OFFA Report on HEI Bursary Spending
In March 2009, the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) released its annual report looking at its monitoring of access agreements. The report has highlighted several problems with the bursary system which is resulting in many institutions severely under spending on support for the students that need it the most. It has highlighted huge inconsistencies of spending with some of the richest institutions spending the smallest percentages of their expenditure on bursaries and scholarships.
N.B. OFFA countable students are those from lower-income or other underrepresented groups. OFFA defines “lower-income” students as those with an assessed household income of up to £48,330.
Some of the key points:
• For OFFA countable students, the overall bursary or scholarship payout was £932. By mission group, this breaks down as follows:
Russell Group: £1,340
1994 Group: £1,092
Million +: £779
• Even though all institutions charge the same in fees, some are profiting more than others from students’ money. Two thirds of Russell Group institutions are giving out less bursary money as a percentage of their additional income than last year, compared to two thirds of Million+ universities, which are giving out more money. Download the year-on-year comparison of Russell Group spending here.
• Million + institutions are consistently spending a greater percentage of their additional fee income on bursaries, scholarships and access than the Russell Group.
• Following last year’s £24 million underspend by universities on student support and outreach activities, OFFA has decided not to publish the amount budgeted by institutions for 2007-8.
• In 2006-7, universities budgeted to spend 25% of their additional fee income on bursaries for poorer students, but only managed to spend 21%. This year, they predicted 22.6%, and only managed to spend 21.8%. Universities have hardly got better at giving out money to students – just better at predicting their low performance.
• Last year, 37 universities underspent on their bursaries and scholarships budget. Of these, only 3 institutions reallocated this underspend back into student support. This only resulted in a net increase of £454,000. Of which; £434,000 was from Canterbury Christ Church University.
NUS President Wes Streeting said: “These figures show just how unfair the current system is…Financial support should be based on how much a student needs it, not where they happen to be studying. We need a national bursary scheme, so that we can make sure that all of this money makes a real difference for poorer students. We completely reject Sir Martin Harris’ inappropriate and unfounded assertion that individual institutions should continue to decide levels of financial support.”
See some of the press coverage here:
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