This latest Government mistake may cost them dear next election
The news that York will be prevented from taking on new British students at more than current levels is disheartening after a few good months for the University’s profile. York was becoming more and more associated in my mind with success after the RAE results, rapturous reception to the opening of the Courtyard, and headway made in student-academic relations.
Perhaps most disconcertingly after three years of criticising both the University and YUSU on an almost daily basis, a small but definitive sense of pride had begun to develop in some dark corner of my brain. I had even started defending York when my friends from home reacted with shock on seeing it at the top ten universities every year. York, the hapless, underrated but eccentrically brilliant place we all attend, was… whisper it… going up in the world.
This is why I am seething that a combination of bad timing, economic downturn, and financial mismanagement on both sides is preventing the full potential of the Heslington East development from being realised. The reality may be either that places for new students will have to be filled from overseas or postgraduate applicants, or the new colleges and classrooms of Hes East will lie empty.
John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills told the Vice-Chancellor in a letter that the reason for the change of policy was that “the number of students receiving full or partial grants was exceeding projections”. One would have thought that if Gordon Brown was serious about his target of 50% of young people in higher education then the Government might have anticipated that more people from middle and lower income backgrounds would apply for loans. More joined-up thinking from New Labour, the party who increased our tuition fees and are doing nothing to help new graduates with unemployment and debt.
The new campus may well now become one of those expensive Christmas presents you felt constantly guilty about for never using. However, unlike an ice-cream machine or set of golf clubs, Hes East has the potential to lift the profile of the University to unforeseen levels. This would allow us to take on the big hitters of Oxbridge and the London Universities not just in research and academia, at which we already frequently outclass them, but in the arenas of overall student satisfaction and facilities. York frequently loses out in University rankings because our spending to student ratio and careers prospects scores are comparatively low. Hes East would tip this imbalance to our favour, allowing the flourishing Law and Theatre, Film, and Television (TFTV) departments to make use of a dedicated space, and of specialist equipment in the latter case. Furthermore, the new swimming pool and student venue which have been much vaunted ever since the embryonic planning stage will also contribute to the kind of student experience that our peers at other universities currently take for granted.
David Garner expresses this in typical blasé marketing jargon: “In the context of the Heslington East expansion, the undergraduate home market is only part of the picture”. The loser here is the British student who needs financial assistance, or exactly the kind of person the Government claims to be encouraging to attend university. This change will mean the applicants with the money, rather than the raw talent to come to York, and the “home market” may simply look elsewhere.
Once again, young people have been let down by Labour. The ones who will bear the brunt of this policy mismanagement will be the teenagers who have strived for their A-levels at poor quality state schools, for the promise of something better for their efforts. York deserves better than a Government whose legacy of broken promises may lose them the graduate vote.
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i imagine a more pressing concern is the abject lack of jobs for new graduates, an issue thayt you seem to skirt around. granted, york city’s mp voted strongly in favour of top up fees, in favour of the iraq war, and in favour of id cards.
i think assessing the merits of hes east will reflect more on the local council, which is generally lib dem controlled (but noc at the moment).
also, apart from a minor dip when library spending was cut, york has been pretty consistently in the times league for quite a while…