Arts students plan to protest ‘unfair’ fees

Hundreds of furious arts students have arranged an end of term protest over complaints their degree doesn’t offer them value for money.

Over 700 dissatisfied students intend to march on Senate House on December 12 and voice their complaints, potentially missing up to an hour of their timetabled classes.

The protest has been organised by George Robb, who wrote a recent Epigram article that claimed arts students are subsidising more expensive science degrees.

Nobody in this picture is getting ‘value for money’ apparently

The lack of transparency over how their fees are spent has led many arts students to get out of bed for a change, and actually try to be proactive.

“Arts students lose money while medics etc. are subsidised,” George declared on the public Facebook event: “ASS Protest: Where is half our money going if not on us?”

“Why must an English student, whose numeracy and Excel training ended abruptly at sixth form, be the one to find the data we are all entitled to?”

3^rd year English student Olly Toomey said: “I think it’s been fuelled by an ongoing dissatisfaction among arts students about the quality of their degree.

“It’s more about working out exactly how much of our money is being spent elsewhere and if it’s too much. Hopefully with more transparency we can better understand how things are actually run.”

George Robb feels the Life Sciences building proves arts students are under-funded

English lecturer Dr John McTague told The Tab: “It is worth asking the question: What effect does the marketisation of higher education have on students’ relationships with each other, with academic staff, with their education, and with the university in general?”

Despite Epigram’s claims, doubts remain over whether arts and humanities students are truly getting a rotten deal.

While their article calculates how much each department is spending per student, it can only guess where any additional money is actually being spent, and fails to take into account the costs of non-departmental staff or shared departmental facilities.