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Online learning

Online learning funding

Paying for your course fees can be a significant outlay so it's important you make the right decisions about financing your studies.

Our students use a variety of ways to finance their study; some take advantage of our flexible pay-per-module scheme, others are funded by their employer. If you're based in the UK, you may be eligible to apply for a tuition fee loan or a postgraduate student loan.

Pay-as-you-go

Our pay-as-you-go payment plan has no monthly obligations. You simply make a payment when you are ready to start the next stage of your course.

Undergraduate tuition fee loans

Students in England
Depending on where you live, you may be eligible for a part-time tuition fee loan of up to £6,935 a year to cover the cost of your course fees. This is a non-income based loan and you only start making repayments when your income is above the repayment threshold.

The total number of credits studied in any year must be worth a minimum of 25% (30 credits) of a full-time course (120 credits) - this depends on how many modules you choose and the credit value of each module - see the relevant course page for more information.

Students in Wales
Our online courses are registered with the Welsh Assembly. If you are resident in Wales you may be eligible for grant funding from Student Finance Wales (SFW).

Students in Northern Ireland
If you are resident in Northern Ireland you may be eligible for grant funding from Student Finance Northern Ireland (SFNI).

Students in Scotland
Students Award Agency Scotland (SAAS) does not fund part-time courses outside of Scotland. If you are a Scottish resident applying for one of our online courses, you are unable to claim funding.

EU students

Due to the UK's withdrawal from the EU, the UK Government issued new eligibility rules for home fee status and student finance from the 2021-22 academic year. For EU Students, this means that, subject to certain exceptions, you are not eligible for home fee status and student finance from 1 August 2021. Please refer to the full eligibility rules for full details.
More about support for EU students

Postgraduate student loans

If you're an eligible student starting a master's degree course in 2023/24, you can apply to Student Finance England (SFE) for a master's loan of up to £12,167* as a contribution towards your course and living costs.

If you're studying for 2, 3 or 4 academic years, the loan will be divided equally across each year of your course.

*Subject to change.

Eligibility

  • You must be a UK national ordinarily resident in England. Or an EU, EEA or Swiss national with EU settled status.
  • You must be under 60, without an existing qualification at master's-level or above.
  • You must be taking a full stand-alone master's course (180 credits), not a partial master's course requiring a lesser number of credits as a result of being awarded recognition of prior learning (RPL) from previous study or experience. Find out more about RPL.
  • Full eligibility criteria

Repayment
You pay back 6% of your income over the repayment threshold.

Other funding sources

Disabled students' allowances are available to help cover some of the extra costs you have because of a mental health problem, long-term illness or any other disability.

The Ministry of Defence's Enhanced Learning Credits Scheme (ELC) is available to members of the Armed Forces wishing to undertake higher education with approved ELC learning partners. Our provider number is 1716.

Sponsorship

If you're working and studying, your employer or another sponsor may fund your course or make a contribution to your fees. They need to write to us on headed paper to confirm their intention to fund, or part fund, your studies or complete our sponsor letter template. We invoice them for the full academic year, part-contribution or on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Your sponsor will need to write to us again in the September of each academic year in which they will be sponsoring your studies (the start of the academic year is always in September, regardless of when you start your course.)

For employers and sponsors

Our online courses enable ambitious employees to balance their commitment to work with online study. Our work-related courses are accredited by professional bodies so you can be sure that our course content is relevant. Our specialist online tutors are experts in their respective fields so you'll benefit from the insight they share with your employee.

You may wish to sponsor an employee who is:

  • studying to support an application for promotion
  • acquiring the skills needed in a new role
  • refreshing his or her knowledge after a career break.

Find out more


Courses

We offer a broad range of flexible, online and open learning courses.

View our courses

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