Money matters

Birkbeck has more money than ever to help students finance their course

A new student financial support package for part-time undergraduate students was created by Birkbeck in 2006 because part-time undergraduate students were not eligible for the same financial support as full-time students when the £3000 differential fee was introduced.

A generous new financial support package for part-time students was announced by the DfES in October 2005, but details of the scheme were published late in the 2006 recruitment cycle, so Birkbeck needed to move quickly.

The challenge in the summer of 2006 was to devise, implement and publicise a new undergraduate financial support package for students. This package used a combination of the new DfES money and donor money (Birkbeck has a growing tradition of raising money from private donors to support students). Any student who was eligible for partial government fee or course grants would have it topped up to the full amount by the College.

Any student not eligible for government fee or course grants could apply to the Student Opportunity Fund. This fund, created from donor money, enabled students to apply for funding who might be caught in the ‘poverty trap’ (just outside government bandings) or who were otherwise ineligible for genuine reasons.

The new financial support package was launched in June 2006 and was very successful:

• 2372 students successfully applied for funding from the Birkbeck Student Finance Team in 2006 compared to 1732 in 2005
• £900,722 was awarded to students in 2006 compared to £537,004 in 2005
• undergraduate recruitment in October 2006 was buoyant
• all the Student Opportunity Bursaries were taken up.