More than 20,000 university students in England who received government maintenance loans and grants worth thousands of pounds have been told they must pay the money back after their universities wrongly told them they were eligible.
About 22,000 students studying weekend courses at 15 universities and colleges have received letters from Student Finance England, part of the government-owned Student Loans Company, informing them that they will have to return the support they were paid.
The letters say the repayments are being demanded because the students’ institutions “made an error when providing your course details to us.” According to the notice, the universities did not tell Student Finance England that the students “only attended on [sic] the weekend.”
The issue affects students who were granted maintenance loans and grants on the basis of information supplied by their universities. Student Finance England said that, because the course details were incorrect, the students were not actually eligible for the funding they had received.
The scale of the problem is significant, affecting thousands of people across multiple institutions. The letters mean that many students who believed they had been properly approved for support are now being told they owe the money back.
No further details were given in the source about which universities and colleges were involved, how the repayment process will work, or whether students will be offered any form of appeal or payment plan.
