This week on the podcast student finance has exploded into the headlines – but is the English student loan system really doomed? Backbench Labour MPs are pressing the chancellor to act, polling has revealed widespread antipathy for above-inflation interest rates, and Rachel Reeves has clashed with Martin Lewis over the freeze to repayment thresholds.

Now former OfS access tsar John Blake has launched The Post-18 Project, our Wonkhe think tank, by arguing that a review of higher education funding is unavoidable and that a graduate tax should be one of the options. So is the government going to act, or will it be bounced into action?

Plus UKRI has found itself in a perfect comms storm over the future of curiosity-driven research funding, and Michael Salmon sits down with Welsh minister Vikki Howells to discuss the challenges facing tertiary education.

With Ben Ward, CEO at University of Manchester Students' Union, Smita Jamdar, Partner and Head of Education at Shakespeare Martineau, Michael Salmon, News Editor at Wonkhe, Vikki Howells, Minister for Further and Higher Education in the Senedd and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

The Post-18 Project: A review of higher education funding is inevitable

Five challenges faced by the Welsh tertiary sector

Maybe a graduate tax wasn’t such a bad idea after all

Welsh higher education is running out of wriggle room

Wales refuses to implement Westminster’s stealth graduate tax raid

Who should pay for our failing student loan system?