General Meeting on Higher Education Funding Policy fails to meet quorum

The General Meeting took place Monday evening, but with only 45 people showing up, failed to meet quorum. The General Meeting, proposed by Imperial College Union Council member Andrew Tranter, aimed to finalise the Union’s stance on education funding and formalise a Higher Education Funding Policy to reflect this.

For the meeting to make quorum, 200 people need to show up within the first half an hour of the meeting, all of whom could then vote on any proposed motions. Despite Council itself having 50 members, with only 49 people turning up, no motion could be passed and the policy will be taken back to Council and discussed in next Tuesday’s meeting. Only then will the policy be finalised.

Despite not meeting quorum, discussion surrounding fees carried on for a further two hours, and the meeting came to an end at around 8.30 pm. Only one person was allegedly seen to be sleeping during the entirety of the meeting.

Initially it was decided by Council last academic year to hold a referendum addressing four options for funding education: for education to be free, for there to be a graduate tax, to pay tuition fees or none of the above. However, this referendum was replaced by the Higher Education Funding survey set and assessed by Alex Savell, the current Deputy President (Finance and Services).

Tranter proposed in the last Council meeting that a General Meeting should be held to discuss the Higher Education Funding Policy, and come to a decision that hundreds of students could potentially all agree upon as opposed to Council deciding alone using the results of the survey. The results were presented in the General Meeting, despite not meeting quorum.

Tranter also introduced two papers to be considered at the meeting: one to install a policy supporting Free Education (regardless of the survey outcomes), and another to introduce annual General Meetings, to be held in the second term of each year. Since the Meeting failed to meet quorum, both of these papers were not passed.

During the meeting, Savell recapped the results of the survey that closed earlier last week. 310 students filled in the survey, just under 2% of the current student population. Out of those that completed the survey, 87.7% were undergraduates.

Although Free Education garnered the most support, it wasn’t by a large majority; 140 students said Free Education would be the funding model they would ultimately want, whilst around 90 students said they would prefer Tuition Fees. Just under than 40 supported Graduate Tax, and just over 20 weren’t a fan of any of the models.

Savell’s results were highly comprehensive and looked at the survey responses from various standpoints, showing the complexity of the student opinion concerning the debate. Savell therefore proposed a policy that instead of supporting one particular line of funding, will look at several components of funding as a whole instead.

This includes campaigning for a regulation on Postgraduate and Overseas Fees, alongside campaigning for a reduced privatisation of the Higher Education sector as a whole. In terms of funding, Savell proposed that the Union should campaign for reduced tuition fees, as “this is what aligns best with the largest number of student views and appears to be antagonistic to the views of the fewest respondents.”

Paul Beaumont, Union Council Chair, was pleased with the meeting as a whole. He told Felix that “Whilst not quorate, the students who did attend engaged fully and it was brilliant to hear their (wide ranging) views. I think that because there is such a diversity of viewpoints on this issue it is important we listen to them all and then try and work out a stance that reflects that - this General Meeting went some way to achieving that.

“It looks like the new policy is going to take a middle-ground approach (as opposed to the previous one passed in 2011), which will hopefully be more inclusive of the membership's views. This can only be a good thing.

“I'd like to thank those who came and got involved, and the DPFS for his hard work on the initial proposals and ground work for the policy.”