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Universities would receive £1,000 for every low-income student they recruit under a plan put forward by Labour intended to widen access to higher education.
Liam Byrne, the shadow universities minister, describes this as a possible option in a pamphlet on university reform published by the Social Market Foundation thinktank.
He also says that expanding the opportunity for students to take "earn while you learn" technical degrees would be a priority for Labour, and that "serious consideration" would have to be given to creating a new loan system for postgraduates.
The pamphlet, entitled Robbins Rebooted in reference to the Robbins report on university expansion in 1963, describes universities as "the power stations of the knowledge economy" and proposes various measures that could link them more effectively to schools and business, but offers no fresh thinking on one of the most controversial issues in this portfolio: the future of tuition fees.
The proposal for a £1,000 "student premium", which would be paid to universities for every student they recruit from a low-income background, was originally floated by the IPPR thinktank in a report last year.
The IPPR said that, although universities were trying to diversify their intake, recruiting students from poor families could be expensive, and that these students were more likely to drop out, which could be a further disincentive.
The coalition set up a national scholarship programme, worth £150m in 2014-15, to help universities provide bursaries to these students. But the IPPR said this scheme was unfair because the money is distributed on the basis of how many students a university has, not how many disadvantaged students, meaning that universities with a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students are penalised.
Instead, the IPPR recommended scrapping the scheme and using the money, plus another £318m set aside for widening participation, to fund a student premium.
Byrne describes the idea approvingly and says Labour would have to consider it.
On postgraduate loans, he says a future government would have to give "serious consideration" to introducing a new postgraduate loans programme. Half of postgraduates cannot access loans, and Byrne warns that this could become "the new barrier to access".
Stressing Labour's commitment to technical degrees, Byrne also says the party wants to give teenagers "a clear route to an affordable degree through A-levels, but also through an apprenticeship organised in the first instance by the city or country apprenticeship agency in partnership with employers offering highly skilled jobs".
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