Hilary Osborne
Hilary Osborne follows how money decisions by governments and companies shape the lives of ordinary people, with a focus on personal finance, consumer protection and the costs of education. She works as consumer and money editor at the Guardian and has spent most of her career writing about how people earn, spend and save their money. Her articles mix practical guidance on everyday money decisions with scrutiny of how policy and corporate behaviour affect individuals, including students navigating higher education costs.
Student finance and the cost of education
Osborne’s education coverage centres on the financial realities of studying, treating prospective and current students as consumers whose long-term obligations need to be clearly understood.
One of her key pieces on student loan promotion in England and Wales reports MPs’ claims that loan marketing mis-sold the product to young people, underplaying the true cost of borrowing and repayment. She approaches this kind of story by examining how loan structures, interest rates and repayment terms influence access to higher education and shape graduates’ future choices. In this strand of her work she focuses on transparency, fairness of terms, and the role of regulators and parliament in correcting practices that put students at a disadvantage.
Household money and consumer protection
Osborne’s core beat is household money and consumer affairs, spanning news and service pieces on banking, saving, borrowing and day-to-day spending. She has edited and contributed to the Guardian’s money coverage, offering practical tips for stretching income, cutting costs and making informed choices about products and services. Her work emphasises the impact of company practices and financial terms on ordinary households, and she often highlights how policies or corporate decisions can leave consumers exposed. Her published money advice is presented as practical, straightforward guidance that helps readers make their money go further and understand everyday financial choices. Across this reporting, she returns to themes of clarity, trust and the small details in contracts or product designs that can determine whether people are genuinely protected.
Business, finance and everyday impact
Beyond individual budgeting, Osborne reports on wider business and financial developments where they affect consumers and workers. Her experience includes early coverage of major social media and technology companies as they entered public markets, reflecting an interest in how new platforms change both investment and everyday life.
Profiles of her work note her long tenure at the Guardian and a sustained focus on the evolving landscape of digital media and finance. She brings these larger trends back to ground level, asking what new products, corporate strategies and market shifts mean for people trying to protect their finances and plan for the future.
In this business-facing strand she stays close to the question of who benefits and who bears the risk when markets and corporate behaviour move.
Ethics in trade and animal welfare
Osborne has also reported on the ethics of global trade, co-authoring a Guardian piece on the cruelty of live animal exports.
The article examines how rising demand for meat leads to more animals transported in harsh conditions and highlights gaps in the regulation governing this trade. Her involvement in this coverage shows a willingness to follow money flows beyond personal finance into supply chains and animal welfare, connecting economic demand with human responsibility.
This thread reinforces the broader pattern in her work: tracking the consequences of financial and commercial decisions not only for consumers but for the living systems affected by global markets.
Across student finance, household money, business reporting and ethical trade, Osborne’s through-line is the same: she focuses on how financial structures and corporate behaviour shape real lives, and she writes in a way that makes those structures visible and understandable to the people living with them. Her coverage of education sits within that wider mission, treating student borrowers as consumers who deserve full information and fair treatment.
4 more education journalists.
Ajit Niranjan
Ajit Niranjan links climate science, policy and hard numbers to how extreme weather and environmental damage disrupt daily life, public services and industry. He is European environment correspondent at the Guardian. His beat includes violent heat, pollution, wildfires, air quality, EU green policy, corporate responsibility, energy transition, clean home heating, public health and long-term risks to landscapes and ecosystems. He examines how lobbying, supply chains and regulation shape environmental harm, from data centres and fish farms to fossil fuel industries. His reporting covers schools, hospitals, transport, homes and infrastructure as climate stress points. He previously reported on climate for DW News. He combines data, scientific research, eyewitness accounts and on-the-ground reporting. He also produces explainers, dossiers, factsheets and Q&As that translate complex technical debates into clear, precise language.
Albert Tait
Albert Tait is Education Editor at The Telegraph, leading coverage of schools and universities as institutions whose decisions have direct consequences for staff and students. He focuses on how regulators, senior leaders and governing bodies respond when safety, standards or integrity are under scrutiny, and how those responses affect classrooms and lecture halls. His work links school inspections and teacher safety to regulatory frameworks and conditions on the ground, and he reports on incidents such as knife attacks and “Code Red” alerts with attention to immediate impact and emergency protocols. He produces multi-part investigations into university governance, including extensive reporting on Cambridge’s handling of Jason Arday’s appointment and resignation. He also covers curriculum debates such as changes in how scientists view evolution and inheritance. He began at The Telegraph as a news reporter and previously covered community news at a local paper.
Beth Kennedy
Beth Kennedy is editor at The PIE News and stands out for reporting on how UK policy, institutional strategy and new delivery models reshape international education. Her beat covers UK study visa rules, international student flows, Home Office and UCAS data, alternative study pathways, language schools, and mergers and acquisitions across the sector. She reports on the practical effects of visa changes, scholarship schemes, online and transnational education, school closures, job losses and sector consolidation. Her work is direct and data-led, with clear explanations of complex systems and a focus on what policy and market shifts mean for universities, language schools and private training organisations. She has over a decade in specialist media, including years reporting for primary healthcare professionals before joining The PIE in 2024.
Callum Clark
Callum Clark is a multimedia journalist at STV News who covers education through the lens of university finances, restructuring and their impact on students, staff and local services. He focuses on stories where cost‑saving plans, job losses and service closures reshape community life, such as Dundee University’s nursery and botanic garden closures, and sets those decisions within wider restructuring efforts. His reporting is direct and fact driven, built on official documents, statements and precise figures that show both the scale of savings targets and monthly losses, and the number of posts at risk. Clark’s background in local news and public service coverage, including mental health service reforms and redundancy schemes, shapes a methodical style that tracks formal processes while keeping the lived experience of workers, families and service users in view.