The Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE) is part of the Government’s
reforms to post-18 education and training. It will offer students
a loan equivalent to four years’ worth of tuition fees (currently
£37,000), which can be used flexibly over their working lives.
This can be used to pay for short courses, modules or full
courses at colleges or universities.
A new paper from the Higher Education Policy Institute, Does
the Lifelong Loan Entitlement meet its own objectives?
(Policy Note 45) by Rose Stephenson, HEPI’s new Director of
Policy and Advocacy, considers if the LLE is likely to meet its
own ambitions.
Rose Stephenson, author of the report says:
The LLE is an exciting piece of policy. It will streamline
funding access for technical and academic courses across colleges
and universities. It will also allow learners to study in a
modular fashion. These modules can be standalone, or built into a
longer course, although the mechanism and restrictions of these
modular degrees are unclear.
However, by setting the minimum course size at 30 credits, the
LLE fails to improve financial support for part-time learners.
The exclusion of distance learners from maintenance loans also
risks holding higher education out of reach from the learners the
Government would most like to target. Without changes, this
policy risks being a molehill, rather than the educational
mountain it has the potential to be.
Professor Tim Blackman, Vice-Chancellor of The Open University,
who wrote the Foreword to the report said:
The development of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement is a positive
step for lifelong participation in higher education. It has
tremendous potential to drive productivity and growth and address
inequalities across the country. However, the LLE will not be
able to spread the benefits of post-18 education over a
working lifetime, as well as across a wider social
spectrum, if students studying full-time and often
residential undergraduate degrees continue to receive such a
large share of the student support available and use up all
their entitlement on
one qualification often before they even start
their careers.
The continuing exclusion of most distance learning students from
maintenance loans in England will also mean that the LLE will not
be able to reach out to the people it needs to reach if it is to
have a transformative effect. These students, who often need the
flexibility of distance learning, are often bringing up
children, in low-paid employment and either did not go to
university straight after school or were unable
to complete their studies. Many have maintenance
costs.
The LLE is a very welcome policy development and this HEPI Policy
Note is timely in highlighting how it can be further developed to
achieve the ambitions we all want it to achieve.
Notes for Editors
- HEPI was established in 2002 to influence the higher
education debate with evidence. It is UK-wide, independent and
non-partisan, and it is funded by organisations and higher
education institutions that wish to support vibrant policy
discussions as well as through events.
- On 24th February 2022, the Government opened a consultation
on the Lifelong Loan Entitlement. This can be found here. The
consultation closed on the 6 May 2022, and the Government
published its consultation response on the 7 March 2023. This
can be found here.
- Other recent HEPI output on the LLE includes:
- On Tuesday, 16 May 2023, HEPI – in conjunction with
Universities UK and Kaplan – will be launching new economic
modelling from London Economics on the economic contribution of
international students to the UK. For more details, including how
to book a free place, see here.
