Will the education white paper proposals hamper student access? (And what is going on with maintenance loans?)

This is the fifth and final part of HEPI’s themed week of blogs all about commuter students. You can read the first blog in the series here, the second blog here, the third blog here and the fourth blog here.

This blog was authored by Rose Stephenson, Director of Policy and Strategy at HEPI.

The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper was published in October 2025. (For colleagues who are not policy wonks, White Papers from the Government set out plans for future legislation.) There hasn’t been much discussion of this since its publication, but there is an issue that needs further attention.

One of the themes in the white paper was ‘specialisation’. In fact, there are 58 references to ‘specialisation’ or to institutions becoming more ‘specialised’ in the white paper.

Across the post-16 education and skills system, we will support providers to identify their specialism and foster collaboration with local market actors. 

Our reforms will bring stability to the sector through a commitment to sustainable funding. And in return we ask universities to focus on their strengths, to specialise and collaborate, and align what they do closely with the needs of the country.

We will create a research ecosystem that drives innovation, supports growth, and keeps the UK at the forefront of global science, by embedding sustainability, enabling collaboration, and rewarding specialisation.

The White paper goes on to state:

Across the post-16 education and skills system, we will support providers to identify their specialism and foster collaboration with local market actors. This will ensure all areas of the country have the right volume and mix of priority courses and research capabilities, both at a local and national level.

This suggests the Government expects higher education providers to offer fewer courses, but for there to be a collaborative and broad course offer across a region. Putting aside the issues of institutional autonomy, financial sustainability, a system designed by policymakers to be a competitive market and the tariff-based application and assessment system, there is another issue here: an unacknowledged presumption that some students will move to their institution to study. Because this approach might work well for commuter students in London, Manchester or Birmingham, where there are multiple institutions and robust, interconnected transport systems. But if you live in rural Gloucestershire, as demonstrated in a previous blog, students are lucky if they can access one institution via public transport.

In an era in which we are seeing a rise in commuter students, policy should be leaning into this student cohort, not leaning away from them. If institutions are going to offer fewer courses, at the same time as students become more reluctant to leave home to study, this is going to reduce student choice even further. And with 25% of students living in villages or other small communities completing their higher education studies online, a move towards specialised provision may lead to more students studying at a distance – not because it is the right choice for them, but because it is the only choice.

We also need to be laser-focused on why we are seeing a rise in commuter students. The 2025 HEPI and Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey showed that 6% of home students selected a different course than they had planned to and 7% selected a different institution than they had planned to because of financial challenges. And the student maintenance loan provision in England may give us some clues here.

• The maximum maintenance loan for students living at home with parents for 2026/27 is £9,118.
• The maximum maintenance loan for students living away from home (not in London) for 2026/27 is £10,830.

This is a difference of just £1,712.

Research into the average student rent rate across 10 cities (excluding London) found a rental cost of £7,475. (This research was completed in 2023, so rents are likely to be significantly higher now, given that they rose by 7% a year over the previous two years.) With rental costs of over £7,500, but only an additional £1,700 being provided through student maintenance support, it therefore seems that students will be much better off financially to live at home. I asked the Department for Education whether there is a presumption that students living at home with their parents will contribute to household costs by paying rent or bills, and whether there is a formula or process that is, or was, used to calculate maintenance loan amounts. They responded with the following.

The loan for living costs is a contribution towards a student’s living costs rather than necessarily covering those costs in full, with the most support being paid towards students from low-income households. A lower rate of loan for living costs is paid to students living in the parental home on the assumption that this group of students will have lower living costs as they won’t have to pay as much for university accommodation, bills etc. However, there is no specific calculation to differentiate between the four different rates of loan for living costs.

I did a little more digging to understand the justification for these figures being so close, despite the astronomical rise in student rent costs. It was explained that the loan amounts were set for the academic year of 1998/99 and have been uprated by a measure of inflation – or ministerial intervention – ever since. It isn’t clear how the original maintenance levels were calculated, but the DfE did reiterate:

The loan is a contribution towards living costs, and there are also no specific amounts for rent, bills, food, etc.

Given that it is almost 30 years since the current maintenance loan system was set up, and in the face of much more detailed research being available on the amount students need to live on, perhaps it is time for an independent review, and a more transparent conversation about how much the Government puts in to supporting students, and how much students (or their families) will need to contribute. I presume the reluctance to undertake such a process is the fear that any sensible answer may cost the Government a lot more money than it does now.

 Some students living at home will be contributing to their household income. Indeed, the Student Working Lives report shows that a significant proportion of students who were in part-time employment were using this income to support their families. However, when comparing the maintenance loans available to students living away from home to the amount available to those who live at home with their parents, many students will be financially much better off staying at home to study. Despite this, the evidence suggests that these students are still struggling. As such, maintenance funding for ‘at-home’ students should not be diverted to those living in student accommodation; instead, the rapidly rising costs of student rents should be taken into consideration when reviewing the amount paid to residential students.

One piece of policy (maintenance loan levels) is pushing students towards living at home, and a proposed policy (more specialised course offer) is pushing students towards residential study, at least where poor public transport prevents commuting. The dots are not being joined here.

The Social Mobility Commission highlighted in their 2025 State of the Nation report that:

Rural areas face distinct challenges, including limited access to educational institutions and skilled jobs, which further deepens existing inequalities.

Given the entrenched inequalities faced by rural communities, policymakers need to place greater focus on the needs of rural students, particularly their access to opportunity. Students should be able to access a wide range of high-quality educational options without leaving home.