Money is no barrier

Christmas is expensive. There, I’ve said it. It may well be the most wonderful time of the year (one of my favourite Christmas tunes as it happens) but the budgeting and worry over money definitely does not give me the xmas feels.
Money and finances should be no barrier to study. If you have the passion, and the desire to study, OCA can help you access the resources to study.
First off, have you thought about a student loan? If you’ve never studied in higher education before, and you live in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland you could be eligible for a loan. As with any loan, you do have to pay this back, but only after you’re earning a specific amount. If you’re interested, full details on eligibility and repayments are available on the Student Finance website.
If you are not eligible for a Student Finance loan, don’t worry, we’ve got your back. OCA’s Learner Support Scheme provides bursaries to students who have low incomes. These bursaries cover 50% of the course fee and you don’t need to pay these back.
Through our Widening Participation schemes, that 50% can be extended and cover up to 90% of course fees if students have one or more indicators of widening participation, for example disabilities, students from a Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic (BAME) background, or with no qualifications. If you’d like to apply for this, or need any more information get in touch with Lia, Gemma, & Xhenifa at learnersupport@oca.ac.uk.
If neither of these apply, access to higher education is still open for you. Not only are OCA course fees around a third of those at a campus university, we can also split those payments down into bitesize chunks helping you spread the cost and getting into creative arts study.
Apart from all of these great funding opportunities for your study, there are other pots of funding out there; member of the armed forces? ELCAS could provide you with funding. No matter what your circumstances are, get in touch with us and we’ll help find funding you can access.
This has been our third day of #accessoca, join us tomorrow for day four where we look at access in the first degree we offered!