In an article in the Times Higher this week, NUS President Liam Burns has slated the National Scholarship Programme in its current form, which is due to start in September. “To put it bluntly” he writes, it is “neither national, nor a scholarship, nor a coherent programme”. His complaints focus on how little of the £150million will actually end up in students’ pockets, instead to be used as fee waivers in order to reduce borrowing.
“Under the NSP, students attending different universities will be offered different packages, rather than support allocated fairly, based on need. Unfairly, those who study at universities recruiting only low numbers of NSP-eligible students are likely to receive more individual support through the NSP than students studying at institutions with more students from disadvantaged groups. A