Financing of students: grants or loans?

When the national accounts are closed for the current financial year it will be found that nearly ?50m. has been spent by local education authorities in grants to students at universities. A similar sum will go in grants to students in non-university institutions of higher education. Between now and 1980, the way things are going, the number of students will rise to more than twice the present total of around 300,000 and the cost of student grants will have risen accordingly. And, as the standards of student life reflect rising levels elsewhere in the community, students will somehow have to get their share of rising pros perity. This in turn will be apparent in higher maintenance grants. All this adds up to a prospect which sends a shiver down the spine of the educational administrator. Any means of breaking a commitment to a system of student grants, the cost of which must inexorably rise faster than the gross national product, must excite a lively interest in the Department of Education. Hence the letter which went out from the Department 18 months ago to the effect that the whole basis of student main tenance was under review, and inviting all and sundry to make comments and proposals. Nothing has come of it as yet. Mr. Anthony Crosland, the Secretary of State for Education, has been careful to do nothing to suggest that he is committed to any particular alternative to the present system. But those close to Mr. Crosland are beginning to search for alternative methods of financing students, of which the most obvious is to replace part of what is now paid as an irrecoverable grant with a subsidized loan.