Repayment shock faced by students

AROUND 22,000 students on weekend-only courses have been told they were incorrectly issued university maintenance loans and targeted grants that they may have to pay back.

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The Student Loans Company (SLC) has written to students to tell them their university or college provided incorrect information and did not tell SLC they only attended on the weekend.

Affected students at 15 institutions are usually only eligible for tuition fee loans and therefore, if they continue to study and are reassessed as ineligible for maintenance loans, will have to pay back any money they were paid beyond the entitlement they should have had.

National Union of Students president Amira Campbell said the news will be devastating for the affected students. “They trusted the Government, the Student Loans Company and their universities to handle everything correctly: now that trust has been broken, mistakes have been made and once again students are made to face the brunt of it,” she said.