WITH a rising number of people getting postgraduate degrees, I believe the lack of access to postgraduate education for people from working-class backgrounds ensures inequality and a lack of representation in certain fields. 

I attended Durham University, surrounded by MacBooks and signet rings, while I was using a laptop that came free with my dad’s wifi. 

I’m trying not to sound ungrateful since I have, in fact, been very lucky. I grew up in a single-parent household in council housing, but in St Albans, a wealthy town where it is the norm to attend higher education. 

I gained a first-class honours degree in mathematics and people often joke that things will be easy for me as a result. 

I have a place on a masters course at a well-regarded university, however I’m in twice as much debt as my peers from my undergraduate degree and I wasn’t prepared for how financially difficult postgraduate education would be. 

When you’re working class you have to live hand to mouth, with no contingency plans and nothing to spare each month. 

Starting from the beginning of the application process, there are financial barriers; these only allow people to continue into postgraduate education if they have access to the amounts of money that it costs to do so. 

It can cost up to £100 to apply for some masters degrees, so the application process can cost up to £500 or more — an impossible amount for many people to find in any given month. 

Barriers also lie in the application itself. Often unpaid research or volunteering experience is needed to make your application “stand out.” 

Those who have no money to spare will not be able to take time off work to be able to get this experience, while someone from a more privileged background may be able to afford time off, have been prepared for these processes or paid someone to tutor them through it. 

If you don’t have these resources you’re immediately at a disadvantage. There is also the issue of having the time and resources to attend interviews, from travel to owning a pair of smart shoes (which I still don’t). 

If you have got to the point where you have been offered a place, the government’s postgraduate loan will cover tuition fees with very little left over. 

You are left with the only option of applying for grants. Masters grants for living costs are scarce, usually very specific and rarely cover the full amount needed. 

It’s also very time-consuming applying for grants, many of which will be for very small sums of money. 

Some also require you to retell your “sob story” (but keep it down to 250 words max!), which is a humiliating and dehumanising process, and often unsuccessful. 

So, if you’re working class, you will most likely need the postgraduate loan to cover tuition fees. This comes in three instalments throughout the year, much like the undergraduate student loan. 

However, fees are usually required up front or in maximum two instalments (not to mention a deposit, which you’ll have to fork out beforehand).

I asked my university if I could pay in three, after each time my loan was put into my account. To my relief, they said yes — a relief until they informed me that I would have to sign a credit scheme and pay a charge of £180. 

This credit scheme, targeted at students struggling to make ends meet, will affect my credit score if something goes awry.

The biggest financial barrier is living costs. With no access to benefits as a student, most working-class people have to work part-time to get them through their studies. 

Universities and courses vary greatly on the amount of time they allow for people to do so, but my course requires daily attendance. 

This essentially means you can only attend if you have your living costs covered beforehand. 

In my experience, people have a very narrow view of what it means to be working class. They assume that because you’re well spoken and interested in arts, culture and education you are not working class. 

Not only is this prejudice damaging in the short-term, people assuming that you’re middle class makes asking for help difficult since they assume that you couldn't possibly need financial help. 

Back to the laptop I mentioned previously, I was in dire need of a new one to conduct the programming required for my dissertation. 

When I went to my department to ask if I could get financial help for this, I was looked at in confusion: “Can’t you just ask your parents?” 

I went to the university with the same issue and was told that I should be able to afford a new laptop and was sent a link on how to budget. 

A masters degree is usually deemed necessary for any level of specialisation in a subject, so these issues become a barrier which will leave little representation of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in certain fields. 

Not only does this cause a barrier to social mobility, but begs the question: are the brightest minds being allowed to pursue academia? 

This then leaves industries and institutions with workforces that have a lack of diversity, which perpetuates the problem. 

As much as the current system for undergraduate degree loans leaves people from poorer backgrounds in huge amounts of debt, at least it allows them to access higher education. 

You would hope that once you get your foot in the door, you could access postgraduate education — but this isn’t the case. 

Having a loan system for postgraduates similar to that for undergraduates might be a step towards making postgraduate education more accessible. 

We must insist upon working-class representation, in all roles in universities, in order for things to change.