Editor’s Note Issue 12 13/02/12

Just as we were going to press, news emerged that the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), has decided to allocate universities an extra £1,100 per postgraduate student. The funding increase will only affect those postgraduate students not taking the lowest costing and humanities subjects.

Tedious acronyms aside, this is a pretty interesting development and may be a nugget of good news for Manchester’s students. While the marching and banner waving seems to have died down for the moment, the means of funding higher education will be an issue that will never die. It is by far the biggest issue exorcising students (from both sides of the pro/anti fee divide).

This latest development, which we will be covering in more detail in next week’s edition, poses a big question to the University.

Given that they have already decided to raise tuition fees for Postgraduate students for the academic year 2012/13 to £5,000, what will they do with the extra per student funding they will be receiving? Will they lower their fees for the following year or spend the money elsewhere? Watch this space.

The other big story on our radars over the past week has been that of Ed Lester, the chief executive of the Student Loans Company who managed to funnel his salary through a separate company in order avoid paying around £40,00 in tax.

There has been no shortage of views on the issue of legal tax avoidance particularly as practiced by top public officials. Our Comment team have been looking at the ethics of tax avoidance. Turn to Page 8 to see how they got on.

The Mancunion is now an official media partner of this summer’s Parklife festival. This means we’ll be bringing you interviews with all the best acts on the line up and a number of other goodies. Keep an eye out in the next few issues in the run up to the weekend itself.