nus...

pavlovs_dog

in several uni's recently there have been campaigns in favour of disaffiliating from the nus.

i was just wondering what you all made of this?


in my uni, the campaign revolved around the high fees the union has to subscribe to, how little we get in return, and the fact that from next year on, they plan to charge £10 for the nus card. the campaign's main slogan went along the lines of

"nus charges your union £40,000 a year. next year nus plan to charge you £10 for your nus card.

£40,000 could get Franz ferdinand or Keane at next years summer ball.

vote NO to nus"

to me, this seems like a bit of a no-brainer. £40k is much better spent on having a political voice than a big name band for an over commercialised event that half the student population cant attend anyway.

that said, apart from the odd 10% here and there (which i would get if i had an ISIC card (£7) for example), how have i really benefitted from the nus? it doesnt seem to be particularly active at my uni (im interested in politics, but i couldnt name one nus rep from my uni), top up fees went ahead, department closures have gone ahead at my uni, the student loan fiasco at the start of the year, etc etc etc

ok, so we have a political voice, but is it loud enough to achieve anything? is anyone even listening?

would the nus subsricption fees not be better spent on staffing, facilities, grants for poor students etc etc?


what you all think about it?

student100

Our AGM last year voted to disaffiliate, there was promptly a lot of kerfuffle and people were asked to sign a petition ("if they wanted an NUS card") for a referendum on the issue. There was a referendum and we remained affiliated.

I think the fee they were saying it cost us was £45,000; from which we get little benefit (our SU doesn't use many of the NUS-provided training services etc. since it does a lot in-house) and student discounts is really a side issue (most places don't specifically request NUS ID, just student ID...our uni cards have a small NUS logo on the back which nobody ever checks anyway).

One of the main arguments was that the £45,000 NUS fee was more than the entire Student Activities (i.e. sociteies etc) budget for our Union, which we certainly get more benefits from. Other arguments included the fact that part of the fee goes towards being a member of NUSSL (NUS Supplies & Services Ltd, the NUS buying consortium) which is supposed to lead to cheaper prices in student bars and shops; it was debated as to whether better value could have been gotten from being part of an alternative buying consortium, and would have led to more choice for students (NUSSL is the reason why most student bars around the country mainly sell Carling and Worthingtons (NUSSL has a contract with Coors) and most student shops can only sell Coca Cola but not Pepsi).

Arguments about discount cards or bands at balls (!) are not really central to the argument, they just serve to grab the support of the less well-informed students. (I expect your union would have a hard time explaining to your University and anyone else concerned if it thought that spending £40,000 of its block grant to get Keane to a ball was really for the benefit of students). I think that is the reason that our AGM (who sat through an hour or two of informed debate on the issue) voted to disaffilitate, but the referendum (which involved a NUS-led "keep your NUS card" campaign) voted to remain affiliated.

I believe the decision of the referendum holds for 3 years according to our SU rules, so we can't do much for a couple of years, but I'm sure this issue will come back again at some point in the future.

More info here: http://www.ubu.org.uk/main/education/NUS

Clareo

Do you go to Cardiff pavlovs_dog?

What annoyed me about the way they went about it was how they forced the petition upon people when they were drunk in the union and had no idea what they were signing! So I was very pleased when they didn't get enough votes.

They thing is, they seemed to want to have their cake and eat it. On one hand they were saying they wanted nothing to do with the NUS but then on the other hand the SU president was saying he wanted to continue to benefit from the buying power of the NUS through NUSSL so they could continue getting cheap booze and stuff for the shop etc. So quite rightly so, the UK NUS president told him where to go!

If the Union was run well and the £40k would alternatively be spent on things like staffing or facilities then fair enough however I know in Cardiff it would be spent on even more freebies for the sabbatical officers who already bleed the Union dry!

But don't get me started

surfcat

I did my undergrad at Oxford and we weren't affiliated at my college because the NUS wanted a similar fee from the college (approx 400 students) as from a whole university. I never missed out on any discounts, my Oxford student card would get me 10% in HMV or wherever, even outside of Oxford. I'm now doing postgrad at Reading, and the NUS here is far less politically active than the Oxford Student Union was.

I agree with the O.P though, it certainly is a no brainer to use the NUS funds to pay for a big band! In my opinion, our union already panders far too much to the beer swillers who attend 'union night' every Wednesday and Saturday.

lellie

the nus costs us sooo much money here.. we get very little benefit from it.. our union in general is pretty crap really.

r.mac_2

I did my undergrad at St. Andrews and we were not affiliated with the NUS.

I really can't see how the NUS justify their fees, which are very high and can severly restrict purchasing for the Students Union.

Going to Edinburgh Uni in September, and I believe they are NUS affiliated. I will be closely examining what I am getting for my money....................

Savvy_Sue

Would it surprise you all to know this debate was going on over 25 years ago?

There is hope for the future if you can all see the no-brainer of equating what it costs to belong to the NUS with getting a big band to play at the Uni!

Mich_3

Just to clear up a little side debate, the whole paid NUS card consists mostly of disinformation.

The NUS card, as a union entitlement card would remain. A second could be purchased for £10 [with some of the money going back into your union] giving the usual discounts and more (if they were able to get a supermarket it would be very big news).

Many shops accept any form of student card and a paid card would really have very few disadvantages. From a financial point of view, if the NUS don't do this they'll be gone in ten years, as they have absolutely no money.

Disaffiliation from the NUS is probably too big a step for most unis, if they sort themselves out they could become a useful force.

NUSSL is a bigger issue, it doesn't seem to be offering great deals and appear to be more concerned with getting big name brands for high joining fees. I know this subsises things to an extent but not having an unbranded vodka is one of several examples where they are tightening things too much.

Haize

I don't have a terribly informed opinion, but the NUSSL clearly is not up to scratch when drinks prices in a JD Wetherspoons pub are usually lower. If, for instance, many universities were to disaffiliate themselves from the NUS, and have the bars join the Wetherspoons buying consortium en masse, prices may even drop further.

Our union shop is theoretically wonderful, there are a great many different things packed into it - fresh sandwiches, ready meals, stationary, etc.. But the prices are so uncompetitive! I know the problem here is with choosing one particular supermarket, but surely Sainsburys, Tescos, etc would love the oportunity for publicity enough to give lower prices to a new "student branch" supermarket within the unions.

Unfortunately, all I ever seem to hear about the NUS is their latest attempt to get in on politics that are not relevant to students. They must be doing some useful work out there, but none of it has ever been brought to my attention.

pavlovs_dog

haize, you've taken the words right out of my mouth! that is EXACTLY what my experience of nus has by-and-large, been like

our union shop, whilst well stocked, is not particularly competive prices. i wont shop there because i know i can get stuff much cheaper elsewhere. thing is, if you dont support these things by using them, you risk losing them.

the drinks in our union arent too bad price wise, that said i never really drink there so im no authority on that matter.

as for politics...the latest big story in our uni was the LGB society being highly offend by the fact that goldie loking chain had been booked to play the summer ball (on account of the song 'your mothers got a penis', which is apperently offensive to transgender people )....the small matter of the (allegedly) corrupt vice chancellor, closure of departments, dismissal of very good members of staff etc, clearly PALING in significance to this :mad: :eek:


and one of my mates who was part of nus wales openly admitted that at the last meetings they went to they spent more time discussing the war in iraq than the top up fee fiasco :rolleyes:

student100

Haize wrote:

I don't have a terribly informed opinion, but the NUSSL clearly is not up to scratch when drinks prices in a JD Wetherspoons pub are usually lower. If, for instance, many universities were to disaffiliate themselves from the NUS, and have the bars join the Wetherspoons buying consortium en masse, prices may even drop further.

Our union shop is theoretically wonderful, there are a great many different things packed into it - fresh sandwiches, ready meals, stationary, etc.. But the prices are so uncompetitive! I know the problem here is with choosing one particular supermarket, but surely Sainsburys, Tescos, etc would love the oportunity for publicity enough to give lower prices to a new "student branch" supermarket within the unions.

Sadly the solutions aren't as simple as you suggest. Firstly the likes of JD Wetherspoon and the big supermarkets aren't franchises, so you can't just set up a branch - they would be completely company-owned things.

Secondly, one of the reasons Wetherspoons are so cheap is because of their business model - large pubs in high-traffic locations, low priced "no-nonsense" food and drink, standard menus nationally, open pretty much all day etc... leading to very high turnover of stock, coupled with a large national buying power makes offering low prices profitable. Most of these things wouldn't apply to your average student bar, which I would expect struggle to find the custom to support such offers.
Although, in theory, the NUS should have a large buying power and be able to offer low prices...and to some extent it does: our hall of residence bar buys its stock through the union (hence through NUSSL) and is able to offer £1/pint most of the time, partly because it's usually quite busy. On the other hand, our main Union bar is pretty much always quiet and also charges £1.50 plus for a badly served pint - even though the stock comes from the same place.

As for union shops...most of them would again be too small to support the low prices of your typical supermarket (most of which are able to offer low prices because of huge economies of scale). Union shops are more on a par with smaller chains and "symbol groups" like Spar and Costcutter (which they could probably join if they wish) - which also have prices way higher than an average supermarket, and compete mainly on convenience.

There's no way you could get Sainsburys or whoever to set up shop within a SU and offer the same prices as they do in their superstore down the road, and offer profit to the union on top of that... for a start, the union shop wouldn't be profitable enough, and they'd effectively be subsidising student shopping and at the same time reducing sales in their "proper" supermarkets.