OF LONDON IN
CRISIS? B Y ANDREW WANDER
The future of the University of London looks to be in doubt after a summer of uncertainty, prompted by Imperial College beginning a process that will end in it awarding its own degrees. Other major member colleges of the university look set to follow suit, after it emerged that King’s College London, UCL and LSE have also applied for degree awarding power. Under the current system, degrees are issued centrally from the University of London regardless of which of the more than thirty member colleges the student attends. However, concerns about the cost of subscription fees paid by member colleges to the notoriously bureaucratic university, coupled with a feeling amongst some colleges that certain other member
institutions are dragging the reputation of the university down have prompted Imperial to act. Imperial itself has claimed that membership to the university is of no “academic or reputational” benefit to its students, and UCL has complained that it was not “value for money”, after its annual subscription to the UL topped £2.2 million. A document obtained by Roar, detailing the comments of a senior Imperial student who was privy to the decision, claimed that the college had acted in order to “stick two fingers up at the University of London” because of their failure to implement what many see as vital reforms to the university’s federal system. The document also attacked UL’s vice-chancellor Graeme Davies, claiming that he had “failed to take real leadership” in consulting “on the fundamental nature of a need
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for a university.” While Imperial has made overt plans to award their own degrees from 2007, King’s College London, LSE and UCL have been more reticent in committing themselves to a date. While all three confirmed that they had applied for the rights to become awarding bodies, they refused to be drawn on the question of when they intended to use them. A King’s College London spokeswoman said: “We are just doing what everyone else is doing so that if we do need to use them we have them in place.” Meanwhile, UCL head, Professor Malcom Grant, said it was “very likely” that his college would be making use of the powers “in the foreseeable future”, but was not any more specific. It would be the university’s smaller colleges that would be the big losers should the move go ahead. ...CONT PG 4
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