Student Hardship Survey

The Issue

You will all be well aware of the huge pressure you guys put on the Government a couple of weeks ago by calling for student support to focus on student hardship rather than graduate debt (coverage here). We've done the public kicking, but we now need to get back to being constructive.

So we can provide the Cabinet Secretary with the arguments to focus funding on alleviating student hardship, we have to prove that in the current economic climate, that it is the right thing to do, as we have pushed in our consultation response to Supporting a Smarter Scotland.

The Solution

As such, NUS Scotland has created a survey on student hardship. This survey aims to evidence the real problems affecting students in Scotland. You can win the argument to get more money back in your students pockets. But we need to work together. 

Students who respond to the questionnaire will be entered into a free prize draw to win a 4Gb iPod Shuffle. So please circulate the questionnaire to your members and encourage them to fill it in. You can access the survey online at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5ior0QCDuA93XlQfWBgZkw_3d_3d

The deadline for responses is Friday 12th June and the prize draw will take place on Monday 15th June.

At the same time we are contacting all University Careers Services, asking for trends in the demand and availability of summer and term time employment… but you don't have to worry about the part.

What we need you to do:

1.    Contact your College/University and ask for an all-student email asking them to complete the survey

2.    Send the link around all of your association networks (Twitter, facebook, sports clubs/society mailing lists ect)

3.    Maybe try to make the link part of your computer network screen savers

4.    Contact us to book a Scottish Executive Committee Member to visit your campus

5.    Organise your own local campaign, getting students to complete the survey

If you need any further help or support, please don't hesitate to get in touch.