Changes that came into effect on Monday saw maintenance grants for poorer student scrapped and replaced by larger loans.

Previously, students from families with a household income of £25,000 or less were entitled to a full grant of £3,387 per year, while those with household incomes below £42,620 were also eligible for grants.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Sorana Vieru, NUS Vice President for Higher Education dubbed the plans coming into effect "a disgraceful change that basically punishes students simply for being poor, so they have to take a bigger loan than those students from privileged backgrounds."

Writing elsewhere for the International Business Times, Vieru said that move "entrenches inequality in our education system as a matter of policy."

"Scrapping grants makes expanding access harder: we know from various academic studies that students from poorer backgrounds are more debt-averse, and that particular groups – like student parents – all the more so", she went on to say.

The plans to replace grants with loans was initially announced by then Chancellor George Osborne in his July 2015 budget speech.

Osborne justified the change at the time, saying: "There is a basic unfairness in asking taxpayers to fund grants for people who are likely to earn a lot more than them".

The change was later approved by a parliamentary committee in January 2016, in a manner which saw the government accused of attempting to "circumnavigate parliament" by Cambridge MP, Daniel Zeichner.

Speaking to Varsity at the time, a student who received a full maintenance grant said the cuts were "really worrying." 

"Students from poorer backgrounds will now face an even larger burden of debt, and that’s got to be a concern in terms of access," they continued. "I rely on the financial support from maintenance grants and bursaries from both my college and the university - I can only hope that Cambridge will step in to support students like me."

Another student, who also received a grant, took a different perspective, saying: "What the government is proposing does not reduce the amount of money available to students from low-income backgrounds – in fact, it increases the amount of money they are eligible for, which is a welcomed change for people like me who wouldn’t be able to attend university without this financial support."

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, emphasised this point speaking to the BBC, saying “In the past [students] had about £7,500, in future they will have £8,200. But it will all have to be paid back if they get a well-paid job, whereas in the past around £3,000 or so did not have to be paid back.”

The changes came into effect a day after a report which condemned the deregulation of the higher education section, warning of a "debt-generating engine" and questioning the existence of a "graduate premium".