Editor's Note: Issue 30
By Barty Roberts, Editor-In-Chief, BA Politics and International Relations
The low-income bursary at SOAS is £1,500 per year, £4,500 per whole undergraduate degree. An amount that has not changed since 2021. As per the Bank of England inflation calculator, £1,500 in September 2021 is now worth £1,804.77, £4,500 would now be £5,414.30, this means that the low-income bursary has had a 20% real terms cut. As per a freedom of information request carried out by the SOAS Spirit, last academic year (2023/24)- 978 students received the bursary. Considering that the bursary is only available to undergraduates,this means that 25% of undergraduate students are in receipt of it.
Uplifting the low-income bursary in line with inflation would cost SOAS £298,065. SOAS currently has an investment portfolio worth £60,946,017 (September 2024) it has increased by £1,084,520 in the last six months alone having been worth £59,861,497 in March 2024. The investments are only available to the public after campaigns by the student body for SOAS to disclose their portfolio following the revelation -that SOAS invests millions of pounds in companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
The low-income bursary is also not available to students repeating a year. The majority of students repeat a year following a leave of absence. A leave of absence is typically taken when a student cannot complete their studies- due to personal factors: like poor physical/mental health or a family crisis. The removal of the bursary for these students is unjust, unfair and punitive; seemingly designed to punish those repeating a year, rather than encouraging them back into higher education. Students repeating a year have to pay full price for the additional year so why are they not entitled to additional support?
SOAS management salaries have all gone up with inflation. For example, in 2023 The Telegraph reported that Director of SOAS, Adam Habib, had his salary increased by 35.3% from £224,000 to £303,000. The weekly price of Dinwiddy House (SOAS’ primary student accommodation) has gone from £186 per week to £230 per week - a 23% increase.
What all these numbers really show is institutional neglect. On the part of SOAS management, the decision to make a 20% cut to the bursary is at best ignorant and at worst avaricious. Above all else it is simply unfair. SOAS have stated that they support low-income students by providing careers support and a ‘Student Success Conference’ but, simply, conferences do not pay the rent. Material problems require material solutions. Low-income students cannot network their way out of poverty.
What is striking about the cut to the bursary is the lack of noise that any student-led groups have made. The Students’ Union have acquiesced about any support for low-income students in the past, and the absence of this demand from all other campaign groups at SOAS has not gone unnoticed. The SOAS Liberated Zone and Democratise Education, have never made any statements regarding material support for working class students, despite their criticism of management pay rises.
Typically, issues at SOAS have a binary nature. They are supported by student activists and rejected by management or vice versa; on the matter of increasing financial support for low-income students-they are united in their silence.
