Written by Amy O’Donoghue
As an institution with a net worth of over a billion and a 26% privately educated student population, LSE is perceived by many as prestigious and elite.
With such a level of wealth and resources, the School has a responsibility to ensure its students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are not left behind. Despite recent changes to its Widening Participation measures, such as updates to contextual admissions criteria and bursary thresholds, many current students from lower-income backgrounds still feel overlooked.
Until 2025, LSE had primarily used the POLAR quintile system – a classification system which grades postcode areas based on rates of university progression – to assess whether students are eligible for a contextual offer (meaning they may receive lower grade requirements). Eligibility for Free School Meals (FSM) or household income is widely considered the most accurate indicators of someone’s socioeconomic background. Yet, until the alterations made in the 2025-2028 Widening Participation Plan, these were not used to determine if someone was entitled to a contextual offer. It’s possible this method of classification contributed to only 14.6% of UK undergraduates at LSE having been eligible for FSM in 2025, compared to 25.7% of students in UK secondary schools and 18.4% of students in higher education (with the most recent data for this being from 2022/23).
The previous system left a lot of room for error. Tom, a second-year student, told The Beaver that despite being entitled to FSM throughout secondary school, he did not receive a contextual offer. Meanwhile, he noted that other students in his cohort did receive one due to their postcode being classified as a lower POLAR quintile, notwithstanding some of these students having higher household incomes and having previously attended private schools.
He believes that LSE “doesn’t seem to make any effort to acknowledge” important factors that determine a person’s likelihood to progress to university, such as parental occupation and education.
LSE confirmed that the latest contextual offer criteria now include FSM as a marker of eligibility, in a change from previous years. They told The Beaver that the new Access and Participation Plan includes “ambitious targets to promote equality of opportunity at every stage from accessing university through to progressing to good graduate outcomes.” They also highlighted that they have recently launched the LSE Navigate programme “to increase support for contextual offer holders.”
This seems to indicate a welcome – albeit overdue – change in LSE’s access measures.
But some current students remain dissatisfied.
One student told The Beaver that since they had not received a contextual offer, despite previously being in receipt of FSM, they had been denied a place on LSE Navigate – a new scheme designed to help students from lower-income backgrounds adjust to university and make the most of the academic and professional opportunities available to them.
It appears that incoming students will have more provisions made for them, which is undeniably a positive progression. However, current students shouldn’t be neglected: the struggles that come with a lower socioeconomic background don’t disappear once a place at LSE is obtained.
Present students have described the stress and dissatisfaction that comes with attempting to get financial support from LSE. One anonymous undergraduate told The Beaver that upon learning that LSE expanded the bursary eligibility to more income categories, they entered into their deferred first-year of study expecting to receive £1500 – only to discover that since they had technically enrolled in the 24/25 cohort, they would receive nothing at all.
Skye, a third-year law student, reported similar frustration with the fact that incoming students, in the same income bracket as her, would receive £2000 more. “My living costs are not minimised by virtue of having started my degree two years ago,” she stated.
In fact, second and third years often have higher living costs, as they are faced with paying rent in London’s brutal housing market, whilst first-years get priority for places in LSE student accommodation.
A LSE spokesperson told The Beaver: “The increased bursary values and household income thresholds will ensure that more of our students will receive financial support and more funding than ever will be disbursed through the LSE Bursary.” They also highlighted that LSE offers “one of the most generous bursary packages in the country”.
Whilst it’s a positive change that LSE is broadening its scope of financial support for its pupils, as an institution with one of the largest endowments in the country, one wonders why it wouldn’t extend this help to all the students who need it.
Home students aren’t the only ones affected by LSE’s potential apathy to financial hardship. With a student population consisting of over 70% international students, many of them having previously attended wealthy international schools, there is a common perception that most international students don’t need financial assistance.
But this assumption overlooks those who don’t come from affluent backgrounds. Grace, who attends LSE on a scholarship, told The Beaver that students who come from abroad may face “specific challenges that LSE doesn’t really consider”.
She highlighted that student overdraft accounts, which may act as a temporary safety net for home students, are generally unavailable to international students, who “can’t really access credit in the UK”.
She also asserted that “the timeline on which they make the scholarship payments is not conducive to actual student life”, receiving less in the first term than she does later on, despite needing more money to help with moving in and buying memberships on campus.
This made Welcome Week and Freshers events a challenge for her. She described sometimes feeling “socially isolated” when events cost more than LSE was providing.
Grace also described the inadequacy of LSE’s guarantor scheme, which she assumed “would have been really helpful as an international student who doesn’t really have a network in the UK.” However, the ”ultra-specific“ requirements that the guarantor scheme stipulates, that students must find their housing through particular sites and ensure that it costs no more than £1000 per month for each person, mean that the scheme is “not fully fleshed out”. When contacted, LSE revealed that just three people are using LSE as their guarantor in the 2025/26 academic year. Moreover, the scheme is not available to home students unless they are care-experienced, ignoring the home students without relatives who earn enough to be their guarantor.
Between issues with the universities’ access schemes and problems with the availability of financial and pastoral support, LSE has clearly left a lot of students desiring a more comprehensive framework. The recent changes would indicate a positive shift, but some pupils are still asking: is LSE changing for the better, or is it too little too late?
The financial support LSE appears to offer is evidently often wrapped up in bureaucracy and practical barriers to access. If the targeted students are consistently struggling to access them, how can LSE claim it holistically supports its disadvantaged students? LSE has a responsibility to ensure all of its students are able to thrive without barriers, and it certainly has the necessary resources. Failure to accommodate these students can only derive from apathy to their struggles.
