Chip in for fair access, vice chancellors urged

Liam Burns, the president of the National Union of Students’ (NUS) launched its national conference in Sheffield yesterday by asking university heads and businesses to help fund its new programme for “student-led outreach” activity to support fair access to higher education.

Mr Burns said vice chancellors should donate money they save from the cut in the 50p tax rate to help fund a major NUS scheme in which students would organise outreach activity.

The NUS has recently piloted projects in which students’ unions organised events to promote higher education and is now planning a more substantial programme.

Mr Burns said: “The Government has increased fees and cut taxes, so that from next April, the average undergraduate will face thousands more every year in fees, while the average vice chancellor will be paying three thousand pounds less every year in tax.

“Nobody can argue that we are all in it together, not when those are the rules of the game.”

He added: “To get more student involvement in the access effort, we want to create a new centre for student-led outreach which we will fund by challenging every vice-chancellor to donate their tax savings from the cut in the 50p rate to make it happen, and get those donations matched by big business.

“On that basis, we should be able to raise close to a million pounds a year.”

Paul Blomfield, MP for Sheffield Central, gave a speech welcoming NUS National Conference to Sheffield.

The NUS said Deputy Prime Minister and Sheffield Hallam MP Nick Clegg had yet to respond to an invitation to speak at the conference.