From the archive, 12 April 1966: Battle lines drawn over student loans

University students will resist government attempts to replace grants with loans. A lot of artificial fury will be generated at the conference of the National Union of Students in Exeter this week. Delegates will go through the ritual of threatening a strike if the Government declares any intention of replacing maintenance grants by repayable loans. The Government has never stated any such intention. All the same, it is an argument that keeps cropping up. Sides have already been taken. On one are the NUS, the National Union of Teachers, the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, and the Trades Union Congress. On the other, only Sir William Mansfield Cooper (Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University), Lord Bowden (Principal of Manchester College of Science and Technology), and Dr Mark Blaug (reader in the economics of education at the London School of Economics) have so far openly stated support for a look at loans.
At a time when state expenditure on higher education is being closely questioned, it does no harm to raise the issue again. The most persuasive argument yet raised in favour of loans comes from Dr Blaug, in an almost unnoticed paper published last year by the Manchester School of Economics. Dr Blaug's research shows that graduates reap a private rate of return on the nation's investment in them of 14 per cent a year throughout their lives. If this investment is estimated at £4,000, then their rate of return on it at the age of 40 to 50 becomes about £400 a year in salary over the student who finished his formal education at 18. Read more...