I don’t know if you’ve ever visited the ‘Sussex 2025 Strategic Framework’ website, (1) but it’s pretty weird. Weird in that, like a third-rate fortune-teller, it shows you what you wish to see but through a magic crystal ball of vaguery, such that the distorted image could be (and ends up being) pretty much whatever you want it to be regardless of who you are and what you desire. The picture it paints of Sussex’s future is nebulous to the point of inanity: “we will seek to be known as a ‘kind’ institution”, “we will ensure that everybody in our community is treated with dignity and respect”, “we will… speak out on issues that concern us… face up to difficult challenges… work for a better world”. Some bored copy-writer could’ve saved a lot of time by just writing “we’ll be good and stuff (please send us your children)”. However, I can’t help but notice the website has a sinister edge for, alongside the ambiguous utopia it markets, lies the reality of what the university is becoming.
A short walk around campus is all it takes to realise that the University of Sussex is changing. The demolition of the old East Slope halls in favour of more ‘up-market’ accommodation is only the beginning of a trend towards increasingly expensive ‘premium’ on-campus housing, and now that the development of West Slope over Park Village seems unstoppable, Sussex is on track to lose its only remaining sub-one-hundred-pound-a-week halls (Park Village is currently priced from £95/week). This begs the question: Who is this new Sussex actually going to be for?
With the loss of Park Village (and Lancaster and York House), the cheapest halls will be at Lewes Court which is currently priced from £123/ week (shared bathroom). (2) For comparison, Save the Student, in their survey published last month, found the regional average price of student accommodation across the country (on and off-campus) to be £126/ week. Meanwhile the average for the south-east is a staggering £150/ week, only £12 less than London. (3)
But so what? Sussex will still have some accommodation priced below the average, what’s the problem? Well for one, £126/ week is the average of all accommodation options, the relatively cheap and relatively expensive. Most unis will likely have some halls priced below and some above this mark but generally they will be situated around it; this is not the case for Sussex where most students can expect to pay around £160/ week, a figure that is high even for the second most expensive region in the country. For two, ‘below average’ does not necessarily mean ‘affordable’. When Park Village is gone, Lewes Court, being the cheapest option, might well be marketed as ‘affordable’ but this is far from the truth, rather it will be the least expensive in a group of expensive options. To get an idea of what ‘affordable’ actually means take a look at ‘Cut the Rent Sussex’, a campaign for affordable housing that suggests an ideal of a ‘70/70 rule’ (4) at which the cheapest campus housing is priced at 70% of the minimum student loan (~£70/week) while the dearest is 70% of the maximum loan (~£150/ week). (5) Even given that this is an optimistic ideal, it is alarming that Sussex’s cheapest housing will soon exceed its guideline by over two thirds, not to mention that prices have been steadily rising for years and show no signs of slowing down (Since 2016 Swanborough for example, has risen from £150/ week to £167.50, Stanmer Court from £142.50 to £159.50. (5) (2) Generally, the increase in prices more than doubled the average inflation of 3.2%/ year).
But what does this mean for students? To begin with, someone staying at Lewes Court now would have to pay £28/week more than if they were living at Park Village, that’s ~£1100 more for a 39-week rental contract and, for students with families that are unable to provide supplementary financial support, increases the need to find work while studying. Considering that holding a job as a full-time student has been shown to hinder academic progression, negatively affect engagement in class and lower the nutritional value of student’s diets; (6) (7) (8) the university’s management, by requiring students to shell out more and more for housing, seems determined to make life as hard as possible for students from poorer economic backgrounds, poising them (relative to their richer contemporaries) for a university experience characterised by greater debt, crushing financial stress, poor health and wellbeing, and less time to focus on studying. It should go without saying that having healthy, engaged students benefits everybody: seminars are more valuable when everyone feels prepared to contribute, group work is easier, etc. But in this case the university seems content to prioritise profit, they seem to have forgotten what affordable housing is for and why it is so important for students and the university as a whole.
With this in mind, what can be done to ensure that Sussex continues to provide for students who cannot afford ‘premium’ housing options? The most obvious solution is to lower and freeze the price of Lewes Court and Northfield to fill the space left by East Court and Park Village. Suppose the price of Lewes Court was to fall to (and stay at) around £90/ week for shared bathrooms, ~£110 for en-suite, it would be far easier for underprivileged students to budget their lives in a way that doesn’t necessitate them working long hours on the side. However, given that nothing has yet been done to account for the loss of affordable housing at East Slope, I think it unlikely that any plans are in the works. Furthermore, having talked at length to the ‘Better Campus’ representatives in the library, and waited several weeks for a response to an email asking how they plan to compensate for the loss of affordable housing, I have received nothing but shrugs and silence.
So, what can we do? What can you do? First of all, email bettercampus@sussex.ac.uk - or the vice chancellor (vc@sussex.ac.uk) if you’re feeling spicy - and ask them how they plan to ensure that people who can’t afford £140-170/ week can continue to study here without compromising their health and education. Raise your concerns with the ‘Better Campus’ representatives in the library. Let management know that people care about this, that we are not content to sit back and watch as they work to gentrify our university. A grassroots campaign is taking shape right now to ensure that there will be affordable housing at Sussex in light of the West Slope plans. If you want to join, take a look at our Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/660629474343751/ .
To end I’ll return to the ‘Sussex 2025 Strategic Framework’. I think it is, if nothing else, a sign of what management thinks people want. The lack of any specifics is perhaps intended to stretch out and dilute the vision so that it appeals as widely as possible, avoids even the faintest whiff of controversy: if they’re not saying anything, who can disagree? But in practice they seem to have a very specific vision for the future of Sussex and something tells me it’s a vision of moneybags. While on the surface, the ‘Sussex 2025’ website paints a utopic picture, upon inspection it is chilling because of what is left out: there is no mention of affordability; of equal opportunities for underprivileged students; of sustainable and equal pay for staff; of minimising the need for full-time students to work jobs while studying. Management’s strategic framework shows no awareness of so many of the problems facing the university and no desire to improve the experiences of those most in need. They have tried to anticipate what we want and placate us with vague, superficial dreams of a better world, a ‘Better Campus’. I think it’s time we let them know it won’t be that easy.
1 ‘Sussex 2025 Strategic Framework - University of Sussex’. Accessed 3 February 2020. https://www.sussex.ac.uk/strategy/.
2 ‘On-Campus Accommodation : Accommodation : Study with Us : University of Sussex’. Accessed 14 February 2020. https://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/accommodation/on-campus.
3 Save the Student. ‘National Student Accommodation Survey 2020 – Results’. https://www.savethestudent.org/accommodation/national-student-accommodation-survey-2020.html.
4 Sussex, Cut the Rent - Home’. Accessed 7 February 2020. https://www.facebook.com/7070housing/.
5 Hume, Emily. ‘Sussex to Increase Accommodation Prices for 2017/18’. The Sussex Tab (blog), February 2017. https://thetab.com/uk/sussex/2017/02/19/sussex-increase-accommodation-prices-201718-17530.
6 Darolia, Rajeev. ‘Working (and Studying) Day and Night: Heterogeneous Effects of Working on the Academic Performance of Full-Time and Part-Time Students’. Economics of Education Review 38 (February 2014): 38–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2013.10.004.
7 Triventi, Moris. ‘Does Working during Higher Education Affect Students’ Academic Progression?’ Economics of Education Review 41 (August 2014): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.03.006.
8 Gorgulho, Bartira, Dirce Maria Lobo Marchioni, Adriana Balian da Conceição, Josiane Steluti, Marina Hurga Mussi, Roberta Nagai-Manelli, Liliane Reis Teixeira, Andréa Aparecida da Luz, and Frida Marina Fischer. ‘Quality of Diet of Working College Students’. Work 41 (2012): 5806–9. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-2012-0958-5806.