Tuition Fee Protest to Prompt Mass Student Walkout
University classrooms and lecture halls are expected to be emptied for a week in a National Union of Students protest against the tuition fee hike.
Students have been urged to leave their classes as a mark of protest, from the 12-16 March, with a national lecture walkout on March 14.
The NUS under a programme Come Clean is trying to suggest university and civil administrators that any decision to further hike the fee will see more people dropping out turning classrooms empty. The students are demanding that administrators take their time and discuss the issue with everyone involved instead of giving privatisation a backdoor entry.
Thousands of students in the UK are to come together after staging a walkout or a boycott against increasing educational charges that are compelling and burdening many to give up on higher education. The call for the strike by the students was given a month ago.
The strike is taking place against the Higher Education Bill the government wishes to pass, to increase the education fee. Students have been complaining that the law suggested has not been debated in the public domain to get the opinion of students already pressured under rising tuition charges.
NUS President Liam Burns called on students to "clear out the lecture theatres, the seminar rooms, the ITC suites and the libraries and demonstrate clearly that without students, universities are just empty buildings" and warned "our education is being sold for profit," the Liverpool Student Media reported.
The NUS president is expecting thousands of students around the UK to come to the streets as a mark of protest. Not all, though, are as keen. For example, Leo Boe, President of the Warwick Student Union, said his college was not looking to participate as they felt it would not have a bearing on the administration to address demands by the students. Instead the college plans to have an alternative plan running through the week, called Pounds in Your Pocket to gauge what amount is spent by the students on campus towards their education.
The Liverpool Guild of Students is organising a rally at 11:00 pm on Wednesday, March 14 at University Square.
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