Yesterday the Sunday Times published the following article, in which it details of some of the outcomes of Lord Browne review which is due to to report in Autumn.  

John Pert who is a member of NUS's Executive Council has provided some good insight and analysis on his blog. 

What does that mean for Salford Students and what will the Students Union be doing?

The leaked outcome of Lord Browne's review suggests various methods of raising fees, one of those suggested is to double the level of fees and then start adding an extra £1000 a year until we see a 'true market'. 

This is an absolute disgrace, students across the country have not seen any benefit of the current system in where students pay fees by taking a loan to pay fees upfront, further more the Times article suggests that 'the subsidised interest rate on student loans would go'. This would be a massive blow for students and what is the fee level that achieves a 'true market' £20000? £30000??

This is issue is not just limited to home students, you can guarantee that Universities across the country will use this as an opportunity to raise fees for international students as well.

We must remember that currently none of the proposals reported in the Times are confirmed, however as students at Salford and nationally we should be ready for what is likely to be the outcome.

The National Union of Students (NUS), agreed at conference that we would be holding a National Demonstration on this very topic and we will be making sure as many Salford Students go to it to ensure the voice of students is heard by the MP's that run our country.

Locally we will be continuing to lobby MP's in the local area to ensure that when this comes to the house of commons, we ensure that they have heard both sides of the argument.

We will also be lobbying our Vice Chancellor Martin Hall, to ask him the very questions I have posed in this blog. Can he show to the student body any benefit they have seen since the introduction of top up fees? Does he support a 'true market' for fees that will  price out so many students from Higher Education?

What can you do?

As I am sure you aware on Thursday the country will take to the polls and this is your opportunity to have your voice and use your vote.

Over the last week we have been working with NUS on the Vote for Students' Campaign.  The campaign is very simple to ask MP's and prospective MP's to sign up to the following pledge 

“I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative” 

The results of all the people that have signed the pledge is available online http://nus.org.uk/Global/FULLVOTEFORSTUDENTSLIST280410.xls and I urge you that when you cast your vote this week you consider who has and who has not signed the pledge.

Politically the next year is going to be a huge challenge not just in the area of tution fees, but also some of the proposed public sector cuts we may see. You will be seeing the Students' Union doing a lot of work over the upcoming weeks and months.

If you have a keen interest in the subject of this blog post send me an email at vphsc-ussu@salford.ac.uk and I can keep you upto date in all the union is doing.

Ricky Chotai 

Vice President Health and Social Care

Tel: 0161 351 5424 | Mobile: 07540222310 

Web: www.salfordstudents.com | Twitter: www.twitter.com/SalfordVPHSC

NB Thankyou for John Pert from the NUS NEC for alerting me to the link.

Original Post Located @ http://salfordstudentsunion.blogspot.com/2010/05/fees-review-leak.html

If you popped into the Students' Union last week you would have noticed that none of the Sabbs were about. We were all at the NUS National Conference in Gateshead.

Myself and Matt go automatically as President and President Elect, Jim, Joe and Alan Bailey came as they were elected delegates in March.

On Thursday was the election for the Vice President Higher Education and former SU President Usman Ali was up against six other candidates.

Below was his speech to conference how why he should be elected!

I have never seen Usman speak so well before.

There were late nights and early mornings campaigning for Usman during breaks and all the hardwork of everyone pulled off and he was elected.

I am really looking forward to working with Usman next year, on some of the key issues that will be affecting our movement nationally. The key one being the Browne review and the outcome of that.

At Conference, we passed policy to hold a National Demo and you can guarantee we will be getting involved with that.

The good news will hopefully set to continue as Alan Bailey is running unopposed for the open place officer for the NUS LGBT Campaign. 

It is awesome that next year we will have two former sabbaticals on the National Executive Council of NUS!

I am sure one of the others will be blogging about the full details of conference soon.

Original Post @ http://salfordstudentsunion.blogspot.com/2010/04/usman-ali-becomes-nus-vp-higher.html

Firstly please accept my apologies for not blogging sooner, things have been as hectic as ever but that is not an excuse.

The second is that back in December I posted about Does the Students’ Union really represent you?, and promised to do I follow up post, this will happen however I am just waiting for some of the election data.

Student Union Elections

 Left to right: Tom Doyle, Student Trustee Elect; Jim Dale, Vice President Elect; Christabel Brown, Vice President Elect; Ricky Chotai, President Elect; Caroline Dangerfield, Vice President Elect; Maros Kravec, Vice President Elect; Sophie Atkinson, Student Trustee Elect; James Walsh, Student Trustee Elect on the night of the win.

As you are aware in February and March the Students’ Union hold elections for next years trustee board and who is to go to NUS conference.

The Results were as follows;

President – Ricky Chotai

Vice Presidents – Christabel Brown, Jim Dale, Caroline Dangerfield and Maros Kravec

Student Trustees – Sophie Atkinson, Tom Doyle, Sylvia Joseph and James Walsh

NUS Delegates – Alan Bailey, Jim Dale and Joe Kirwin

The new sabbatical team is fantastic and I look forward to the all the challenges ahead and working on delivering our individual manifestos from the 1st of July. The team is a real mixed bunch of people some of whom I already know such as Jim who is one of the current Vice Presidents, and Caroline who I knew as the then Head of News at Shock Radio 3 years ago and is the current President of the Rowing Club. Others who I know less well, however I am sure this will change over the year, Christabel who is the current chair of Almost Famous and Maros Kravec who is Vice President of the Law Society. 

NUS Services Election

After the Students’ Union Election I vowed to myself, no more elections however as president elect last week I attended NUS Services Convention. NUS Services is owned by Students’ Unions and the National Union of Students.  Their mission statement is to; ‘Create, develop and sustain competitive advantages for member Students’ Unions – reducing costs and maximising commercial revenues’

To this end they provide three core services:

• Purchasing

• Commercial Development

• Marketing Services

The board is made of student officers and staff members from various Students’ Unions across they country and I decided to run for the position of Non-executive Student Directors.

The question I am sure you are wondering is why? During my time at University I did not study Politics etc, I studied Business and I have a real passion for it. 

Yes I am one of those sad acts, that gets excited when such shows as Dragons Den and The Apprentice is on. 

I was successful at the election for non executive student director, and therefore start my time on the board on the 1st July 2010.

General Election

For those of you may have been asleep over the last 24 hours, the date of the General Election has now been called for the 6th of May.

Check out all the details on our website www.salfordstudents.com/vote

We are supporting the NUS ‘Vote For Students’ campaign. Join us and pledge your support to vote for a candidate supportive of a fairer fees and funding system for UK Universities at the next General Election.

If the 7 million students in this country stand together in this campaign and pledge their support to protect our future, MPs and parliamentary candidates will have no option but to vote with us or pay the price at the ballot box.

Sign up at: www.voteforstudents.co.uk  A minute or two of your time could help make a huge difference.

As well as encouraging Salford students to sign up, USSU and other unions across the UK are lobbying MPs to support the following pledge:

“I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative”

Find out more about the Vote For Students campaign here. 

Make sure you check out the Facebook Group here.

On that I think that well and truly covers the topic of elections.

I will promise I will blog more regularly and maybe kick the others to maybe blog more often! :)

Original post is at http://salfordstudentsunion.blogspot.com/2010/04/elections-elections-and-general.html