Unwrap with care

Beware chancellors bearing gifts, writes Paul Wakeling.

George Osborne is fond of springing surprises on universities. His final budget of this parliament, unveiled on 18 March, included another unexpected package. He announced income-contingent loans of up to £25,000 to support PhD students and those on research masters, which seemingly came out of nowhere. Unlike the £10,000 loans announced for taught postgraduate programmes in the 2014 autumn statement, this new departure was not a response to sustained lobbying by universities or student representatives. It features some of the chancellor’s favourite motifs—the short-term political purpose is easy to spot. But the scant detail provided makes it trickier to work out precisely what the loans might look like or be able to achieve.

With pre-election purdah imminent and the promised consultation on taught postgraduate loans still awaited, many people had expected some repeat of that policy in the budget or perhaps the simultaneous release of the consultation document itself. However there is little political capital accrued from simply repeating previous commitments, especially if it involves providing the kind of details where devils can be found. Rather the chancellor has returned to one of his favoured themes: the science base as a catalyst for economic growth. Previous budgets saw windfalls for chosen pet projects such as graphene and the Crick Institute. (In research, chancellors like to “pick winners”, although it doesn’t always come to much—remember Gordon Brown’s Cambridge-MIT institute? Anyone?) Thus the PhD loans come as part of a broader, if somewhat vague commitment to “strengthening the UK’s skill and innovation base”.