vendredi 3 août 2018

The spying accusations are a new low for the Student Loan Company | Dawn Foster

If you’re a student who is estranged from your parents, the last thing you need is the SLC making a fragile situation even worse

Heading off to university offers many students their first taste of adult life: their first adult relationships, the trials of flatsharing, budgeting, managing workloads, as well as drinking to excess and failing to adequately feed themselves. But for some it’s not as simple as mere growing pains: the university culture and student finance system can entrench existing inequalities at every step, with students from wealthy backgrounds able to rent superior accommodation, while students from less affluent backgrounds struggle with money, and students estranged from their families are left without accommodation during the holidays. As if that wasn’t bad enough, now the Student Loan Company has been accused to have been spying on vulnerable students.

A number of students who reported estrangement from their parents when applying for student finance reportedly had their social media monitored, with staff at the SLC searching for proof that the students had disproved their claims by made contact with their parents to disprove their claims. Several students had their loan payments stopped and then some are said to have dropped out of university despite no findings of fraud against them.

Related: Graduate anger mounts over ‘nightmare’ Student Loans Company

Related: UK universities call for joined-up mental health care for students

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LPnnx2

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