IN JANUARY, The Guardian reported that several universities had failed to spend their budgets for the student bursaries they had promised as a counterbalance to the new £3,000 topup fees. Poor administration was claimed to be the cause, with data protection rules preventing otherwise willing institutions from getting the money to students.
Damn nuisance
While Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College had all replied to Freedom of Information requests asking them if they had under spent, Provost Malcolm Grant's UCL chose not to — not surprising when the man in charge has previously referred to FOI requests as a “damn nuisance”.
UCL obviously has something to hide... and here it is. Out of its £1.26m budget for student bursaries during 2006/07, College spent only 76%, leaving a healthy £302k still in UCL's coffers — enough to fund bursaries for hundreds of students.
Flawed
Grant admitted the under spend to the Sabbatical Officers late last year, but was unable to provide them with a reason as to why the money had not been spent. While Grant claims that College will not attempt to claw the money back, news that the flawed system will not be reviewed until 2009/10 is less than encouraging. College has so far declined to comment.