintenance grants are two areas where the Danish authorities have reluctantly accepted to follow the case-law of the CJEU.

Money for nothing: Estimating the impact of student aid on participation in higher education

Understanding how higher education (HE) finance policy can affect HE decisions is important for understanding how governments can promote human capital accumulation. Yet there is a severe lack of evidence on the effectiveness of student aid in encouraging HE participation outside of the US, and none at all for the UK. This paper exploits a reform that took place in the UK in 2004, when maintenance grants were introduced for students from low income families, having been abolished since 1999. This reform occurred in isolation of any other policy changes, and did not affect students from relatively better off families, making them a potential control group. We use a difference-in-difference framework to estimate the effect of the reform on HE undergraduate participation. We find a positive impact of maintenance grants, with a £1000 increase in grants leading to a 3.95 percentage point increase in participation.

South Africa: A Science Lesson

South Africa: A Science Lesson

Table of Contents

Abstract NEWS NCVS session experts offer tips for ‘going global’ with pro bono Charity front and center at Wyndham Championship NEWS BRIEFS CORPORATE PROFILES Dell Inc. CACI International Inc. CA Technologies Advent Software Inc. Crowe Horwath LLP Deloitte LLP L.E.K. Consulting LLP CohnReznick LLP GRANT ALERTS Aging Aging research grants Creative aging project grants Animal Welfare Banfield Charitable Trust pet grants Arts and Culture ACLS grants for China‐related study Environment American Hiking Society trail maintenance grants SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund Health Association of Health Care Journalists fellowships Medical Research Suicide prevention research grants Critical care nursing research grants

Export of Study Grants and the Lawfulness of Durational Residency Requirements: Comments on Case C-542/09, Commission v the Netherlands

Abstract In Commission v the Netherlands (export of study grants) the Court has rendered an important judgment which has ramifications for the lawful use of durational residency requirements imposed on students wishing to export maintenance grants for study purposes as a means to balance the promotion of student mobility on the one hand and Member States’ desire to protect their educational budgets. Moreover, the judgment also addresses the legal position of frontier workers and migrant workers as regards access to social advantages in the state of employment, and more generally as regards the use of residency requirements for the purposes of assessing the link between the individual and the host society in EU law. Overall the conclusion seems to be that the Court is seeking to clarify its existing position while simultaneously developing new and more extensive obligations for the Member State in its relations with EU nationals of other Member States.

Union Citizenship and the Legality of Durational Residence Requirements for Entitlement to Student Financial Aid

The recent ruling in Förster demonstrates that Union citizenship is not a magic judicial tool for expanding citizens' rights. The Court upheld a national rule that makes entitlement to maintenance grants for economically inactive nationals of other Member States conditional upon five years of prior residence on the national territory. The Court did not support its conclusion by persuasive reasons. The ruling suggests that the Court merely accepted the five-year residence requirement simply and only because the EU legislator had authorized it. While there is in principle nothing wrong with respecting legislative choices, this contribution argues that the Court showed far too much deference to the EU legislator. Förster constitutes an unnecessary step back on the road to a meaningful Union citizenship.

Formation à la recherche et partenariats de recherche public-privé : Contribuer ensemble à l’excellence scientifique et à la croissance économique

The European Union has set itself the daunting target of becoming the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010. Any hope of success against the United States and the Asian tiger economies lies in the quality of scientific and technological research. In France, postgraduate training has long labored under a deep academia/industry divide. Although the universities have introduced supervised 3 year doctoral courses along the lines of the English-speaking countries, they still produce too many postdocs with little experience or understanding of, and little taste for, the private sector. This ignores career realities: the public sector can offer employment to only half the postdocs it produces. The rest must fall back on positions in the private sector, in some cases with a sense of failure, ill suiting them to drive the intellectual economy forwards compared to their international competitors. To combat the divide and emphasize the quality of the research training available within industry, the public/private National Association for Technical Research (ANRT), acting on behalf of the Ministry of Research, created the Industrial Research Training Agreement (Cifre) scheme in 1981. Higher education laboratories and private companies combine to offer doctoral students the opportunity to undertake their 3 year course in a mixed public/private environment (the exact ratio is not defined but in the case of the Servier Research Group, an early and active participant in the scheme, at least one third of the course is spent in the private sector). The doctoral thesis is thereby transformed into a meaningful career qualification. Funded by the Ministry, with maintenance grants to the students and compensatory payments to the companies, the Cifre scheme, which is currently being expanded, has produced 12,000 postdocs personally and intellectually equipped for careers transiting seamlessly between the public and private sectors, to the enrichment of each.

Compromised Communities and Re-emerging Civic Engagement in Mpumalanga Township, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal

This article is concerned with organisational responses of residents in Mpumalanga Township, located in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The central argument of the article is that there is a slow and fragile process of consolidating democracy emerging in the township. It is argued that the potential of democratic consolidation is being undermined by the social, economic and historical realities of the township. Four themes are discussed in the article: the crisis of representation and decline of old organisations; the fragile stability of families and kinship networks; the process of facing up to faultlines and the new face of community organisations; and consolidating democracy out of conflict. Firstly, this article explores the tenuous process of rebuilding community-level trust and collective action in the wake of political transition. The general lack of trust in politicians and popular representatives in the contemporary period has meant that people are retreating into families and kinship networks, a response reinforced by poverty. Second, the family is seen as a site of stability, but this is only realisable if the institution is supported by government policy. State transfers, such as pensions and child maintenance grants, are critical to relieving the enormous pressures and demands made upon the household. However, with the enormous burden placed on family networks and unequal power relations within households, the stability of family networks is seriously undermined. A crisis of reproduction surfaces as incidences of alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence become a common feature of most households. Third, the link between household survival and urban services has also given rise to popular responses through newly formed community organisations. Finally, the consolidation of democracy is emerging out of conflicts between community residents and the local government around issues of service delivery and political accountability.

Students' Demands and Expectations in an Age of Reduced Financial Support: The perspectives of lecturers in four English universities

This paper uses qualitative data from interviews with university lecturers to explore the effects of changes in financial support on students' demands and expectations. Four main changes were identified: a higher proportion of students enter higher education for career reasons than in the past; students are more interested in vocational aspects of their courses than in academic study; they are less willing to undertake independent study and are more demanding of teaching staff's time. A further change was identified in the extent of part-time working by students which affects attendance and study. The replacement of maintenance grants with loans and introduction of fees were seen to have encouraged 'consumerist' attitudes towards higher education. Changes in attitudes and expectations were also explained with reference to the expansion of higher education. These had adverse effects on university lecturers, with implications for job satisfaction and for recruitment and retention.