Ok, so about the article in the Tab today: I submitted an original version to my editors. That piece was about how ucl is not doing enough to be inclusive of students from working-class and less privileged backgrounds than the one I myself have enjoyed and how this leads to social stratification and less social mobility and how this is bad for both ucl and society as a whole. The Tab edited my original to include a disparaging, vitriolic tone that I strongly disagree with and muddled the structure so the key message of what I said is largely unclear if not lost and then published this without me seeing the final edited version. I dont wish to bash or praise privilege, especially given my background. The type of education you receive or the amount of income your family has is not something any child has a say in: how could anyone judge them for it? What isnt right is that 7% of British students were privately educated and yet they make up 32% of ucl. One thing we can infer from this is that the disproportionate cost of living in London is deterring gifted students from less privileged backgrounds who might have otherwise have come. UCL has more than enough money, and I think therefore the responsibility, to provide more assistance to these students. I dont think thats a controversial opinion. My intention was to draw attention to this problem. Im posting my original here so that those who care to know can see what I really think, albeit with some concessions to the Tabs style. To reiterate, this is what I thought the finished article would be: UCL is a rich boy’s playground. We all experience it in our daily lives: you can smell the privilege. We all know someone, or might even be, that person who discovered themselves in South America on their parents’ tab and now wakes up at dawn to recalibrate their shakras as the sun rises; Or commutes into uni from their “London home”, returning to the ancestral manor in Hampshire on the weekends; Or whose total school fees could lift Malawi out of poverty. We literally had the heir to the Spencer estate in Ramsay a few years ago. And it’s born out in the facts as well: 32% of UCL students are privately educated, among the highest rates in the country, and only 1 in 5 is from a working class background. The latest figures also show 42% are international students, and those who are outside the EU have to be doubly loaded because of the ridiculous fees they have to pay. If, for example, you’re a prodigy from a rural mountain town in Tibet looking to trade skinning goats and altitude sickness for studying medicine at UCL fees are a whopping £29,900 a year (*with a 3-5% increase year on year)! That’s £3000 more than the average annual wage in the UK... and we haven’t even factored in living costs yet.... It’s no surprise that studying in London has attracted the haves rather than the have-nots: the average monthly rent in Greater London is roughly double what it is in the rest of the country. And they’re increasing and increasing at a faster rate than the rest of the country. The Tab recently broke the story that rent at Ramsay has now exceeded £200 a week. When I left those hallowed halls in 2012 it was £170. That’s a £120 extra a month for the same rooms, the same facilities and the same roadworks albeit slightly further down Maple Street. The cost of living is also not easy to meet. Fortunately you have the Student Finance maintenance loan to cover those costs. Unfortunately that loan (roughly £5500) is £2300 less than the rent someone in Ramsay will have to pay this year. So they will have all of -£2300 to lavish on themselves. Given London’s more expensive nightlife, fewer student friendly spaces given the closure of ULU and other higher living costs it’s even harder to make your -£2300 stretch as far as it needs to. This necessarily means that only the privileged can afford an education at UCL. As UCL starts matching Oxbridge’s academic reputation in the league tables, we need to ward against it matching their reputation for elitism as well. There are outreach programs to get students from less privileged backgrounds into UCL and universities like it but the fact that there is still not enough assistance to help these students handle the financial burden of actually being here stifles the effectiveness of these programs. UCL spends millions on ambitious projects like the Crick Institute and building campuses abroad in wonderful totally-not-slave-using democracies like Qatar. The people making these big decisions need to realise that some of that same ambition and investment is badly needed in its own backyard. UCL is fast becoming, if not already, only affordable to a wealthy minority and those invested in the future of UCL and upward social mobility in this country should be concerned by this trend.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 14:57:14 +0000
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