Recession hit students struggling to keep up with tuition and maintenance fees may be eligible for help as part of a new University scheme to ease financial pressure.
The Personalised Instalment Payment Plan (PIPP), recently launched at Kingston University, has been funded by £300,000 made available to the university as a result of the Government’s 2.5 per cent VAT cut announced in November. Keith Houghton of Kingston University’s Student Services and Administration, the department managing the fund said: “It is for people who have been affected by the credit crunch who have unfortunately lost their jobs or for those who had employers who sponsored them to do a Masters and are no longer able to fund them. [Postgraduates] are the group we are expecting to take this offer.” PIPP, which has so far been offered as a pilot to 22 postgraduate and overseas students at Kingston University, although it is also available for undergraduates, requires applicants to have taken out all statutory funding available to them, or show that a change of circumstances such as redundancy or withdrawal of credit has left them struggling. Eirini Alexopoulou, a 24-year-old Cancer Biology postgraduate is aware of the difficulties of funding yourself and studying. She said: “I’m an EU Overseas student and my parents are supporting me. To be honest I spent my last six years in studies continuously and I have never worked. I am more interested in finding a job related to what I’m studying, so I don’t have to be working at the same time and leave my studies behind in order to do that.” The Greek Masters student whose course costs £3,700 added that she would be “really interested” in the scheme but called for more face to face information to be offered rather than relying on leafleting. The application process, which requires students to maintain ‘satisfactory academic progress’, asks for both undergraduate and postgraduates to have passed all their assessments at the first available attempt, dismissing efforts at re-takes. Houghton said: “It is our policy to improve academic standards. Students who [apply] who have not done the work are not accepted. It is different with students who have tried hard.” “The whole purpose of this is because we want students to not worry about paying fees and loans.”
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