Students count cost
TWO UNDERGRADUATES DESCRIBE THEIR BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT AFTER MISSING OUT
JACQUELINE Skiptunis paid £17,000 to move to Manchester from the US to do a Masters. She’s missed a month of lectures due to staff strikes. She says she now needs counselling.
Jacqueline worked for a year and a half in her hometown of New York to save to enrol at the University of Manchester. She is one of the thousands of students to have lost a month’s-worth of teaching time because of industrial action earlier this year.
On Tuesday, the M.E.N. reported that undergraduates and postgraduates are seeking compensation following the University College Union strikes, held as a pensions row rumbled on. This week, angry students held a protest outside Whitworth Hall on Oxford Road.
This is what two furious students told us...
Jacqueline, 27, who is studying towards an MA in linguistics, said: “I’ve wanted to study here pretty much my whole life.
“The UK is one of those places that is known for its educational institutions. If I was going to study what I wanted to, this was one of the places to be - especially Manchester.
“I couldn’t even afford to come here for my undergraduate, so that was an extra decade’s worth of going to university in Canada, getting jobs, and figuring out how to make it happen.
“I spent the last year and a half working odd jobs and putting a bunch of money together so I could come here and spend the year studying.
“I was working in clothing stores and at a lab making glasses, and in financial administration, secretarial work.
“The Masters degree is £17,000 so it’s not a small amount of money for an international student to pay.
“I’m paying for rent, I’m paying for food, I’m paying for extra money to be here, I’m paying to use your bank machines – when I get money out of an ATM it’s $5.
“I was lucky enough to be able to get a loan. The loan that I have is for the first two terms and the interest on the loan is 4 per cent to 11pc. A lot of people put it on their credit card.
“I’m frustrated and really disappointed. The university wasn’t supporting teaching and learning as it should. I was going through a tough time personally at that time. I didn’t have the motivation to keep to my schedule. I was already dealing with being depressed. What’s the motivation to get on the bus or to bike through the freezing cold to get here to get to classes if no one is going to be here? I went to counselling services during that time.
“It’s a bit demoralising. I didn’t come here just for a degree, I could go online in the United States for £1,000 and get one.
“I wanted to be here interacting with other students, meeting people from this city, from this part of the world, from all over the world, making friends and making connections.
“It’s really isolating as an international student when you first get here, you don’t have a network of people built up. “The university and the student union do try to get people together to interact, but you really rely on your dayto-day schedule of going to your lectures and having something to look forward to, your readings, keeping to that strict rota of university. “I know a lot of international students were saying this is their chance to get out here, to build a life and become better people. That’s what you go to uni for, and they were denied that.”
Louisa Reddin is in the third year of her politics and philosophy.
The 22-year-old, from Brighton, said: “It’s obvious that we’re not getting the teaching we need, but there’s also the other side of it - we’re not getting the support.
“As a third year I’m writing a dissertation, I’m writing long essays and I need support from my lecturers.
“My lecturers did everything they could to support me without breaking the strike, but when it comes down to it, they’re striking.
“As someone with mental health issues, this has had a huge impact on me – and loads of people I know that do suffer from anxiety and depression issues – which I’m happy to talk about, but I shouldn’t have to.
“We pay for our education now, our education has become completely consumerised. Why are you surprised when we react badly when you take our money and don’t teach us anything?
“I’m going off on an internship for three months and I need that 2:1 to go on that internship.
“I missed three lectures and three tutorials from each lecture and I couldn’t have any contact with my dissertation supervisor, that’s pretty much