New development in ongoing bursary saga

Tuesday’s Union Council saw the announcement of £250k funding secured for “unfairly underfunded” 2015 bursary cohort students.

This represents the latest update in an ongoing saga following the Union’s request for reimbursement for undergraduate students from the “squeezed middle” £35,000 - £60,000 income brackets that were on the heavily criticised 2015-intake bursary scheme. The Union requested that the affected students receive reimbursement for the 2016-17 academic year and for this funding to be guaranteed for the remainder of their degrees.

The £250k funding pot will not be directly available to those affected. Limitations placed on what the money can be used for include money being put towards Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programmes (UROPs) and Careers services. Medical students affected will also be able to put the money towards overseas electives.

This development has been described as a “highlight” and a “big win” by the Deputy President (Welfare), Becky Neil, and Rob Tomkies (President of Imperial College Union), respectively.

However, with the majority of the affected students having either graduated or currently in final year, this resolution has been seen by some as unsuccessful. One affected student remarked that this only represented College succeeding in “waiting out” the affected students.

The Imperial bursary works by providing financial support on an annual basis to Home undergraduate students with a household income of up to £60,000. The sum awarded depends on the income bracket, and varies depending on which bursary scheme the individual is on.

There are different bursary schemes for different years of enrolment at Imperial. In December 2016, it was revealed that higher income brackets (from £35k to £60k) saw a sharp drop in funding. This meant that, under the 2015 system, students from lower income brackets (through a combination of higher maintenance loans & grants from SLC, and a higher Imperial bursary) received more than the annual living costs at Imperial (estimated at £11,522), while students from higher income brackets who still qualified for the bursary received substantially (~£2-4k) less than the living costs.

Following this, College decided to change the bursary scheme for the 2016 intake, giving far more to higher income brackets in a move widely seen as acknowledgement of the inadequacy of the 2015 bursary scheme. Although this was described as “commendable” by the Union, it was also noted that affected students that were left under the 2015 bursary scheme had been “overlooked” as nothing had been done to improve their financial provision.

The change to the 2015 bursary scheme was initially thought to have affected up to 200 undergraduate students from the 2015-16 cohort - students who would have received substantially larger bursaries had they enrolled either a year sooner or a year later.

All students will receive an email explanation and the affected students will receive details of how they can claim the promised funding.