Why does Warwick own a floor of the Shard?

Recently, The Tab covered the opening of a new, California based campus for the University of Warwick. But it seems a campus much closer to home has been causing more controversy.

Back in January 2014, plans were announced for Warwick Business School to open a campus on the 17th floor of the tallest building in the European Union, with courses beginning this January.

The London-based campus offers two lecture halls, with 160 seats between them, eight seminar rooms and an IT Lab. But the courses available are only for Masters students.

If you’ve managed to stomach an undergrad degree in Business, you could continue your self-flagellation in the evenings with a part-time MSc in Finance or Human Resource Management and Employment Relations. What better way to spend a night in London?

This. This is a better way to spend a night in London.

The WBS floor of the Shard, however, has split opinion. Some argue millions shouldn’t be spent on a campus based far away from the majority of the student population: especially when that student population endures a campus grimmer than the morning after Pop.

Warwick expanding its expensive property portfolio doesn’t sit right with many of us. Grace, a second year sociologist thinks “the whole concept just feeds into the hands of greedy corporations who are more about putting on a show than trying to better educational development.”

There is an air of hypocrisy surrounding the issue. One of Warwick’s mission statements is “to serve our local region – academically, culturally and economically.” But London isn’t exactly local.

Surely Vice Chancellor, ‘Geographer’, Nigel Thrift can help us define local?

It turns out, however, that any Warwick student can use the Shard as an event venue. Pitch your idea to WBS, get some faculty backing, and you could have a swanky party/industry event in central London. It’d be a lot easier to impress potential employers in one of the world’s most famous buildings, rather than in fucking Coventry. The Shard floor could be an effective platform for Warwick students to shape their future upon, provided this location in London does deliver on its promise to uplift our prospects here in the Midlands.

So the 17th floor of the Shard may be a contentious issue at Warwick, but one thing is for sure, it is an emphatic, and enjoyable, fuck you to Oxford’s dreaming spires.