![]() ![]() A new petition demanding tuition fee compensation for international students has received nearly 25,000 signatures in just over a week. ![]() With many thousands of students at British universities still studying alone in their bedrooms, often paying for accommodation they cannot use, calls are growing for the government to give a fee rebate. “International students have lost so much and we are showing that we have a voice too,” she says. She hopes that the strikes in London will galvanise overseas students across the country. “Students are scrambling to rent expensive private studios they can’t afford.” “I’ve seen students who have been forced to do metal smelting at home and burned their hands, or who have been painting in small unventilated spaces,” she says. ![]() Shahril says students of practical arts and design courses at UAL and the RCA have struggled without sufficient time in studios and workshops. Syahadah Shahril, a master’s student from Singapore at the University of the Arts London, and chair of a student activist group Pause or Pay, has helped to organise the fee strikes and plans to launch a pre-strike call on Monday targeting international students at her own institution. Meanwhile, at Soas University of London, where overseas undergraduates pay £18,630 a year, about 100 students are withholding fees a strike is also under way at Goldsmiths, University of London. The students are angry that the institution actually increased its fees this year during the pandemic, despite vital practical work in studios and workshops being curtailed, and say they have not received the immersive experience they are paying for. Strikers were told in an email this week that they would be suspended if they did not pay or come to an arrangement with the university by Monday. After a letter from the college threatening them with suspension, some backed down, but the vice-chancellor, Paul Thompson, confirmed in a meeting on 4 March that 93 students had still not paid. The international students, who pay £29,000 a year for a master’s course at the RCA, took action despite fearing their visas may be revoked. ![]()
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