Mech Eng head tells students he’s voting remain
Professor Peter Crawley emailed all mech eng students and staff telling them life would be harder after Brexit
On Sunday, the head of the department of mechanical engineering sent an email to all of his students and staff, addressing concerns about a post-Brexit fee status for EU students, and telling them that he was “strongly in favour of remaining in the EU” and so would be “voting accordingly”.
In the email, Professor Crawley said that several EU students had expressed concern that if Britain were to vote to leave the EU in this month’s referendum, they would be forced to start paying international fees of £26,000 a year, as opposed to the £9000 they currently pay.
As with everything in the referendum, it is unclear how the free movement of people, which currently allows students from the EU to pay home student fees, would be affected.
As Crawley stated in his email, it is unlikely that these students would be retroactively deemed international, and be forced to start paying £26,000 halfway through their degrees. However, he reassured EU students college wouldn’t just start charging them more without a fight, saying “we will do all in our legal power to ensure that current students are not subject to a dramatic increase in fees”.
If Britain were to leave, fewer EU students are likely to come to British universities, and those that do would probably have to pay the higher fees. This would mean there would be no financial cost to Imperial in terms of fee income, as it will either take more home students for the same money or take more international students and make more cash.
Professor Crawley made no secret of how he will be voting in the referendum. He said a leave vote would spell bad news for funding research, the companies that mech eng works with, enlisting students from the EU, and that therefore he would be voting “accordingly”.
He told FELIX that remain offered “ease of collaboration around Europe, including student exchanges” which “is hugely important for the College”.
“We also benefit from being able to recruit research and academic staff from EU countries without work permit issues. We succeed by being open, and anything that increases barriers is detrimental. I am also concerned that many of the companies with whom we work will scale back their UK activities and relocate to the continent to be within the single market. It is much easier to work with companies when they are located closer to us.”
This comes after Alice Gast, the Imperial President, sent an email out to all students and staff saying how college could not tell its students how to vote, but that Imperial had been involved with the remain campaign.
Staff in the RSM took a different view, forwarding an email out to all students and staff from Imperial’s Britain Stronger in Europe campaign group, but adding they were happy to send an email out from the equivalent pro-Brexit group.
In our print edition we mistakenly printed "Professor Crawley made no secret of how we will be voting in the referendum" when we meant to say "Professor Crawley made no secret of how he will be voting in the referendum."
