maintenance – The Orbital

As of last Monday, students starting university courses in England will no longer be able to receive maintenance grants. The change, announced in 2015 by Chancellor George Osborne, condemns poorer students into a ‘lifetime of debt’, according to the NUS, with the move deemed as ‘disgraceful’. The vice-president of the NUS, Sorana Vieru, says that the move: “punishes poorer students simply for being poor, so they have to take a bigger loan than those students from privileged backgrounds. “It could put off students from underprivileged backgrounds from applying, who might not understand how the loan system works, or are very debt-averse. “We also know that mature students are way more debt-averse than younger students and BME students perceive student debt on a par with commercia...

It was half past eight in the morning and I was fast asleep. As it was my day off from lectures, I wasn’t planning on getting up anytime soon. However, my peaceful slumber was soon disturbed by incessant knocking at my door; knocking that had also woken up the other seven members of my flat. A maintenance worker had come to fix something that had been reported by housekeeping during the last room check. With no forewarning that maintenance was to be coming, and not even knowing that something in my room needed fixing, it was a less than pleasant start to a Monday morning. While I was grateful something in my room was fixed, this incident highlighted issues with the on-campus maintenance procedure. There is a lack of a system in place that alerts students as to when they should expect ma...

Tag: maintenance

University grants scrapped.

Maintenance of campus accommodation: an experience of varying satisfaction