Students fear for uni places when cuts are imposed

Thursday 14th January 2010, 2:29PM GMT.

GUERNSEY students are worried over UK Government plans to slash university funding by £900m. over the next three years.

Kim Gleeson, 19, who is studying art at Bristol UWE, said that the cuts were a concern.

‘It sucks, to be honest,’ she said.

‘There are no universities in Guernsey, so if all of them start closing down in the UK, where will we gain our higher education?’

Miss Gleeson said that the UK Government was contradicting itself by making the cuts.

‘There has been an increase in university applications as people cannot get jobs because of the recession, and now they are going to cut the higher education funds,’ she said.

‘It is just all counteracting.’

According to the Russell Group, which represents 20 leading UK universities, institutions face the ‘bleakest time since the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s’.

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1
Neil Inder

January 14, 2010 at 4:45 pm

Education is a business. And our students are big earners for UK universities. The UK are unlikely to cut an external revenue stream.

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2
Student Bob

January 14, 2010 at 7:22 pm

I’d love to have access to the full article because this seems like an epic non-story.

So far as I can tell, whilst the government funding cuts are a shame, no-one (the universities, or the NUS) is particularly worried. State support accounts for about a third of the universities income, and the cuts are being made across three years up to 2013. So, according to the NUS, it’s a reduction in funding of about 5% a year, which really isn’t that much, and, as Neil Inder points out above, with the horrific fees paid by us Guernsey students, the UK uni’s will be falling over themselves to give us places!! Hooray!!

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3
j

January 15, 2010 at 1:46 pm

Obviously Kim didn’t read the comments on the story that GP posted a week or so ago.

Guernsey students are counted as foreign stadents and are therefore not affected by these cuts.

In fact there should be more places for channel island students following this.

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