The National Union of Studentsâ new vice-president for higher education has vowed to put improving access to postgraduate education at the heart of her term of office.
Megan Dunn, who was elected at the NUS conference in Liverpool last week to take over from Rachel Wenstone in the key post, said too often postgraduate study was viewed as a âmiddle-class playgroundâ. In her speech to conference on 9Â April, Ms Dunn said she wanted to âsmash through the layer of privilege that dominates postgraduate studyâ.
Ms Dunn, president of Aberdeen University Studentsâ Association, later told 51³Ô¹Ï that she was keen to look at new ways to allow students from poorer families into further study without their incurring large bank debts. âWhen the choice faced by students is to take out commercial debt, we are not giving them fair access to postgraduate study,â said Ms Dunn.
Ms Dunnâs focus on postgraduate education in her election speech is likely to hearten those within the sector who have often complained that the needs of the UKâs 535,000 or so postgraduates are overlooked by the NUS, which represents about 7Â million students.
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Manchester-raised Ms Dunn, 23, who took a degree in politics and international relations at Aberdeen, is likely to be a leading voice for higher education students in the run-up to next Mayâs general election.
Ms Dunn, who paid fees of about £1,800 a year as an English student in Scotland, has called on whichever party is elected to âtake a wrecking ballâ to the current system of £9,000 annual tuition fees, saying university education should be âdemocratic, diverse and debt-freeâ.
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The stance was backed by the NUS, which voted to campaign for free education, although its re-elected president Toni Pearce â who polled twice as many votes as her opponents combined â called for a graduate tax that would remove the £9,000 sticker price for university courses.
That apparently contradictory stance may lead to tensions within the organisation ahead of the election, as might the extent to which the NUS will target Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg over his broken promise to oppose higher tuition fees.
Delegates voted to campaign against Mr Clegg and any MP who broke the NUS pledge âby publicly highlighting their broken promiseâ.
However, Ms Dunn is more reluctant to mount a concerted campaign to oust Mr Clegg from his Sheffield Hallam seat â an aim publicly backed by former NUS leaders.
While insisting that it would be a âdangerous precedentâ to let politicians off the hook, she believed the NUS should ânot simply aim to take politicians outâ. âWe will be working with the local student union and finding out what action they want to take and work together to get the best outcome,â Ms Dunn said.
That view echoes the sentiments of Ms Pearce, who said the NUS âshould not have a Tarantino-style revenge campaignâ against the 28 Lib Dem MPs who had broken their promises over fees.
Mr Clegg and Co. might be relieved that Ms Dunn beat her election rival Tom Flynn, vice-president (education) at University of Bristol Studentsâ Union, by 300 votes to 241, as he had warned the Lib Dem leader: âWe are coming for you.â
Underdog with bite: NUS outsiderâs surprise election victory
Those who complain that the National Union of Studentsâ leadership is dominated by wannabe Labour MPs will be heartened by the election of Piers Telemacque.
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In the shock result of the NUS annual conference, the president of Bradford Collegeâs studentsâ union was picked as vice-president for society and citizenship, beating two candidates â Hugh Murdoch and Skye Yarlett â both of whom had far larger and more visible campaigns.
Lacking the teams of supporters to hand out leaflets employed by his rivals, Mr Telemacque instead relied on an electrifying hustings address, partially given in rhyming verse, to win over delegates in Liverpool.
He even broke the NUSâ rule on swearing on the conference platform â once â to express his anger about the impact of cuts on education in the past few years.
âNow the young and poor are being hardest hit â so do you know what IÂ say? Eff this shit,â he remarked, winning cheers and applause from the floor.
Mr Telemacque, who joined Bradford College after being expelled from school, also used poetic verse to bash bankers and then politicians who called for cuts to deal with financial austerity.
In fact, austerity was âdue to the need for greed by a very few indeed, who plant the seed that leads people like us to blame each other for the mess we did not createâ.
After the speech, the underdog candidate â backed by the socialist Student Broad Left movement, not by the mainstream Labour Students group â romped home to victory in the vote on 9Â April, winning 383 votes â more than his two opponents combined.
Indeed, his tally was just 71 votes fewer than the support garnered by Toni Pearce, who was easily re-elected NUS president with a total of 454 votes, way ahead of her nearest rival, NUS black students officer Aaron Kiely with 150 votes.
In her keynote address before the election, Ms Pearce called for a ânew deal for the next generationâ and also criticised the actions of police at recent campus occupations.
Her call was later echoed by a resolution that the NUS would campaign for laws that police cannot enter campuses without permission from both the university and the studentsâ union.
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