We have the best Students’ Union in the country. The awards prove it. But should it cost students this much to use it?
Forge Press has already covered the staggering price rises at the SU’s outlets. In December, we reported sandwich prices increased by 31% from 2020-2023 and milk increased by 77% in the same period.
Of course, prices are increasing everywhere. Our economy has been battered by COVID, the Truss experiment, Brexit’s economic isolationism, and supply issues from wars and shipping disruption. Inflation isn’t as bad as it was. It’s now at 4%, down from the 10% peak in 2022. 4% is still abnormal. In my lifetime, inflation has only reached 4% twice – in 2008 and 2011. Students are clichéd as perpetually broke, but no one seems to care too much about it. As students, our SU should be a safety net in times like these, and if anyone should care, it should be them.
Fundamentally, the SU should be one of the cheapest places to eat, drink and shop. That simply is not the case. Take coffee for example, it is a staple for many students while they are studying, but in the SU, at Coffee Revolution, it costs £3.35 for a regular cappuccino. Whereas, the same coffee costs £3.23 in Gaard or £2.70 at Appetito (with student discounts), both a short walk away, so if external companies can cater towards struggling students, why can’t the SU? In the 2022/23 academic year, you could buy a fresh wrap in the SU for £3.50, up to £4.50 this year. These increases are commonplace but seem to disregard the fundamentals. Students should be able to rely on their university and students’ union to make life easier, it seems the SU can often take advantage of the ease and convenience of nipping in the SU, and charge students over the odds for this extra convenience.
The Students Union doesn’t just raise funds from sales in their retail outlets. Typically, they receive a grant from the university, although the extent of this isn’t clear for our SU. On the SU website, they have highlighted a few ways they are helping students with the ongoing cost of living crisis. Most of these things are trivial at best, but some are really handy. A discount on food or drink if you bring a reusable container is a nice gesture, free sanitary products and a community fridge is also welcome. The University is taking applications for its Cost of Living Fund (one off payment of up to £325), and the Financial Support Fund for those in exceptional circumstances, all things which are helping many students a great deal. However, it is not only those in exceptional circumstances that need help at this time, the Students Union needs to be more affordable to help all.
Looking at students’ unions of yesteryear, they definitely seemed affordable. For my parent’s generation, they remember an affordable SU. Where my parents studied, the SU bar was about 20% cheaper than others nearby. In the early 80s, when my uncle studied at Sheffield, he too remembers a cheap SU bar. We had a similar inflation crisis in the early 80s as we do today, yet Student Unions seemed to cope better. At Bar One for example, they are offering drinks prices cheaper than Wetherspoons in their latest marketing campaign, which is the kind of thing we expect for our SU, to offer exclusively low prices due to being for students, we do not expect the extortionate prices of Our Shop and Coffee Revolution (to name a couple).
Society used to have the view that higher education was valuable to enriching our young people. As a result, politics of the 20th century made the lives of the students easier. I still have to correct my dad when he refers to a ‘maintenance grants’, which ended in 2016. Tuition itself was free until 1998! Highly educated people are useful to society, so let’s encourage more people to be better qualified. In the recent past, that sentiment has been lost. Admittedly, that isn’t something that our SU alone can fix, but young people are going to be less and less encouraged to continue their studies into higher education, if all that is waiting for them is three years of poverty. The SU should not be out of any students budget.
Potentially the new SU officers could offer some ideas to make it affordable for all, and I would urge them to do so, cause in this current situation, the SU will be being utilised less and less.
If you are struggling with your finances in any way and feel you are being hit hard by the cost of living crisis, information on the University’s financial support funds is available below.
https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/financial-support/university/cost-living-fund#eligibility