Students and staff at colleges can access the Financial Times for free from today.

The news outlet is extending its FT schools programme - which already offers free access to FT.com to all schools globally that teach 16- to 19-year-olds - to all further education colleges.

This means that there will be free access from college campus devices, but students and staff will also be able to set up user accounts of their own, using their college email addresses. 

Opinion: New to teaching? Here is what you should expect from FE

News: £1.1bn needed to reverse FE funding cuts, says IFS

More on this: What is the role of a college lecturer?

Lifting the paywall

Financial Times project lead and global education editor Andrew Jack said: “The FT, like many other publications, has a paywall. We decided around three years ago, initially in the UK, to lift it and make it accessible to staff and students in secondary schools. We then quite quickly expanded that around the world.”

Mr Jack said that, as a UK-based publication, the FT was aware of the resource issues facing colleges. It was therefore decided the scheme should be extended to the FE sector, which could bring an entirely new readership to the FT, rather than affecting existing readers.

Content on FT.com was just as relevant to colleges as it was to schools, Mr Jack said: “Economics, business, politics, geography - those subjects are also taught in colleges. A lot of people try to enrich the curriculum and we want to get to those people who maybe have not always thought about the FT.” There were a lot of intersections with FT content, he added.

There were ways for teachers to highlight content that was particularly relevant to parts of the curriculum, and these could then be shared by the FT across the sector, Mr Jack said.

Since launching in 2017, the FT schools programme has reached more than 50,000 students in 100 countries, according to the FT.