Lucy Hunter Blackburn's research on student debts, which is linked to CREID's projects on Scottish higher education (HE), was quoted by Ferret Fact Service in The Daily Record in response to SNP MP Joanna Cherry's claim on the free fee policy of Scottish HE in the Andrew Marr Show on the 18th February.
Ferret Fact Service wrote in The Daily Record that Cherry's claim was mostly false. This argument is partly based on a previous comment by Blackburn that the statistical figures released by Student Loans Company “consistently represented only around two-thirds of the average amount [of debt] that a four-year honours degree student would have accumulated”.
Blackburn was also interviewed on student funding by BBC Radio Scotland on the 23rd February 2018 for the higher education series of its programme 'Sunday Politics'. The programme will be broadcasted at 11. 30 on Sunday the 25th February.
Blackburn is currently an ESRC-funded PhD student at Edinburgh University and was recently involved in our projects Higher Education in Scotland, the Devolution Settlement and the Referendum on Independence and Access to higher education for people from less advantaged backgrounds in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
Blackburn's research on tuition fees can be found on her own blog 'Adventures in Evidence' and on the following websites of our projects.