Is The University Prioritising Profit Over Student Welfare?

 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 1^st 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.

“The provision of housing to students, both on and off campus, is for profit and largely in the hands of private landlords.”
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 1^st 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.

Thousands receive late loans

Photo credits to marsmet471

Over a thousand Exeter students were amongst hundreds of thousands across the country who received the first instalment of their student loan late this year.

Data retrieved through the Freedom of Information act (FOI) revealed that of the 9,400 undergraduates at the University applying for ‘core support’ – including tuition fees, maintenance loans and maintenance grants – 1,180 were paid late.

Nationally, the proportional figure was much higher, as 175,000 students were scheduled to face delayed payment. That equates to nearly 20 per cent of the 925,000 applicants for core support.

Exeter students have been provided with an “expected date of payment” for each of their three instalments, the first of which was the 24 September, but this year 13 per cent of students were not paid by that date.

The figure does not include the 1,657 international undergraduates, who have different financial arrangements, or the 779 home/EU undergraduates who did not apply for core support.

With tuition fees soaring, alongside the substantial cost of living in the city, many students – particularly first years – are now greatly dependent on their loans.

Having negotiated Freshers’ Week without any state funding, support from the government is then expected to help cover first term investments on necessities such as accommodation, books and food. But without the scheduled payment – a minimum of £1,018.47 – students can become overwhelmed by the financial burden of living away from home.

The Student Loans Company (SLC) has not disclosed the average waiting time for core support, but a first year International Relations student had her payment delayed by nearly six weeks.

Alice Lynch explained: “It was really inconvenient. Some money came through two weeks late but that was the wrong amount.

“Thankfully Exeter were sympathetic over accommodation, but it was still frustrating because I’d done all the paperwork correctly, yet the SLC’s excuses just kept coming. I had to go into my overdraft, delay joining societies and buying the books I needed.”

 

Officials from the government-funded institution have pointed to a number of factors contributing to late payment of Exeter students, including overdue confirmation of attendance from the University and delays in bank processing.

As the SLC prepares to commence secondary loan payments early next January, it has published figures showing that even by 14 October, around 100,000 UK applicants had still not received their full entitlement.

The unprecedented statistics are the latest in a long line of controversies surrounding the company, whose chief executive Ed Lester said in May that he would stand down following scrutiny of his £182,000 salary, in connection with a tax avoidance inquiry.

Student loan payments have often been perceived as unreliable, especially after the SLC’s then deputy chief executive, Derek Ross, compared mislaying student documents to “losing your car keys,” during an inquiry in 2009 when around 115,000 UK students were paid late.

Fresh questions about competency and bureaucracy levels at the company now look likely to resurface, particularly after Scotland’s Education secretary, Michael Russell, ordered a review into why numerous Scottish students had not been paid by November.

With the deadline for the second phase of instalments looming, students in Exeter and around the country will be hoping for more timely funding when next term begins.

By Harrison Jones