Student loans in the United Kingdom

Student loans and grants in the United Kingdom are primarily provided by the government through the Student Loans Company (SLC), a non-departmental public body. The SLC is responsible for Student Finance England and is a delivery partner of Student Finance Wales and Student Finance NI. The Student Awards Agency for Scotland assesses applications in Scotland. Most undergraduate university students resident in the United Kingdom are eligible for student loans. In addition, some students on teacher training courses may also apply for loans. Student loans are also being rolled out, starting 2016/17, to postgraduate students who study a taught Masters, research or Doctoral course.

In the years following World War II, most local education authorities (LEAs) paid students' tuition fees and also provided a maintenance grant to help with living costs; this did not have to be repaid. The Education Act 1962 made it a legal obligation for all LEAs to give full time university students a maintenance grant.

The SLC was founded for the 1990/91 academic year to provide students with additional help towards living costs in the form of low-interest loans. In its first year, the SLC gave loans to 180,200 students This represented a take up rate of 28% of eligible students, with an average loan of £390.

In 1997, a report by Sir Ron Dearing recommended that students should contribute to the costs of university education. The Labour government under Tony Blair passed the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 which introduced tuition fees of £1,000 to start in the 1998/9 academic year. In addition, maintenance grants were replaced with repayable student loans for all but the poorest students. The total loans provided by the SLC increased from £941 million in the 1997/8 academic year, to £1.23 billion in the next year, when tuition fees took effect.

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