Dear colleagues
Following a ministerial decision, HEFCE have recently published a consultation circular about the withdrawal of funding for students with equivalent or lower qualifications. This change in policy will mean that HEFCE funding is withdrawn for students taking a qualification at an equivalent or lower level than the one they have already, for example no funding for people taking a postgraduate taught course in a different subject in order to retrain if they have already studied at this level. The change in policy will come into place from academic year 2008/09 and will affect all categories of new Home/EU HEFCE fundable students - full-time, part-time, undergraduate and postgraduate.
The HEFCE circular can be seen at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07_27/
This new policy is bad news for universities - the Open University - the hardest hit - will lose approximately £30m per annum. We have no real way of challenging this ministerial decision, except that the final question of the HEFCE consultation document (consultation question 7) asks whether the ELQ policy is likely to have a differential impact on students, depending on their gender, race, disability etc.
We will be responding to the consultation and intend to say something about the prejudicial impact of this policy, for example on women seeking to retrain following a career break, or disabled people seeking to retrain to allow them to move into an occupation where their impairment or condition can be more easily accommodated etc.
Any thoughts out there on how to build this case?
Regards
Alex
Alexandra Muir-Mackenzie
Equality & Diversity Adviser
University of Portsmouth
Tel: (023) 9284 5039
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