Thursday 13-10-2022 - 17:54

It’s a difficult time to be a student. The cost-of-living crisis is hitting every resident of the UK, but students don’t benefit from many of the schemes, support, or sticking plasters which are available to the rest of the population. Student loans haven’t kept pace with student costs and thresholds for loans have not been uprated. This means students face both a cost-of-living crisis and are being short-changed by the current financial support in place.

 

At University of Salford Students’ Union we know this isn’t fair. And do not worry – we will be putting our energies into working with local MPs, mayors, and NUS to address this systematic problem. In the meantime, we know that there are students in our community who are facing hardship like few other generations of students have experienced. Simply, we cannot wait for a political solution while the practical necessities of eating, heating, and studying are so urgent.

 

This year, as an officer team, we are focusing our energies on the cost-of-living crisis. Through working with the staff team at the Students’ Union and colleagues at the university, we are committed to orientating our work to the practical measures which will help you, our members, to get through this incredibly difficult period.

 

As a first step, we recently launched a survey to better understand the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis on students at our university. Off the back of this work and conversations with students across campus, we will be working to support students to access housing, challenging the cost of community, finding cheap alternatives to eat on campus, looking at how our outlets can help cut your bills, and engaging with the University on support for all students – we also acknowledge extra support could be required for international students, and students with children and caring responsibilities.

 

We know that the current crisis cannot be solved by a single students’ union or university, and that this is an issue which goes well beyond education. To make our work as impactful as possible, we will be working with the other students’ unions across Greater Manchester to bring issues collectively and directly to the door of our elected representatives. Bus fares, rent, and bills do not respect university boundaries and only in working together can we make significant change.

 

Alongside our political and practical work, our commitment is to put students at the heart of everything that we do. This is a national crisis wrapped up in thousands upon thousands of local challenges. This year, we are committed to changing the way we do student democracy. We hope that this will ensure we are most effectively representing you when we are speaking on your behalf, enabling you to engage directly where you want to, and generally making it much easier to know what’s going on and how you can change it.

 

The university also has guidance that can be found on their cost of living webpage.

If you want to be involved in our cost of living work this year you can sign up to our mailing list please fill in this form. The scale of this challenge requires our collective efforts and while we cannot solve the cost of living crisis alone, together, we might just ease some of the burden for our community.