Why aren’t St Andrews students more angry?

This week, St Andrews students received the news that our next principal will be Sally Mapstone. Like most students I had never heard of her before the announcement, and I haven’t heard anything that would give any indication as to whether she will be good or bad in the role. Most people I’ve spoken to are fairly positive about the announcement. I imagine I speak for us all when I wish her well in her position, and hope she can guide the university to further success in the future.

One thing I would like to see actually relates more to the students, but with the appointment of a new principal, perhaps this is an opportunity to put some (overdue) pressure on those in charge. One aspect of the university I would like to mention specifically is that of accommodation prices. It is well-known that in St Andrews we have a whole host of issues relating to accommodation. For a long time there simply wasn’t enough of it. There have been all sorts of horror stories relating to estate agents. Where private accommodation could be found, it is often extremely expensive.

There have been occasional attempts to try to stir up some activism. In 2008, when the university announced the closure of Fife Park, one of the ‘affordable’ housing options, there was a protest and a petition which had over a thousand signatures. When the HMO cap was brought in a few years ago for housing within the town centre, there was a mild uproar. Last year, amid news of the university would knock down Albany Park, and build expensive DRA-like buildings in its place, there was a protest, which, though relatively well-attended, had no apparent lasting effect.

Explanations for lack of collective action

Rich students: We might think an obvious reason that there is a dearth of action is that so many of our students are extremely wealthy. I think this probably is a significant factor. If you can afford to pay the sorts of fees without a huge inconvenience, it’s unlikely to be a huge motivating factor. Not all students are of this category though (and presumably we wouldn’t want to only have students who are wealthy). Many do struggle, or are greatly inhibited by their strained finances. It is hardly any wonder that many students now live in Dundee or Edinburgh, in search of better value (or simply ease of finding housing). While there is obviously nothing wrong with living in Dundee or Edinburgh, it would be difficult to deny that one misses something of the St Andrews experience by not actually living here. We have a vibrant (though somewhat insular) community, and even the bus journey to Dundee significantly separates people from that.

 

Summer/winter holidays: One reason these bursts of activism never seem to get off the ground must be that most students aren’t here for large portions of the year. If students get frustrated and organised during term-time, and even manage to organise some sort of protest between assignments, they’re gone within a few months. Then the long summer is ample time to forget, or lose enthusiasm. Out of sight out of mind.

 

Transience of student residency: Then there is the issue that most students are only here for four years. Those who remember the significantly cheaper prices of four years ago – and potentially the best placed to make the case – are soon to depart, so have the least motivation to bring about change, and the least ability to be part of any long term change. New students, on the other hand, who have the most incentive, also have the least information (about both the history and the institutions behind the pricing).

 

Short collective memories: Many students are unaware of the how much university accommodation prices have increased in recent years. With that in mind, I have developed the following chart. The information has all been taken from official university sources, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) I have not seen the university put much of this information in the same place before. I’ve selected halls where the service has remained largely the same over the time period (no major redevelopments, no big change in contract types, etc.).*

“So what?” you might think. We know that inflation happens, and it’s at least not obvious – just from this sort of figure – that the situation has, in real terms, gotten any worse. With that response in mind, here is a graph the percentage increase of costs by year, and correlating them with a UK inflation (CPI**) figure. In this graph the inflation for 2010, for example, is aligned with the 2010/11 year. I thought this would be sensible, as the prices are obviously set quite a while in advance.

For all but five of the years, inflation was lower than the increases in every hall, and often, the inflation figure is absolutely dwarfed by the increases. Why, we might wonder, does the university need to increase its accommodation prices to this degree? Presumably, the costs the university has incurred in relation to providing accommodation can’t have increased that much more than inflation?

 

This becomes even more concerning when we consider what the standard maintenance loans for students are. (I will focus here on the maintenance loans UK students for simplicity. This isn’t to say the issue of funding isn’t an issue for students from other countries; I’m sure it is.) For UK students not eligible for additional means-tested funds (definitions for which range from household incomes under £ 34,000 in Scotland to under £50,020 in Wales), the standard maintenance loans available currently range from £4,750 (for Scottish students) to £5,740 (for students from England). We might well note that these maintenance loans will not even cover the rent in any catered St Andrews halls. So much for maintenance. Some of course will be eligible for additional means-tested funding, which may be up to an extra £1,750 in Scotland, £3,387 in England,  £5,161 in Wales, or £3,475 in Northern Ireland. One still might note that even the poorest Scottish students would only be entitled to a loan of £6,500,

When students’ loans fall so far short of what is required to live on after rent is taken, students are forced to gain money elsewhere, with many students regularly receiving money from parents, working or resorting to other means.

This seems like a huge problem, specially considering how St Andrews is regularly criticised in local and national media for being elitist or inaccessible to students from low income families.

 

I’ve restricted the discussion here to undergraduates, though many of the problems apply just as much to postgraduate students. Students here only for one year, like many of our taught masters students, will have much less information about the price history, and also, very little information about renting in St Andrews, putting them in a very difficult situation.

I should also note that these figures might make the issue seem less bad than it actually is. Here are a few factors why that might be the case:

1. Shorter terms: Since exams switched to being before Christmas (cutting out reading week in semester one), housing contracts are now shorter. Previously, students would have to be back in early January for their exams and not have to leave again before term starts. Now, in most halls (Albany, DRA and ABH are exceptions) students are forced out of hall during that break. With the first semester also shorter, due to the lack of a reading week, presumably the contracts are also shorter.
2. I have restricted discussion here to these halls which have been open the entire time. When we look at the halls which have closed (or are closing in the case of Albany), and what has replaced them, we will also note a huge discrepancy. Fife Park (cheap) has been replaced by Fife Park Apartments (DRA-level expensive). Hamilton Hall (which was on a par with McIntosh and the town catered halls) was sold. Gannochy, which was cheap postgrad accommodation has been refurbished (a bit) and now charges the same as Sallies. Everything lost seems to have been replaced by something more expensive.

 

Who’s fault is it?

Recently, the body responsible for managing the residences at St Andrews, RBS (Residential and Business Services) seems to have been blaming Fife Council for its strict HMO rules. This has been cited as the reason for several renovations – and the costs of these renovations are cited as explanations for the costs. We have several reasons to be sceptical of this. Firstly, I haven’t seen any specific regulations mentioned in any of these discussions (if anyone has, and can supply me with sources) I will happily retract this claim). Secondly, the graphs above clearly show that this is not merely a short term issue. The costs have been increasing by excessive amounts year-on-year for the last 12 years. Believing a (presumably recent) excuse like this for recent price increases would offer no explanation for the years of previous increases. If you’re cynical, you might think that exploitation of students in order for the institution to hoard more money seems like a more plausible explanation (we might note that the university endowment has increased by over £20 million in the last ten years).

Ben Stuart, the head of RBS (Residence and Business Services) was asked by many last year about the issue of hall costs, particularly in the wake of the housing protest. One of his responses was to supply this table (well, actually a table with this content but much more poorly formatted):

	2012/13	2013/14	2014/15	2015/16 (projected)
Pays	5,050,905	5,017,095	5,241,000	5,404,620
Provisions	1,863,027	1,900,483	1,984,771	2,243,846
Maintenance	2,235,090	2,057,855	1,943,000	1,922,280
Finance	4,569,622	4,539,854	4,675,921	4,727,817
Utilities	1,635,498	1,352,573	1,856,159	1,954,500
Others	986,547	1,214,907	1,677,416	2,055,348

 

If you think this is not particularly clear, I sympathise, as it doesn’t look clear. I’ve heard of people asking for clarifications about what these categories might involve, but none of the answers have really been (even remotely) satisfactory.

Around the same time, Ben Stuart also announced that the university made a loss on all its catered accommodation. When I have discussed this claim with friends and colleagues, the comments have fallen into three sorts:

1. If that is true, then the university must either have been making implausibly huge losses for a long time, or there are some magical additional expenses which have somehow been incurred in recent years (this is the type of response I’ve had least).
2. Some Hollywood accounting must have been done.
3. The people running these services must be complete monkeys.

 

If, as most people I have encountered suggest, it is either the second or third of these options, students clearly deserve better. Either, they deserve officials who will treat them fairly and honestly, or they deserve competence. If there is something in the first option, then presumably we should press to find out what these hidden costs are.

 

What should we do?

In September we welcome a new principal. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could change the relationship between the university and its students?

With the issue of accommodation (and any others – like perhaps stabilising international student fees, or retaining final year costs for rUK students, making St Andrews more expensive in terms of tuition than any of its English rivals with three year undergrad courses) in mind, I hope St Andrews students will be more vocal, more active, and more willing to hold officials to account in future. This might be something to think about when we elect our student representatives in the near future. Perhaps a bunch of yes-men might not be the way to go. Just a thought.

 

 

 

* The John Burnet Annex might seem like a strange choice to include here, as it only houses 36 students. The motivation for this is that it represents the ‘pricey’ option and the data is simpler for this than say, DRA (which used to exist as DRH, and seems to have been mostly catered in the past) or New Hall (which has changed names and had significant changes in the prevalence of catered/non-catered students). I include only McIntosh out of the standard town catered halls (McIntosh, Regs and Sallies) because they’re pretty much the same. In recent years their prices have been the same, and prior to that the differences were fairly negligible.

If anyone would like information regarding the sources, drop me a message. I would have listed them here, but there are lots of them. Collating the data was not a quick process.

**I’m not an economist, and haven’t studied any economics formally since my teens. If anyone would like to suggest a better measure of inflation – one that might be more appropriate in this context – I will happily defer. CPI data from here.  .