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Charity should begin at home - Alexandra King |
UCL must not abandon its students to fund an academy
As University College London gears up to sponsor a city academy in Swiss Cottage, current student Alexandra King warns that the project could have an adverse effect on the already cash-strapped campus
MOST UCL students will probably be indifferent to the news that their university is set to sponsor a city academy in Swiss Cottage.
This is unsurprising, considering that UCL Union is at a loss as to how to entice its students to take interest in university issues.
After the University and College Union’s (UCU) annual meeting on January 8 2007, the proceedings were cut short and left inconclusive owing to lack of attendance. Inquorate was called after numbers fell short of the mandatory one per cent required to pass any of the motions put forward by students.
This could indicate that the students of UCL are simply not interested in the decisions their university makes.
Yet our students have a history of political and social awareness and activism.
It is my opinion that students have become increasingly disillusioned and disinterested, their voices insignificant as the focus on student welfare and teaching is sidelined in favour of other projects, the latest affair being Provost Malcolm Grant’s decision for UCL to sponsor a city academy.
Prof Grant has emphasised that, ultimately, this is an investment that will pay off, hinting that raising standards in the state school sector would mean more ‘effective undergraduates’ to take places at world-class universities such as UCL.
There is, of course, a crucial flaw in this plan, namely the fact that the college, in line with many other cash-deprived British universities, is focusing on attracting more foreign students.
Prof Grant’s asserts that he will be investing money to raise standards of British children so they can secure places at esteemed universities like UCL.
Yet by increasing the college’s intake of lucrative foreign students over the next five years the position of prospective British undergraduates will be marginalised.
The provost has said that part of the innovative new academy’s curriculum would involve day trips to hear lectures and seminars at the college’s Gower Street campus.
It seems, however, that he will not be asking them to stay. So, if Prof Grant truly has little intention of using the academy as a feeder of bright young talent to UCL, what, precisely, is the point of the £30 million project?
Prof Grant has more to say: “We are proud of being a world-class institution in a global city, yet we are sited on the edge of an area of significant urban disadvantage. I don’t think we should turn our backs on that.”
This sounds an awful lot like charity: a worthwhile donation of time and money, some might argue. But does UCL have money to spare? The resounding answer is No.
So dire is the state of the college’s finances that many UCL academics continue to work in a climate of fear as a result of plans implemented in 2005 to cut jobs by 15 per cent over three years.
Members of UCU have, unsurprisingly, campaigned against this, and state on their website that the college must not be allowed to blame what they deem to be ‘structural under-funding’ and ‘managerial incompetence’ on ‘hard-working staff’.
Despite this, the provost has still refused to compromise on the cuts, which he hopes will help lower the college’s losses which, over the past five years, have been as much as £7 million in a year.
As well as job cuts so harsh that a friend of mine witnessed his tutor bursting into tears in the middle of a lecture, in some cases teachers have had their pay cut by almost half. Student tutors in UCL’s English department were shocked to discover last October that their wages had been reduced by 30 to 40 per cent, without any prior notice.
In 2006 hundreds of students did not receive their exam results after teachers went on strike over reduced pay.
This year, my department cut an hour of precious tutorial time from my timetable.
Meanwhile, as teachers battled with pay cuts and the threat of losing their jobs, the college was busy consulting with world renowned architect Terry Farrell over plans to redesign and gentrify the campus after the UCL provost announced that he would “welcome an improved Bloomsbury as an international focus for higher education”.
In other words, a prettier campus means better publicity and a more attractive option for wealthy foreign students.
The Bloomsbury Regeneration project, which essentially aims to pedestrianise UCL and its surrounding areas into something they term London’s new ‘university district’, is partly funded by UCL and expected to cost of millions of pounds.
The plans reveal computer-generated images of familiar parts of the campus, only with a few more benches, a dash of crazy paving and the odd scattered pot plant. It is, in my opinion, utterly pointless.
Prof Grant proudly describes UCL on its website as “an outstanding world-class university”, an institution that “ranks regularly among the top few universities in Europe, and among the top 25 in the world”. He is clearly proud of the college.
Then why, I ask, does he insist on jeopardising it’s deservedly brilliant reputation by investing huge sums of money in everything but the most crucial components of this achievement – the staff and the students.
He has chosen, once more, to put the college’s students last and his ferocious publicity campaign first.
Although, I suppose, Prof Grant believes that a major benefit of the city academy project is potentially gaining more publicity to secure the financial backers, investment opportunities and students, (particularly wealthy foreign ones) of the future, nobody currently a part of UCL‘s staff/student population of 27,000 people seems set to gain anything tangible.
As for what he calls his sense of “social responsibility”, as far as I’m concerned, charity begins at home. While the college ponders just what to do with the 14-19 year old curriculum, I would like to hope that more will be done to ensure that my teachers will be protected from job cuts and reduced pay, and that my undergraduate teaching hours and examination results will not be reduced or delayed.
UCL desperately needs to focus on the undergraduates of today, not just the ones of tomorrow.
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