£80 and the right to apply
Imperial College London has recently introduce an £80 application fee its MSc and MRes programmes, to little fan fair. Together with >1161 other members of the Imperial College community I have asked them to remove the fee. Why?
The (weak) case for a fee
The ‘legitimate’ case for an application fee would be to make people think twice and think seriously about where they want to apply to study.
If any of you have tried to fill in, or read, a post graduate application form, there is plenty of information required, together with references and certificates even before the application is fully processed. The idea that (many) of our 45,000 applicants are frivolously applying to study with us, given the work required means that make the idea of there being a substantive number of ‘frivolous applications’ a questionable assumption.
The true ‘cost’ of the being used in this manner is — do we remove ‘frivolous’ applications without removing legitimate applications from those who do not have the financial means to pay an £80 application fee?
Waivers — a ‘moral get out’
Colleagues suggest that waiver programmes act as a sufficient method to address any widening participation issues, as those in need to can use the waiver programme to apply anyway.
Firstly, you are making those in need have to do extra paperwork. This is a barrier.
Secondly, the waiver programmes are complicated and not joined up. I know that the Imperial College one was devised in a few days, under extreme pressure by other people. However, the consequence of this is a waiver programme that could be argued to do more harm than good.
I went through the waiver programme in more detail in a ‘live tweet’ thread:
A substantial portion of this form is extremely similar to the Cambridge University waiver process, especially the ‘well meaning’ aspects of the
Official Development Assistance (ODA) list of countries. Yet, as proudly noted on our website “Imperial is one of the world’s most international universities” and yet the waiver programme is blunt and heartless towards a nuance of need on the international stage.
Just beyond the waiver programme, we are in effect asking each student to pay c. £80–800 in fees (assuming a one in ten success rate) to a number of Universities in order to secure on place on a masters course. Or perhaps we just ask them to apply again next year. I remain confused at how this is a reasonable proposition.
The moral case?
It costs money to process applications. I’ve been told that Imperial processes 45,000 Masters level applications per year. This is lots of paperwork, but we also admit c. 4,000 Masters students per year, so if we frame it that way, we are looking at about about 10 per place. Who pays for this labour?
For each academic appointment, we have often have 100 applicants per job. For each post doc, we often have 30 applicants per job. Who pays for this labour?
When starting a financial and education relationship between a University and Student, I’d argue that it is immoral to ask the most needy (i.e. the prospective students) to speculate to accumulate. It is wrong to ask them to pay for the privilege of having their application considered.
A Red Herring
MSc and MRes tuition fees are substantive at the college, especially for a masters programme. The fee tables are pretty eye watering, for 2021 entry, the Faculty of Engineering ask £14k and up for Home, and £32.5k and up for overseas for MSc. Scholarship programmes do create access routes, especially for those who do have financial privilege.
In none of this argument have I discounted the value in scholarship programmes, and how they can successfully be used to widen participation.
Yes, we should have more scholarships for students, especially to right historical imbalances. Is it moral to ask us 175 people to apply such that one Home student’s MSc fees are paid for? About 17 of those would get a place, and the remaining 158 failed applicants are being asked to pay for someone to experience something they have no chance of partaking in.
I don’t really want to distract the argument here — but saying it is ok, as ‘we will use the fees to pay for scholarships’ — this is a weak foundation.
Who should pay?
This flips the question, so who should pay for the application process?
The current student population and the current fee — a reason why their make up of students is (likely more) inclusive, diverse, and present is because there is a functioning application process. Shutting the door, or encouraging students who are not as financially able to apply elsewhere, will narrow the wider student experience that they, and future students, will draw upon to strengthen their understanding of how their science, technology, engineering and maths relates to the wider world.
There are a number of other central college functions for which the tuition fees do pay for already (beyond contact hours) and the application process is just another cost of doing business.
In the scheme of things, I’d also echo a colleague who said that putting an ‘extra’ cost in the way also makes us look like a budget airline.
Curious Timing
When discussing the tuition fees in Felix (the student newspaper), Prof Emma McCoy — Vice Provost (Education and Student Experience) commented: “I don’t think this is about College Profiteering.”
If there is no dampening to the application numbers as a result of the fee, then the College is likely to take close to £4m in fees. This is new money which is unallocated against existing budgets and I suspect this is extremely attractive in a time of financial uncertainty. I stress that this is speculative on my part, I have had no formal confirmation (either way) of this line of thought.
If this is an argument being presented behind closed doors, it is disgusting and plainly immoral. Many UK universities, especially in the Russel Group, have been running a surplus and should stretch themselves first before asking prospective students to pay the bills via an unethical application fee.
A Direct Barrier
Many students, especially international ones, are required to have secured a place at University before they can apply for a scholarship. The grounds of the scholarship are likely to be substantively different and not overlapping with those that are consider in the waiver programme, and either those students are locked out of education, or they apply elsewhere.
I have been told on several occasions that ‘we will monitor the impact’ of the fee, particularly with respect to widening participation and equality, diversity and inclusion.
Firstly, we simply do not see those who do not engage in the process. We are also about enter a period of extraordinary global recession due to COVID-19 pandemic and often people turn to education and upskill at these times. So just looking at our future numbers, it will be extremely challenging to monitor what has happened properly.
I used to Direct a MSc and handle admissions, and I can confidently say that in that time there were no grounds that I could look at an application and make an assessment of someone’s need, how how they would add to diversity of our cohorts. There are a limited number of markers, e.g. country, maybe gender if it was made clear in the paperwork, and perhaps ethnicity, but none of this was easy to access nor actively monitored and collated.
I have even made a FOI request of Imperial College for applicants for PhD study (for a different project) and I was informed that we did not collect Participant of Local Areas (POLAR) data. Thinking back, trying to unravel this from the applicant paperwork I had would not be clear either, as many students would apply using a mixture of their student residence, family home, or somewhere else.
I suspect this is common across the sector, and highlights yet another area where the UK system is failing to address structural inequality in higher education. The fact that Masters courses are the least tightly regulated, and often the most financially lucrative, means we risk ‘baking in’ structural inequality.
Absent Morals
Many may suggest that University X does this so it’s ok. This is nonsense. Taking money from prospective students, most of which will not get a place, to fund the bottom line is not reasonable or fair.
Let us return our argument to back to us asking prospective research, academic, or administrative staff to pay us to consider their application? In the UK, legally employers are expected to cover the cost of staff recruitment. I’m sure there are many reasons why this is the case (and I am not a lawyer), but one of which would be a risk that someone could profiteer from operating a recruitment process.
The desired price point
It is curious that Imperial College London chose an £80 price point. It is unlikely that this was based upon the cost of each application.
If we look at other Universities in the Russell Group, less than half charge application fees. But interestingly for those who do, £80 makes is ‘not the most expensive’ (King’s College London @ £100) but financially exclusive enough to make us likely desirable (and for anyone who flirts with the profiteering argument, maybe we also make sure we aren’t leaving money on the table).
Creating Barriers
Many of us work hard to understand and break down barriers in higher education, especially to address historical imbalances. Many of these are created due to financial privilege, and in the UK we know there is extensive co-correlation of anti-Black racism and the disproportionate allocation of wealth.
Education is a form of wealth. Fundamentally, it is difficult to take education away from someone. Knowledge opens doors and stimulates new ways of solving problems and sustaining communities. Denying access to this education via an application fee creates and sustains wealth inequality.
Wilful creation of this direct financial barrier is a crushing blow for anyone working to use the momentum we now have to address widening participation issues in education.
The letter asking Imperial College London to scrap the fees can be found here, and it is still open for signatories. An indication of the strength of feeling across the College can be felt with this breakdown of staff signatories by Department.
Ben is a current employee of Imperial College London. The views in this blog piece apparently do not reflect the views of his employer, or so it seems, but they are shared with many of his colleagues. You can find Ben tweeting as @bmatb.
Medium is a social network, so please ‘clap’ to make this most more visible to others.
