The Dearing Report 25 years on: Student loan reform in UK. Did it work?

Nicholas Barr

Professor of Public Economics at LSE

Professor Barr was an architect of the 2006 reforms of student funding.

Claire Callender

Professor of Higher Education Studies at IOE and Birkbeck

Professor Callender is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE). She undertook research for the Dearing Committee on students and now explores the effects of student funding on students and graduates in England.

Bruce Chapman

Professor of Economics at Australian National University

Professor Chapman designed the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, the first national income contingent loan scheme using the income tax system for collection in 1989, which was the blueprint for England's system of income contingent loans.

Charles Clarke

Visiting Professor at Lancaster University and Kings College London

Charles was Member of Parliament for Norwich South from 1997 to 2010. He served as Education Minister from 1998 and then in the Home Office from 1999 to 2001. He then joined the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and Labour Party Chair.

From 2002 to 2004 he was Secretary of State for Education and Skills and oversaw the 2003 white paper which introduced annual tuition fess of £3,000 underpinned by income contingent tuition fee loans.

Lorraine Dearden

Professor of Economics at IOE

Professor Dearden has evaluated the impact of various reforms of the student funding system and advises governments on income-contingent loans and other student funding issues.

Nick Hillman

Director at Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI)

Nick has been the Director of HEPI since 2014. He worked for the Rt Hon David Willetts MP (now Lord Willetts), the Minister for Universities and Science, from 2007 until the end of 2013, as Chief of Staff and then Special Adviser in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Under his watch, tuition fees were increased from £3,000 of £9,000 were introduced in 2012.

Simon Marginson

Professor of Higher Education at University of Oxford

Professor Marginson is Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education and higher education as a public good, and higher education and social inequality

Anna Vignoles

Director at Leverhulme Trust

She is an education economist and previously a Professor at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the relationship between educational achievement and social mobility and the role played by skills in the economy. Her first research assistant role was to support Frank Coffield who worked on the Dearing Review and since then she has written extensively about widening participation in, and the outcomes from, higher education.

Gill Wyness

Professor in Economics at IOE

Professor Wyness is Deputy Director of the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO). She has evaluated the impact of various reforms of the student funding system and her research now focuses on understanding the nature of, and drivers of socio-economic gaps in higher education access and attainment.