Real Equality for University of Southampton's International Student Community
Anonymous submitted on
Friday 4th February 2022
Complete
University clearly has a dense international student population. Since University's profit base is "Student Tourism" based, it categorically addresses the international students in a way that is almost analog to secondary members of the community. Other than the surface-level integrations in place, the gap between the inbound and international fees is not justifiable. The normalization of this gap actively works against international students' integration into the university community.
- SUSU should undertake more visible and aggressive campaigning regarding this issue.
- University should be directed towards diversifying their income portfolio instead of margining profits off from student fees.
- University should be reminded of their founding status in the Russel Group and suitably they are directly responsible for undertaking change towards a more sustainable and fair business model.
- This undertaking should be based upon the fundamental institutional reorganization rather than positive discrimination. SUSU must demand accessible communications between the student base and the university executives regarding the actual benefit of getting a degree from their organization. If the justification comes in the way of arbitrary listings like Guardian or THE, then SUSU should demand empiric justification rather than advertising material.
- SUSU should demand that the executive body should not embed itself under bureaucratic channels and must regularly keep in contact with varying sizes of micro-communities the students to fundamentally understand the reason why SUSU is insistent on its position.
Responses
Here, you can view the complete set of official responses from the sabbatical officers regarding this submission.
Students' Union replied on
Friday 18th Mar 2022 10:34am
Hi,
I am going to be closing this You Make Change now. If you would like to contact me directly to discuss the outcomes when they arise, you can email me at welfare@soton.ac.uk. Equally, you can contact Union President at president@soton.ac.uk.
Thank you again for your submission.
Kind regards,
Savanna- VP Welfare and Community
Students' Union replied on
Friday 18th Mar 2022 9:58am
Hi,
Thank you again for your You Make Change submission. Ben, Union President, and I have taken some time together to reflect on the points you raised and plan tangible next steps.
In terms of the international student community, we cannot speak for the University, but I can for SUSU and we are doing lots of great work with representing and engaging with international students. We have an activities coordinator that is dedicated to supporting international students, including pre-sessional students. We have celebrations such as Culture Week that is currently going on, and we support international and cultural societies in getting involved in these sorts of things and with their own events. Furthermore, we also have a student International Officer who I have regular catch ups with in which the Activities Coordinator and I help put any of his ideas into action, and in which he also provides feedback on anything we have going on related to international students.
With regards to your reference to the gap between inbound and international fees, SUSU’s Insight Manager is going to do a comparator analysis of home and international fees across Russell Group Universities- to see if the University of Southampton has a smaller or wider disparity in fees. Union President will then be able to lobby the University with this data at the University Executive Board.
Further to this, Union President will also address the University diversifying their income portfolio with the University’s Executive Director of Finance and Planning. He will speak to her about what the University are currently doing and what they could do to further diversify their income stream. If you would like to meet with Ben to speak to him specifically about this, please contact him at president@soton.ac.uk.
The University also have a Student Ambassador Scheme and a Graduate Ambassador Scheme. More details can be found here-https://www.southampton.ac.uk/studentambassadors/index.page, including ways to get in involved and in contact. This will be a good way to hear about the benefit of getting a degree from the University of Southampton.
We know that there is always more that we can do for the international student community, and we are open to suggestions, so please get in touch at welfare@soton.ac.uk if you have any ideas.
Kind regards,
Savanna- VP Welfare and Community
Students' Union replied on
Monday 14th Feb 2022 10:20am
Hi,
Thank you for submitting a You Make Change.
It would be great to have a meeting with you to chat about this further and look at next steps. In this I can also loop in Union President, who interacts with the University Executive regularly, through various meetings.
Please reach out to me at: welfare@soton.ac.uk and I can then arrange a meeting for us.
I look forward to hopefully hearing from you in due course.
Kind regards,
Savanna- VP Welfare and Community
Actions
Forwarded to Vice President Welfare and Community
Friday 11th Feb 2022 9:05am
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