A lot of you have been in touch with me or other members of the Cambridge SU sabbatical team with concerns about the cost of living crisis and how this will affect you
Hello everyone,
I hope you are keeping well and looking forward to the start of term.
A lot of you have been in touch with me or other members of the Cambridge SU sabbatical team with concerns about the cost of living crisis and how this will affect you, especially as winter approaches.
Addressing this is our top priority for the year and the team and I have already started on multiple campaigns and projects. This includes developing an accurate index to see how much it actually costs to live in Cambridge and also talking with colleges about rents.
In good news to start the term however, the UKRI have increased their postgraduate stipends by a total of 13.1%. This was swiftly followed by the Cambridge Trust, an internal funding body, increasing theirs too.
The UKRI have announced that from 1st October, the minimum stipend they will give to postgraduate students for the 2022-2023 academic year will be £17,668 full time equivalent, making the minimum stipend level for postgraduates funded by the UKRI £2,000 more than it was in 2021-2022.
This could not have been achieved without pressure from our student campaigners, multiple open letters, and we are really pleased by the effort and resilience you have shown.
This is a great first step, but the cost of living crisis has and will deeply affect everyone. We will work with the student body to not only lobby for further stipend increase from funders who are yet to act, but also make funding options clearer and, more accessible as a minimum.
Postgraduate students should not be struggling to get by and hopefully more funding bodies will realise this.
If you have concerns, ideas, or would like to be involved in the SU’s cost of living campaigns, please do get in touch! There will be more updates on our cost of living campaign coming from the sabb team too.
All the best,
Amelia