In line with May Day’s protest over the rising cost of living for students and a perceived privatisation of the University of Exeter, keen activist Carlus Hudson delves deeper into the motivations behind the protest and points the finger of blame squarely between the private landlords of Exeter and the profit-driven mindset of the university.
On Wednesday 1st May, also International Workers’ Day, students in Exeter will be holding a demonstration in Queens LT2 at 6pm to challenge the on-going economic attacks on students. The tripled tuition fees introduced by the government have been implemented, meaning that students who started their courses this year and from now on will be landed with an extra £18,000 debt for a three year degree. International students have an even larger debt to pay because of going to university than that. While students are being weighed down in the long term by the increased debt burden (for the crime of wanting an education and being upwardly mobile), in the short term their standard of living is being targeted by an increase in student rents. The Students’ Guild have already taken action to freeze rents, but this should be extended to keep living costs low for students over the next few years.
Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013 via Compfight cc
The provision of housing to students, both on and off campus, is for profit and largely in the hands of private landlords. Maintenance loans are sometimes barely sufficient to cover the cheaper end of accommodation available, meaning there is simply not enough affordable student housing to go around. The demolition of old housing and the construction of new housing on campus itself largely caters to the higher end demographics. This means that not enough investment is being made into cheaper housing. This process is slowly making Exeter unaffordable to thousands of prospective and current students at Exeter. Student housing should not be to there to maximise the profits of the companies the contacts are outsources to, it should be run at cost by the university to make sure that high quality accommodation is available at a reasonable price.
A number of other services on campus have been shut down, including several of the cafes that operated on campus until the start of this academic year. This means that a number of staff have lost their jobs and those services have been centralised to the Forum, which damages the diversity of services available on campus as well as being detrimental to those who have been made redundant as a result.
Students are mobilising at Exeter University to fight these attacks, and pressure the university management to implement measures to reverse the changes that have taken place. The demonstration on 1st May will be the start of a long-term campaign to achieve this, and this campaign will seek to organise the anger felt by many students on these issues.
Carlus Hudson
Editorial Note: This article claims that jobs were lost when cafes on campus were closed. To clarify this point, all staff affected by these closures were in fact offered alternative employment or a voluntary severance package.
Could the university be doing more to help ease the pressure of living on a student budget? Or is the cost of private housing really none of their concern? Leave a comment below or write to the Comment team at the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group or on Twitter @CommentExepose.
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