£5000 scholarship for individual achievement is hugely excessive

It could be spent far better


Are you struggling to make the decision between a night in the Lizard and a night in the library? Does that snooze button get hit countless times until the prospect of making that 9am goes right out the window? Has procrastination got you reciting Buzzfeed and bragging about your Yakarma?

Well, here’s a new incentive: ‘The Principal’s Scholarship for Academic Excellence’, which gave £5000 to 50 people within the university who rank highest academically.

It’s not just for those who are on Firsts, or have been on the Dean’s List the last few years, it is simply the top 50 people across all the departments (meaning that if you are in a smaller department you have a higher chance of receiving it than a larger one).

It would appear the academic funding struggle isn’t such an issue after all.

There’s a lot I would do for £5000 right now – I’ve reached the point of just not looking at my bank balance out of pure denial of the money I’ve recently spent. Well, as they say, you only get out what you put in.

The sum total of my money right now…

Should these people who are consistently achieving such high grades be rewarded? Yes. Should it be monetary? For students in a very expensive town, most definitely. Should it be £5000? No.

£5000 is a huge sum of money – it’s not being deducted from any fees (not that that would make a difference for the Scots, but that’s another article…), nor is it being directly put towards anything that would further their academic career at the university. It’s a direct bank transfer for receivers of the scholarship to do with what they will. Some might put it towards something productive, but is that really likely? For me it’d just fund an already crippling shopping habit…

With 50 people getting the prize, the University has spent £250,000 on these ‘scholarship’ prizes. That is a phenomenal amount of money that could have gone towards increasing bursaries and widening access, something the university claims it is attempting to do. Courtesy of rising fees and extortionate accommodation costs, many people are being priced out of higher education.

This is not acceptable. If someone has the capability and talent to be here, why should money be the only prevention? They far more deserve a place than someone for whom the university only sees rolling dollar signs. Yet, no prizes for guessing who the university apparently chooses.

Plenty of this = £5k?

While academic achievement like that definitely deserves to be rewarded, £5000 that could be used to give someone very deserving with limited income and support a chance at this beautiful university, is way too much. £500 probably would’ve been closer to the right figure.

Sadly it’s only going to fuel the already ‘elitist’ opinion far to many people have over a community that in reality is more balanced than we’re ever given credit for.