How students were sold a false prospectus

LOCKeD down in her student flat, prohibited from going to pubs, restaurants or parties, and receiving all her tuition online, Glasgow University student Lucy Owens poses some plaintive and highly pertinent questions about her plight.

In a BBC television interview she asks: ‘What are we paying for? I could do everything I’m doing from my house. So why have they sent us here?’

Why indeed. Miss Owens and thousands of students like her across Britain are paying through the nose for a university experience they are simply not receiving.

Instead of taking their first steps into independent adult living, they find themselves more constricted than ever, with many under virtual house arrest. They are even being told they may not be allowed home to their families at Christmas. It’s positively Kafkaesque.

It may not have been deliberate but these young people have been sold a false prospectus. Universities should now make recompense by giving them a substantial refund on their fees and rent.

Their generation (and future generations) will already be saddled with a vast bill for this pandemic, servicing our towering Covid debt for years to come and probably finding good jobs harder to come by as recession bites.

Making them pay top dollar for what amounts to a second-rate educational product adds insult to financial injury.

Some institutions have made a welcome gesture by offering small rent refunds. But much more must be done.

Today’s universities like to style themselves as global businesses rather than mere educators. So they should behave like every other good business and look after their paying customers.

And if they’re looking for economies to help foot the bill, they could begin by slashing the absurdly lavish salaries of vice-chancellors and senior staff.