End of grants 'likely to force thousands more students to work'

Predictable. First they came for EMA. More A2 learners from poor backgrounds have to work long hours again - thus prejudicing their grades. Then they removed AS as an indicator of potential. Then they removed the grant for undergrads whose parents have income below £25k in the household - damaging the prospects of undergrads from poorer backgrounds. Now they intend to increase fees incrementally through TEF - deterring those from poorer backgrounds who are resistant to accumulated debt. Already, recruitment of those from poorer backgrounds has stalled at some RG HEIs (particularly Oxbridge, Exeter and Durham). The effect will be to waste talent as the elitist universities will not accommodate those from poorer origins. Those young people will be disadvantaged by attending 'lower-ranking' HEIs and their degree prospects placed in jeopardy by the necessity to work part-time (that means, in fact, long hours) to contain the costs of their higher education. The prospective result is that the 'higher' professions will become more exclusive, including, one suspects, the academic profession. What, in effect, the Coalition and the Tories will achieve is social closure. Who is opposing this pernicious tendency? It's certainly not the upper echelons of HE management who seem myopic in their demands on their 'customers'. One has yet to hear a concerted and pronounced opposition from the academic profession, individually or through the AUT. There seems to be no defence of the prospects of the poor. Are there any murmurings out there?

BTW, what has happened to government impact assessments for either primary or secondary legislation? How does that assessment (if it exists) compare with this report?