Unis slammed by watchdog for denying students graduation over library fines

Unis cash in on fines while students punished and left with nothing.


Stopping students from graduating if they have unpaid library fines may be ILLEGAL, says a heroic watchdog. 

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has slapped unis with a warning after it found three quarters of them refuse to let final year students graduate if they owe money for books returned late.

Those visits to the library could be costing you more than you think…

Unis have blackmailed students with the crafty policy for ages, pocketing six figure sums every year and even ruining some people’s degrees – almost 600 students have been denied graduation in the last five years in Scotland alone.

Now the OFT is calling on 160 UK unis to drop the dastardly practice because it may be against the law.

The watchdog was alerted to the situation by the National Union of Students in July of last year.

The NUS’s vice president for welfare, Colum McGuire described unis’ policy as “almost laughable” and pointed out that withholding graduation from students would actually make it harder for them to pay back any fines.

Even more alarmingly for students, Nisha Arora of the OFT also claimed that the policy could “significantly harm their future employment prospects and ability to pay off their debts.”

Significantly harmed job prospects.

Third year politics and sociology student Alex Hylan, who is  hoping to graduate this year, said:”People should have to pay their bills but it can be sorted in a better way than threatening to stop people graduating.”

Final year law and criminology student Robyn Lewes takes a different view, she said: “It’s not that hard to pay off your library fines, people should just pay before graduation.”

The news comes less than a week after the revelation that lecturers may refuse to mark exams if they don’t receive a pay rise by the end of April.

Even if final years pass this summer, graduation may still prove elusive.