Fancy a house in Glasgow?
THE DEBT OF the average student on graduation is enough to buy a small house in Glasgow, the Finance and Funding (F&F) campaign revealed this week.
Radcliffe Square played host to a 'Summer Stunt' at the weekend, as campaigners donned 'badges of shame' to send a message to David Blunkett about the extent of the debt in which students currently find themselves. A sample of twenty people present showed a total accumulated debt of £83,293, with the average first year already running up debts of nearly £3,000.
The demonstration also served as the gathering point for OUSU's petition in favour of free education, urging the Government to "abolish tuition fees and rule out top-up fees for good". Twelve hundred signatures have now been collected university-wide, attracting the support of such luminaries as Jeremy Paxman and Tom Paulin.
Finally, the gold ribbon campaign was also relaunched, following OUSU Council's decision to provide three thousand more ribbons - which represent free education - for Freshers' Week next term.
F&F Co-Chair Will Straw described the event as "commemorating a great year of the campaign, that has seen all major parties ruling out top up fees, a successful occupation of the Bodleian, and all proctors' fines being paid by JCRs or private donations".
Philip Thompson, another F&F Co-Chair, insisted that it was still crucial to keep the issue of debt on the agenda: "David Blunkett must realise that this level of student debt is completely unacceptable. The plight of students is bad enough already, without the prospect of top up fees." The campaigners calculated that the average student will be well over £10,000 in debt by the time they leave university - "enough to buy a small house in Glasgow" according to OUSU President Kirsty McNeill.
The F&F campaign is now concentrating on next year, when it hopes to involve new students in another high profile campaign. Gold ribbons will abound, and numbers of non-payers are hoped to increase yet again. One fees campaigner views this aim as "completely attainable", following a year in which the NUS campaigned for grants not fees for the first time in years, OUSU voted to affiliate to the Campaign for Free Education without a single vote in opposition, and a record number of Oxford students refused to pay their fees.
1st Jun 2001