To pay or not to pay

Why three students at Oxford University refused to pay their tuition fees

Amid the uproar surrounding top-up fees and student wrath at the White Paper on higher education, three Oxford undergraduates have quietly been using the time-honoured technique of non-compliance to protest against government policy.

Julia Buckley, Phil Thompson and Laura Santana are "non-payers", having elected to withhold payment of the £1,100 flat-rate tuition fee expected from all undergraduates at English universities.

Thompson sees non-payment as the ideal way to "bring down the system"; Santana believes that "if non-payment were more strategic, it could cause a serious problem for both the university and the Government." All are veteran non-payers, having delayed payment for the last two years or more.

In a series of increasingly terse letters last term, the three were threatened with being suspended from the university for their refusal to pay. Santana has since been forced by parental pressure to settle her account, but Buckley and Thompson continued to withhold payment, and have now been told of their suspension. Within Oxford's collegiate system, both remain members of their colleges, but they have been denied access to all central university facilities, including libraries and lectures. This is a restriction that Thompson, who is approaching his finals, is finding increasingly problematic. "Pressure is building, academically," he says.

The final deadline for payment of fees is approaching. Unless Buckley and Thompson settleby mid-February, they risk being sent down. But the fear of expulsion does not deter them. Buckley, in her penultimate year, plans to withhold payment again next year. With Thompson and Santana set to leave in June, however, it is likely that Buckley will be the only non-payer in the university.

Despite the apparent prevalence of student activism against top-up fees, spearheaded by the ubiquitous Will Straw, the Oxford student body as a whole appears nonplussed. After tuition fees were introduced in 1998, Oxford mobilised the largest non-payment movement in the country, but now, says Thompson, students have "sunk into complete political apathy". The politicised minority campaign tirelessly, but a demonstration against fees organised to coincide with the announcement of the White Paper attracted only a few hundred students from an undergraduate population of about 11,000.

Buckley cites an increasing expectation among students of having to pay fees: "With every new generation of students, the memory of the time when there were no fees fades. Tuition fees are increasingly seen as a given."