How much do you spend on “clothes, books, and socialising” per year? If it’s less than £2,700, then the University thinks you’re not spending enough. Prospective graduate students must prove in advance that they have at least that much to spend per year, over and above the costs of rent, utilities, and food – altogether that’s £12,900 for each year of your course. And that doesn’t even include the fees. If you can’t afford the kind of lifestyle that costs over £400 a year for clothes alone, then you have no place here, according to the current rules.
One would-be student protested against those rules by taking my college, St Hugh’s, to court last year. A few days ago the case was settled, and in a significant sense, he won. He’s been offered his place, yes; but more importantly, the University is undertaking a review of the policy, known as the financial guarantee. This is no longer a question for St Hugh’s alone, but for all of us. What kind of restrictions should be put on the people who come here as postgraduate students? Who exactly should the University be excluding, even when they’ve been offered a place on academic merit?
The University tells us that the purpose of the financial guarantee is to ensure that nobody will need to drop out of their course for financial reasons. In reality, it excludes anyone who doesn’t have large cash reserves – or a family that does, and is willing to sign the guarantee. We can’t tell how many people who would otherwise have come to Oxford have been put off by this arrangement, but the simple fact is that most people don’t have that kind of money. And the guarantee policy gives no leeway to those who plan to earn money in vacations, or who can make cheaper arrangements for rent, utilities, food, and lifestyle. After all, who needs to spend so much on books when we have the best libraries in the world?
Even if the amount specified by the guarantee was more reasonable, it still creates an unnecessary and unjustifiable barrier to entry by requiring that students have money available, for their whole course, months before they’re due to arrive. It assumes that people aren’t capable of making their own decisions about budgeting. No-one wants to drop out, not least because that would mean sacrificing the enormous fees we have to pay at the beginning of each year. Doing something about fees and funding is a separate, important issue; but for those who can afford to make the investment, the financial commitment is already massive.
No other university in the UK has a system like Oxford’s (as the court found when Oxford tried to falsely claim otherwise), that requires you to prove how much money you have before you get here. If you’re offered a place at Cambridge, you need to sign a financial undertaking form declaring that you have the necessary funds to pay your fees and complete your course – no bank statements, no letter from your parents.
It’s important that the review the University is about to conduct is fair and open, and that students have their say too. MCRs are made up of people who have already complied with the financial guarantee – JCRs, which will include many undergraduates hoping to go onto postgraduate study, must take a stand on this issue as well, and OUSU must support them. If the review committee decides to continue excluding qualified applicants on the basis of their wealth, it’ll be the whole University that suffers for it.
