YUSU admit to ‘fiddling figures’ for NUS affiliation
YORK STUDENTS’ UNION could be forced to leave the NUS after it was revealed they lied about the number of students at York University in order to keep their NUS affiliation fee at the previous year’s level, £36,000.
The deception was discovered when the NUS decided to check student numbers submitted by students’ unions, upon which the fee is based, against those from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
York was found to have enough students to warrant a fee of £51,250, the maximum that can be taken from a Higher Education institution for membership. If the SU don’t pay this they may be asked to leave the NUS.
Amidst fears that the SU might disaffiliate from the NUS, the SU President, Mickey Armstrong explained that this was unlikely to happen because the funding comes directly from the University and does not affect the SU budget.
He said: “We’ve got nothing to gain from disaffiliation at all, and we’ve got everything to lose.”
In the face of the new fee, the SU have put forward a hardship case, and are hoping that as they have no commercial income they will not be forced to pay the same amount as universities up to four times York’s size.
However, finance committee minutes admit that “apparently for years YUSU has been fiddling the numbers of how many students they had”, but Armstrong said in defence: “I think that over the years we’ve just resubmitted the same numbers, and the University has changed.
He continued: “It’s something that every union does.”
Joe Rukin, the NUS Treasurer, explained that policy has been passed to ensure that SUs are paying an accurate, affordable and fair fee.
