We recently saw a report from independent think tank Bright Blue advocating that the UK should have a higher proportion of people in their late sixties and seventies in work to boost individual and national prosperity. From the report:
Bright Blue calls on the Government to introduce new policies to ensure those who aspire to work when they are aged 65 or over are better supported. Bright Blue argues that if baby boomers in particular decide to work for a greater number of years they will be contributing enormously to the economy and helping to create more intergenerational fairness.
The current government has already adopted Bright Blue's recommended policy of enabling working grandparents to be entitled to Shared Parental Leave, so more older workers can stay in work and meet their family commitments.
Bright Blue is now calling for the introduction of a new lifetime Higher Education (HE) loan account for all adults to be able to obtain financial support to pay the tuition fees of HE courses to upskill and reskill throughout their working lives, so people are better able to work for longer later in life.
Our recent report advocated that all eligible adults from the UK and other EU aged 18 onwards should be entitled to access a lifetime HE tuition fee loan account from government to pay for tuition of any HE course - full-time or part-time - in England during their lifetime. This means that adults of whatever age could access this account to pay for equivalent or lower qualifications, or courses below a certain intensity.
Those who are older can currently access tuition fee loans for undergraduate courses, and in the future, those aged up to 60 will be able to access tuition fee loans for postgraduate courses. But these tuition fee loans are not available for those undertaking equivalent or lower qualifications, or those undertaking courses that are studied below a certain intensity of hours per week.
The amount in the lifetime loan account should be determined after extensive consultation led by government. It should take into account that the amount would have to be high enough to take into account people studying multiple degrees. However, the loan account should also be low enough to trigger price competition and, in particular, downward pressure on undergraduate tuition fees in England.
Similar to the current system, students will repay the amount they have borrowed from their lifetime loan account to the Student Loans Company through the PAYE system. This tuition fee loan will be separate and junior to the maintenance loan UK students can obtain for a first undergraduate degree.
We'd be very interested to know your thoughts on the report: whether you'd want to be in work into your 60s and 70s, whether a higher education loan would make you more likely to retrain - or maybe you're not tempted at all!
