ABSTRACT
Those concerned about the demonstrable increase in student hardship as the higher education system expanded and the Conservative government ‘reformed’ its patterns of student finance have had to face some difficult issues: the relative generosity of the state package in international terms; its hugely regressive effect in terms of return to income groups; and the overall high personal rates of return to graduates in work. Nonetheless, along with the funding of institutions, this circle (of apparently generous yet inadequate public investment) was one of the major tasks of the Dearing Inquiry to square.
