Welcome to Access Alliance

The final resolution

Following a confidential report by a group of Cambridge bursars last year, most Cambridge Colleges decided to raise their room rents significantly over a period of up to six years. The report did not consider the implications for access arising from its proposals for rent rises, namely, that such very high costs will deter applicants from low and middle income backgrounds from applying to Cambridge.

The Alliance believes that Cambridge should aim to attract the best from all backgrounds and from all schools. Ability and potential are what should matter, not wealth or privilege.

At the end of 1999, a rent strike was called in King's, and the Access Alliance formed. Over 70% of undergraduates withheld their college bills and paid them into an account administered by the Alliance, which in the end held over £230,000. The strike was called off in February 2000 when a paper between the College and the Alliance was agreed upon. The agreement basically has been to set up an Access and Costs Committee looking at all aspects of rent policy, which with the presence of facts (rather than guesses, as formerly), a proper long-term rent policy can be produced with no presumption of any rent rise until the committee reports in around November 2000.