Palatinate Durham’s student newspaper since 1948
Thursday 6th May 2021 | No. 839
Sport interview DURFC alum Fitz Harding after his breakthrough at Bristol Bears
www.palatinate.org.uk | FREE
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Interview and Fashion talk all things corsets with young designer Harriet Feldman
One in four PhD students drop out
Luke Payne Investigations Editor
▲ Students have descended on Durham’s drinking establishments en masse as lockdown eases (Adeline Zhao)
One in four Durham PhD students leave study without achieving their target doctorate degree. The data, acquired through a Palatinate Freedom of Information request, reveals performance is particularly poor in certain departments, with Computer Science, Education, and History perfoming amongst the worst in their respective faculties. Palatinate received data from 10 UK universities counting the number of PhD students who left study between the 2015/16 and 2019/20 academic years and how many of those students received a doctoral degree. The figures include some medical students and other doctoral awards, while a small minority of students leave study due to transferring to another university. At Durham, only 74% of doctoral students, who left study over the five-year period, received doctorates. This figure compares poorly with rival institutions such as Glasgow
and Imperial where figures are 93% and 91%. Only two of the 10 institutions surveyed had poorer PhD success rates based on the raw data. These were Strathclyde (68%) and Liverpool (65%). In response to the article, Durham University disputed Palatinate’s findings and said the true success rate was closer to 81%, after taking into account students transferring between institutions. It further claimed that it was not accurate to compare its data with other UK universities. In the Faculty of Science, a number of Durham departments are very successful at ensuring their PhD students graduate with doctoral degrees. Over 90% of Physics, Mathematics and Earth Sciences PhD students graduate with doctorates. By comparison, only 73% of Engineering and 69% of Computer Science students leave with doctorates. These rates are 10 to 20 percentage points behind comparable departments at Glasgow, Imperial, York and Leeds. Continued on page 5
“Relentless racial abuse”: LGBT+ PoC speak out on discrimination in Durham Katie Tobin Investigations Editor A Palatinate investigation has revealed concerns by Durham’s LGBT+ students of colour about their treatment by other students in the queer community. Students have reported feeling helpless, and have had no choice but to withdraw from college and University life for their own
wellbeing and safety. Palatinate spoke to students who discussed their experiences of receiving extensive racial abuse, particularly on dating apps, such as Tinder and Grindr, with other Durham University students. Currently, there are 5,995 Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students enrolled at Durham, according to University data. Such experiences of racism
by students of colour are nothing new. In 2020, Mirabelle Otuoze wrote about her experiences of racism. The 19 year-old said she had suffered racial slurs and felt “unwelcome as a student of colour”. Significantly, she claimed that these concerns were shared by other BAME students. The student who Palatinate spoke to claimed that the racial abuse he has received at Durham has been relentless. He noted
that, in June 2020, many white friends would post black squares in solidarity with the BAME community, but this was the extent of their activism or anti-racist efforts. He suggested that, despite their performative allyship, they would also commit acts of microaggressions like stating overtly white racial preferences in prospective partners like “blonde hair” or “I’m not really into black girls”.
However, the student noted that he found racism to be most prevalent within the queer community in Durham and that they’d found an amazingly supportive atmosphere within college rugby. “Being a person of colour in Durham is challenging enough, and being gay is also incredibly hard. But being both is just another level,” he said. Continued on page 7
