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Introduction
The expansion and growing importance of higher education (HE) in England since the 1980s have prompted numerous reforms aimed at reshaping and restructuring student finance, reflecting the changing ideological, economic and social functions of HE. The undergraduate student funding reforms introduced in England by the 2004 Higher Education Act, especially the launch of financial assistance in the form of bursaries funded by higher education institutions (HEIs), the focus of this paper, were particularly significant. Bursaries alongside higher, variable tuition fees were to embody the Labour government's quest for an HE quasi-market. Together they would establish price differentials among universities to promote provider competition and student choice, while bursaries also would help off-set tuition fee increases to safeguard HE access by lowering the cost of HE participation. Both policy tools lie at the heart of the Westminster Coalition's 2012/13 HE funding reforms and their goal of completing Labour's marketisation agenda. The Coalition increased undergraduate tuition fees threefold and boosted the role of institutional aid through the National Scholarship Programme (NSP) which they co-fund. In 2010/11, universities and colleges spent £378.1 million on bursaries and scholarships for low-income students (OFFA, 2012a) and plan to spend £443.9 million on financial support in 2013/14 while the government will be investing £150 million in NSP (OFFA, 2012b). Significantly, too, bursaries reflect the ongoing trend in welfare provision towards discretionary benefits and decentralised or 'localised' decision-making (Hills and Richards, 2012) as each university designs its own system of support with widely varying eligibility criteria.
Despite considerable investment in bursaries in England, little is known about student perceptions of their effectiveness in promoting HE access and choice because until now they have not been examined systematically in England. This article presents such an analysis and considers the implications for the NSP, drawing on the findings of the first major national study of bursaries which included a survey of 4,848 full-time undergraduates entering HE for the first time in 2008/09. The article concludes that most students do not believe their choices are affected by bursaries. This is partly because of a lack of bursary information and poor marketing, and partly because bursaries are poorly designed, undermining their effectiveness. The reconfiguration of institutional aid from 2012 under the NSP may overcome some...