NUS Urged Government to cut Grants

The NUS President, Aaron Porter, has been embarrassed by the leak of secret emails in which he urged the Government to make cuts to grants and to charge students market rates on their vital loans.

Aaron Porter, the NUS President, visited Southampton during the referendum.

After failing to stop the rise in tuition fees, failing to gain SUSU’s affiliation to the NUS, and the on-going protests around the country, this comes as a further blow to the embattled Union.

The emails contain pleas to start cuts in Student Support budgets first. These support budgets include grants, loans and bursaries for poorer students. This flies in the face of NUS policy of supporting low-income students.

Controversially, the NUS proposed that the cuts affect CURRENT STUDENTS; an idea which did not feature in the Browne review or any Coalition policies. If this went through, it would mean that WE would pay higher fees as well.

Far from opposing any cuts to Higher Education, as they are mandated to, the NUS instead pushed for swingeing 48% cuts over the next 4 years. An NUS executive wrote: “It would be better in our view to first mitigate the cuts to provision by seeing how student support can be better focused at lower cost.”