The amount of financial support paid to students by the Scottish Government has risen to record levels, new figures show.
Latest statistics show 143,110 students received support in 2016-17, up from 141,000 the previous year.
In total, £834.8 million was paid in bursaries and grants, fees or authorised in loans for the 2016-17 session, an increase of 3.6% from 2015-16, when it was £805.8 million.
The average support per student in the 2016-17 session was £5,830, up 1.9% since 2015-16 when the average was £5,720.
Higher education minister Shirley-Anne Somerville said: "Higher education in Scotland is based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay.
"I very much welcome these figures, which show this government is investing a record amount in student support - up 3.6% to £834.8 million last year.
"As a result, more students are benefiting from free tuition and the maximum level of grant.
"We are also seeing more students from the most-deprived backgrounds entering higher education."
The Scottish Government said almost 3,000 additional students qualified for a non-repayable bursary or saw their funding increase as a result of the income threshold being raised from £17,000 to £19,000 last year.
There was also an increase in the number of students receiving support through the nursing and midwifery bursary scheme, from 8,780 in 2015-16 to 8,915 in 2016-17.
One in ten of those receiving financial support was European Union (EU) students studying in Scotland.
In total, 14,785 EU students were supported in 2016/17, which is 10.3% of the total number of students supported by Student Awards Agency Scotland.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel