A Celebration of Fifty Years at Sussex

1976

• HE, particularly universities, will have to justify itself in terms of cost effectiveness and social relevance
• Sussex UGC is cut by 3.5 per cent for next year, which is compounded by inflation and a minimum five per cent pay rise across the board. This will lead to a deficit and possible redundancies and restructuring
• An increase of the student body is planned: 4,500 by 1980-81
• Tuition fees are to greatly increase next year to £500 pa for home UG and £750 for home PG, and £650 for overseas UG and £850 for overseas PG
• 3-15 March 1977 students occupy Sussex house over fee increases despite management offer of a hardship fund for students already hit by the increase. The occupation is not against management, whose only alternative would be to bear the rise and make redundancies, but against the Government
• March 1977 Council offers a £60,000 fee waiver package to assist self-financing students
• 31 May teaching is suspended for a day so that a debate on the crisis in education could take place: 500 attend and the debate is ‘quite vigorous’
• Large numbers of faculty are now of the age/position where promotion should be imminent, but the UGC has put a 40 per cent rule on how many faculty can be paid at a higher grade
• Applications are increasing: by 2.3 per cent in arts and 7.6 per cent in science
• Links with local technical colleges means that students at these colleges can take BSC honours degrees in engineering and applied sciences. This will lower the barriers between the two sectors
• Joint Surrey/Sussex Russian Studies programme will begin from October 1978: Russian language at Surry then three years of Russian Studies at Sussex
• Sussex now has 13 Fellows of the Royal Society
• Nobel Prize winner Prof AJP Martin’s name appears on an 11p stamp to mark the centenary of the Royal Institute of Chemistry
• An oak tree is planted to commemorate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and Mass Observation is resuscitated to do a survey on the Jubilee year
• New Thermo-fluid Mechanics building begins
• Refectory extension building completed to provide late-night service to students
• More accommodation is planned north of East Slope
• Sir Basil Spence dies November 1976
• AFRAS is in its 14th year and still growing, with around 300 students and 33 members of faculty in the School. The interdisciplinary nature of the School incorporates history, geography and social anthropology as core subjects. Caribbean Studies is a new, popular area of study, but the MA in South Asian Studies has been dropped though lack of students. There are plans for an MA in Rural Development
• Profs J Maynard Smith and J Postgate of BIOLS are elected Fellows of the Royal Society. ‘Their honours bring great credit to the University’
• Education teaching is hit particularly hard by national Government spending cuts. Student numbers are cut by Government because of teacher unemployment. West Sussex is also affected by reduced numbers but remains open
• The Former Sussex Students Association is launched at the end of 1975 and has its first AGM 1976-77. Membership is open to graduates, those who failed to graduate, ex-employees and faculty. Membership is 300 and doubling every six months. It has a newspaper: Falmer News

Quotes

[There is a] ‘growing shortfall between the expansion projections of the early 1970s and reality’ Sir Denys Wilkinson, third Vice-Chancellor

[This year has taught universities that the] ‘long honeymoon that started with Plato’s Academy is really over’

Student numbers

4293 students: 3215 undergraduates, 109 visiting undergraduates, 443 postgraduates, 4 visiting postgraduates, 522 research students

Gender ratio

Undergraduate arts

984 men: 1237 women

Undergraduate sciences

825 men: 278 women

Undergraduate education

six men: 10 women

Certificate of Qualification in Social Work. (CQSW)

3 Men: 16 women

One Response to “1976”

1. Neil Murray says:

   May 10, 2011 at 3:40 pm

   That first year, in the long golden autumn that followed the legendary Drought Summer of 1976. Eight people crammed into 69 East Slope. Music. Punk rock in the Crypt. The formal Christmas dinner we had in the flat at the end of the first term, commandeering next door’s kitchen as well, which involved removing the connecting door from its hinges. I can still remember the names from that flat, so for posterity: me, Paul Nagle, Semi Talu, Sharif Sharifi, Beverley Jacobs, Jacquie Robinson, Janaki Moonesinghe and Sally Leahy. Why, when I think of Sussex, do I always remember it in the sunshine? All students are blessed, but we were truly blessed in those last few years of a more innocent world. Blinking back tears now.