In the UK student financial support is determined by your home nation, and funding for universities determined by the nation where your university is based. Thread.
That's thrown up a few anomalies this year because in-year hardship funding has been routed through universities rather than through the SLC. 
If you think for example about massive disparity in help for students between Wales and England, the 25,000 or so students from Wales studying in England have good reason to feel completely abandoned by their host nation.
Treatment like that for example isn't going to help with Wales' brain drain, and it's amazing to me that the issue appears to have been almost completely ignored by the Senedd Children, Young People and Education Committee @SeneddCYPE @lynne_neagle
It's been particularly acute this week in Northern Ireland. You'll recall that @DianeDoddsMLA announced a £500 payment for all students. But almost 11,000 NI students study in England and many thousands more study in the south/ROI.
The NI Dept of the Economy has repeatedly said that the "Department does not have the legal basis to issue funding to universities in GB for them to administer the scheme, nor to the Student Loans Company (SLC) for them to make the payments in GB."
And tellingly "when the Minister previously approached the SLC to enquire as to whether they could issue the payments on our behalf in GB, the Minister was advised that the SLC did not have the capacity to do so"
It's shocking that the devolved administrations have no way of financially supporting students who happen to have chosen to study elsewhere in the UK, and fairly damning that the SLC can't be asked to just top up some loans without crying "capacity" a whole year into the crisis.
The whole affair has interesting implications for the union too.
Anyway - Sinn Fein launching a motion into the assembly on this on Tuesday. Will be interesting to see how that plays out.
https://twitter.com/JohnODowdSF/status/1370444869311856646?s=19
NUS-USI running quite an impressive campaign here. I wonder if Brandon Lewis has said anything.
https://twitter.com/NUS_USI/status/1370667724351889408?s=19
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