Pound in Your Pocket campaign

A campaign has been set up to discover the true cost of studying at Warwick.

The Pound in Your Pocket campaign will uncover the true cost of university life and attempt to reduce it.

The Students’ Union (SU) is gathering information on hidden course costs such as mandatory trips, compulsory ‘extras’ such as laboratory coats and core texts books. It will also calculate the average student spend on essentials such as transport, accommodation on campus and food.

SU President Leo Boe hopes that the findings will shed light on the true cost of university life, a figure that far exceeds the stated tuition fees.

“We want to send a strong message to the university – a quantified representation of what costs to be a Warwick student” he said.

The SU plans to use the proposed Week of Action by the National Union of Students (NUS) to gain support for the campaign. Students will be asked how they spend their maintenance loan and their anticipated level of debt after graduation. This information will be passed to the University, exposing the actual costs of student life.

Other universities are undertaking similar initiatives to improve prospective students’ understanding of the true cost of their degrees.

A survey by National Book Tokens has revealed that 56 percent of first year students do not accommodate book costs into their predicted university expenditure, and with average book costs peaking at £100 to £200 per year, providing book tokens or study packs for core texts could substantially reduce costs.

Book tokens, printer credits and guaranteed bursaries for students from less privileged backgrounds are several measures the SU hopes to implement to offset unacknowledged study costs.