Mixed News For Scottish Students

Wed, 11 Jun 2008

Postgraduate students in Scotland have been ordered to repay the full £2,289 cost for their undergraduate education after receiving a bill from the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) which they claimed was due to "accounting procedures".

Around 3,000 post-grads were led to believe they could pay in instalments through a graduate endowment scheme, which would have allowed them to defer payment until the end of their postgraduate studies.

The Scottish Parliament voted in February to abolish the £2,289 graduate endowment, meaning that undergraduate education for Scottish students attending university within Scotland will be free from this academic year onwards.

The final demand from SAAS was backed by the Scottish National Party (SNP), which formed a minority government in the Scottish Parliament following its victory in last year’s local elections .

Commenting on the one-off charge to postgraduate students, a government spokesman said: "Some students who completed their undergraduate courses in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and have continued their studies to a postgraduate level were allowed to defer the payment of the graduate endowment fee until they completed the course. This was a goodwill gesture and did not affect the date of liability."

"Now that the graduate endowment fee has been abolished and the scheme is being wound up, SAAS are no longer in a position to allow these students to defer."

In response, James Alexander, president of Scotland’s National Union of Students (NUS), said that despite being pleased with the decision to abolish the endowment, the NUS "are extremely disappointed that a previously positive benefit for postgraduate students appears to have been removed with the introduction of this legislation".

Students from the rest of the UK will still be charged £1,700 a year to study their course in Scotland, while Scottish students attending institutions in England and Wales are still liable to pay for their education .

As a result, the number of pupils from Scottish schools applying to universities in England this year has fallen by 6.1 per cent.

Graduate debt for those who left university in 2007 stands at £11,000 per person across the UK, according to latest government figures.
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