On Monday the National Student Survey went live, this in an opportunity for final year students to have “their say” on their experience of Higher Education and most importantly of Swansea University and their degree scheme. Last year we got around a 70 % feedback rating so we have a hard task ahead of us to take that rating up!!! This year weve gone with a kind of “on tour” theme- basically either having a stall in Fulton House where people can fill in the survey there and then on their laptops and then have the opportunity to rock out on guitar hero in front of literally tens of adoring fans!
Alternatively we are taking the tour to them – from department to department were going into lectures, talking to students leaving departments, gatecrashing revision sessions and interrupting hard work on facebook!
On Tuesday the snow shut the United Kingdom down so I was forced to take the day off! It was a good opportunity to hang with the housemates and particularly because it was Adrians birthday – so we made sure we had a “few” drinks to celebrate.
We had been planning on going to Cardiff to meet with Education AM – Jane Hutt, sadly our delegation – and a number of the NEC were unable to make it. However I think those that did manage to did us proud!
On Wednesday we held a Higher education review session with members of NUS Wales NEC and delegates from the Assembly’s review group. It was a great opportunity for a number of students from Swansea, Swansea Met (and even a very dedicated President from Aber!) to really put their points across regarding their experience of Higher Education. Everything from funding to freshers week was discussed and I hope that their thoughts will be taken strongly on board by the review group.
I think the key thing was no-one wanted fees to increase and wanted a more sensible funding and bursary system. But alongside this they wanted the current system to be sincerely looked at, in that there are major discretions and generalisations within the current system. For example if you are a student from a separated parent base, you get your funding based purely on the amount that the parent you live with earns.
Now whilst this is sensible in principle in some cases students with parents who are still married are potentially severely left out. A student might only live with one parent but is still supported financially by the other – yet another students whose parents are married gets less because jointly his or her parents earn above the threshold, yet they cannot afford to support him or her as much. Is this fair? The general feeling was that the system was too black and white and did not account for the considerable grey area in students financial situations.
On Thursday and Friday I met with a number of committees and finalised the changes to the officer titles and election schedule by meeting with University representatives.
Friday night was by far the highlight of my week though! I returned to campus at around midnight just as it began to snow. Then Luke Young, Alison Pritchard and Adam Bruce Smith drifted in to the offices for a cup of tea before we made our way out to do the SSHH campaign. Impressively the lights were actually broken in Singleton Park, but the full moon reflecting on the snow drift gave an odd brightness to the evening. It was another good campaign with some awesome students out and some good banter – it’s a bad precedent that’s been set now though students literally expect our little luminous brigade with our mass of lollipops!
