Fine-tuning the HE reforms

The Higher Education (HE) Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons on the 31st of March 2004. Whilst the overall thrust of the proposals is now firmly in place, the fine-tuning of the proposed package in the run-up to the second reading of the Bill on January 27th, made it unnecessarily complicated. It seems to us that it is now time to focus on the specific details of the proposed package. Here we suggest one way in which the implementation of the proposals can be simplified. Our starting point is to take the overall stipulations of the Bill relating to variable fees, the provision of grants, GCS loans and bursaries, as given. We focus instead on the practical interactions of the various elements of the package and how they might be simplified in such a way as to maintain the essential elements of the HE Bill.