FUCK FUTURE FINANCE – THE FRIGHTENING REALITY OF PRIVATE STUDENT LOANS

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academics, advertising, campaigning, casualisation, corporations, cost of living, cycle of debt, featured, finance, Future Finance, government, higher education, interest rates, loan sharks, maintenance, marketisation, mental health, morality, NCAFC, payday loans, predatory loans, private landlords, private student loans, rent hikes, student activism, student debt, student finance, student loans, suicide, trade unions, tuition fees, UCU, UCU strike, unethical, university, working class.

By Robyn Banks

CW: mentions suicide.

Sometimes targeted adverts reveal to you more than you wanted to know. I’ve recently been experiencing facebook ads for Future Finance, a company that offers loans of up to £40,000 to students, with an interest rate of 17.45% APR for all the time that you’re studying. To put that in perspective, if you borrowed £7000 over 5 years, you’d have repaid a stonking £11,223 by the time you’ve paid it off. This eye watering example reveals both the current state of Higher Education financing and a frightening future that is increasingly intruding on the present.

A CO-OPERATIVE FUTURE FOR STUDENTS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #9

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged BDS, Beyond Tuition Fees, Birmingham, Birmingham Student Housing Co-op, block grants, Brighton, co-operatives, Co-ops UK, coalition, corbyn, cost of living, democracy, economics, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op, ethical procurement, exploitation, featured, food, food co-ops, free range, free trade, Glasgow, Glasgow Student Housing Co-op, grassroots, housing, Labour, landlords, local food, maintenance grants, nestle boycott, norwich, Norwich Association for the Co-operative Housing of Students, nursing bursaries, NUS, NUSSL, organic, private renting, profit, property, Sheffield, Sheffield Student Housing Co-op, student accommodation, student activism, Student Co-operative Homes, student debt, student housing coops, student loans, students, Students for Co-operation, students' unions, SU reform, Tories, tuition fees.

By Robyn Banks

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

Up and down the UK, from Edinburgh to Brighton, students are building alternatives to existing, exploitative housing and food practices. How? By creating co-operatives! These alternative ways of organising are expanding and flourishing at a rate never seen before, as students look to take their lives into their own hands, in defiance of the rising cost of living and exploitative landlords and businesses. The founding of Student Co-operative Homes, a launch pad organisation for potential student housing co-ops across the UK founded by the grassroots network Students for Co-operation and supported by national co-op federation Co-Ops UK, demonstrates the growing support for these independent, democratic projects.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN A POST-FEES WORLD – BEYOND TUITION FEES #1

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academics, activists, Beyond Tuition Fees, Bright Green, consumerism, cost of living, democracy, diversity, education, employability, featured, Free Education, future, government, HE policy, higher education, jeremy corbyn, Labour, Lib Dems, marketisation, mental health, NUS, postgraduate tutors, progressives, representation, sexual harassment, social justice, social mobility, strike action, student activism, student debt, student experience, student life, students, students' unions, Tories, trade unions, tuition fees, UCU strike, uk, universities, university staff, utopianism, welfare.

By Bradley Allsop and Calum Watt

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this new series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

Politics is in a very different place than a few years ago. Radical change feels possible, tangible, close. The Labour Party’s pledge to scrap tuition fees is one of many signs of this – welcome, and necessary to salvage higher education from the marketised juggernaut it has become. But just abolishing fees is not enough to fix all of higher education’s problems.

YOUNG VOTERS – DAMNED IF WE DO AND DAMNED IF WE DON’T

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Student and tagged anti-intellectualism, Brexit, Brexit negotiations, class, class divides, conservatives, cost of living, demographics, DUP, EU referendum, experience, GE17, generation gap, government, grades, graduates, housing benefit, hung parliament, hypocrisy, jeremy corbyn, Labour, lecturers, liberal ideals, Michael Gove, minimum wage, political economics, polls, property ladder, rent, snap election, student debt, student votes, students, Thatcherite, theresa may, turnout, young people, young voters.

by Alex Powell

Seeing the reaction to the snap general election result has been fascinating. For years, young people, particularly students, were criticised for not going out and voting. June 8th 2017 was the day we did. The result? A hung parliament that defied all expectations. In the lead up to the election, all the indications suggested that the Tories would win a landslide, even if the gap had begun to close in the final polls. In the end, this was far from how things played out, leaving Theresa May without a majority and forced to rely on the DUP to pass her key votes.

POVERTY LOANS: THE FORGOTTEN FIGHT?

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged access, Brexit, campaigning, cost of living, higher education, income inequality, maintenance grants, maintenance loans, means testing, postgraduate, postgraduate loans, rent, rent strike, social mobility, standard of living, student activism, student poverty, students, tuition fees, UCL, universities.

by Alex Powell

Disclaimer: in what follows I am not suggesting that tuition fees are acceptable, nor that we should stop campaigning against further fee rises and for their complete abolition. But I think that we should put as much effort into campaigning on another, more pressing issue, which is often sidelined in the discourse around the marketisation of education. We need a maintenance loan settlement which works for all students and, crucially, higher postgraduate loans, to truly improve access to education.

cost of living

FUCK FUTURE FINANCE – THE FRIGHTENING REALITY OF PRIVATE STUDENT LOANS

A CO-OPERATIVE FUTURE FOR STUDENTS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #9

YOUNG VOTERS – DAMNED IF WE DO AND DAMNED IF WE DON’T

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