What shapes student intentions? The interplay between policy, social and personal factors in postgraduate education

ABSTRACT

The Master’s Loan Scheme in England was initially designed to support widening access to postgraduate education. However, the general increase in the average fees has posed a risk of reducing these schemes’ effectiveness in promoting social mobility, especially for debt adverse students. We use a multidisciplinary framework to build a model of postgraduate intentions to review the Fast Forward (FF) Master Scheme at the University of Greenwich in the UK. This framework underpinned the development of an online survey for this observational study. The results suggest that the FF allowed some graduates who, without the FF intervention, would have disregarded undertaking postgraduate taught studies (PGT) to consider studying for a PGT degree. Many of these graduates are from previously under-represented communities in the sector. We found that financial concerns could deter some students, but the intervention design allowed students to consider PGT study when they had a positive undergraduate experience. Alleviating the credit constraint may not be enough to widen access at the PGT level. Better information about PGT courses, more flexible delivery of PGT, and employment support, such as mentorship and work experience, and social and personal factors considerations could help widen access to PGT studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Postgraduate degree intentions
• widening participation interventions
• credit constraints
• student motivations
• access to postgraduate education

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Emmanuel Igwe and Emeka Okoye for their research assistance. We are grateful for the comments and suggestions received at the British Education Research Association (BERA) Annual Conference 2015 in Belfast, Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Annual Conference 2015 in Newport and HEFCE Postgraduate Support Scheme 2014/2015 Conference in York in 2016. The study questionnaire is available on request to the authors. All remaining errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the literature presented, individuals are not simply considered as rational or irrational decision-makers, but as decision-makers whose decision-making meanders from abject rationality to frivolous irrationality.

Additional information

Funding

We would like to thank Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) for funding this research under the Postgraduate Support Scheme (Project Number GO166).