An Interlude – Action on Fees

I’m going to take a break from my coverage of things you might not expect a President to do, as in my past couple of posts. This one is something you would expect a President to do!

One of the major roles of the President is external relations, representing the students of Imperial College to other organisations. We are also members of several groups, including the United Students’ Unions (mostly non-affiliates of the NUS) and the Aldwych Group (students’ unions of the 20 Russell Group universities). We also have a non-voting membership of the University of London Union, as we still have over 1,000 students on University of London degrees. As well as getting a good look as what is happening at other unions, and any good practice we might apply at Imperial, these groups also campaign on student issues. We had a success doing this today.

Lord Browne is currently conducting a review of Higher Education and Student Finance, which is currently collecting a second round of evidence. The first round was published on their website, as the philosophy of the review is to be as transparent as possible. The Russell Group asked the review not to publish their submission, as they did not want it to be seen “out of context”. They promised to release their full report on Higher Education instead, however this has been dragging on for a while. A freedom of information request lodged by Oxford University Students’ Union was rejected, so we decided to apply more pressue.

Today I joined other members of the Aldwych Group at LSE Students’ Union, subsequently walking down the Strand to Trafalgar Square, home of the Russell Group headquarters. We were seen by two members of Russell Group staff who accepted two letters addressed to the Director General and Chairman of the Group calling for the release of the information.

The Chair of the Aldwych Group was invited to meet the Director General, and after 20 minutes he returned to announce that they would be releasing their submission to the review on Friday.

A good result – now we will know what they are suggesting, we can get your views and feed back into the process.