They receive a mixture of a non-means tested bursary, a means-tested bursary and a reduced rate student loan to help with their living costs.
Under plans announced by David Cameron, from 2013 a new single benefit called the universal credit will replace means-tested benefits, while the personal independent payment (PIP) will replace the non-means tested disability living allowance.
They include things such as housing benefit, some forms of non-means tested unemployment benefits and non-means tested help for the sick and infirm.
Around 3.2m people, including children, are in receipt of the non-means tested DLA payments of up to £70 a week (depending on severity of condition).
The DLA is a non-means tested benefit, paid to Paralympians, people in work and those for whom work will always be impossible.
Free bus passes, free TV licenses and non-means tested winter fuel payments are all dolled out to those in higher age brackets.
In Britain, there are a bunch of non-means tested benefits that the government thinks fall into that first class of payments that can legally be fenced off.
The IPPR argues that a new national salary insurance could offer working people who become unemployed up to 70% of their earnings in non-means tested support for up to six months (capped at £200 a week).
As a widowed parent I became entitled to apply for Widowed Parent's Allowance, a non-means tested benefit which means that you can still work and claim it (it's worked out based on your partner's national insurance contributions).
When she claimed for income-based jobseekers' allowance (a non-means tested variety of unemployment benefit) she was refused on the grounds that she did not have a right to reside in Britain.
Attendance allowance is non-means tested and non-taxable and amounts to £73.60 per week.
