Students from Scottish universities facing a shock bill of more than £2000 will not now have to pay backdated interest on any loans they take out to cover the cost.
The Student Loans Company said yesterday that any postgraduate student borrowing money to cover the cost of a one-off charge called the graduate endowment would pay interest only from April this year.
On Monday, The Herald revealed that 3000 postgraduates had been told to pay an immediate £2200 to pay the endowment, which they had previously been told to pay off at the end of their studies.
Then, yesterday, it emerged that those who had missed the deadline for applying for a student loan to cover the charge had been told they faced additional interest payments, backdated to when they first graduated.
However, after being contacted by The Herald about the case of Kathleen Burt, a PhD student from St Andrews, the loans company admitted a mistake had been made.
"We apologise for the worry or confusion caused. Ms Burt will not be disadvantaged in any way as we will be removing the backdated interest from her account for the graduate endowment loan," a spokeswoman said.
"This will also apply to other customers where interest on the graduate endowment loan has been backdated."
The problem is an unintended consequence of the scrapping of the graduate endowment fee by the SNP-run Scottish Government, which introduced the policy as a means of reducing the burden of student debt.
The former Scottish Executive had allowed postgraduate students to defer payment until completion of their studies.
However, because the scheme is being wound up, all outstanding debts are being collected by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland, which administers the endowment on behalf of the government. In a letter sent to students in March, the agency invited those who could not pay upfront to take out a student loan to cover the cost.
Last night, a spokesman for the Scottish Government said officials had worked closely with the SLC as soon as the problem had emerged "to ensure that if there were any instances of erroneous correspondence having been issued to students, those cases were identified quickly and steps are taken to remedy the situation".
However, Claire Baker, higher education spokeswoman for the Scottish Labour Party, called for all payments from postgraduates to be deferred until their studies ended. "Thousands of students had made an agreement to pay their endowment years down the line and budgeted to do so accordingly. The SNP have broken that agreement."
However, SNP MSP Aileen Campbell said: "It was Labour and their LibDem allies that introduced this tuition fee in the first place so for Labour to complain about anyone having to pay the graduate endowment fee is utter hypocrisy.
"If Labour were still in charge, all students across Scotland would continue to be faced with this backdoor tuition fee."
Source:
http://www.theherald.co.uk |
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