Bachelors who miss the party

Institutions should help hard-up graduates pay the spiralling cost of attending their graduation ceremonies, argues Gail Chester.

Across the country over the last few months, new graduates should have been looking forward to their degree ceremonies - mounting the platform to receive public acknowledgement of their hard work, watched by admiring friends and family. But as I discovered recently, if you do not have at least Pounds 40 to spare, you can forget your moment of glory, and sit at home, waiting for your certificate to plop through the letterbox instead.

At the school of advanced study of London University, where I have just completed my MA, the cost of hiring a gown is Pounds 24. Irritated by this expense, I conducted an informal survey of the charges at other institutions. It emerged that Pounds 24 is cheaper than at the half-dozen other universities I chose for comparison. My guest tickets, at Pounds 8 each, were also competitively priced, with other universities charging from Pounds 5 to Pounds 15 per guest - only Cambridge does not charge its guests.

Despite the high cost of attending graduation ceremonies - which creeps higher when hidden extras like travel, eating out, photos and memorabilia are added - an increasing percentage of students are graduating in person. Nobody is sure why, although several administrators mentioned students becoming more conventional since the 1970s, and parents who have to contribute more to their children's education being keener to observe the outcome. This trend is coupled with an increase in student numbers, which means universities have to organise more graduation ceremonies, and thus incur higher costs. Universities without suitable halls have to hire venues on top of the other expenses of organising a large-scale event.

No administrator I spoke to agreed that charging for graduation ceremonies might be a problem, as they had not heard any complaints. But people who cannot afford things rarely say so. Administrators also assumed that parents would pay. This is clearly unlikely for the increasing number of mature students, and there are many parents on low incomes who could not afford it.

For graduates worrying about unemployment and how to repay student loans, having to fork out for graduation may be a cost too far.

None of the graduates I spoke to who had attended their ceremonies felt it was good value for money. Almost everyone was disappointed by the quality of the reception, and many people resented having to pay so much to hire their gown. One graduate had hoped to share hers with a friend graduating later on, as her parents had done at their ceremony 25 years ago, but the hiring regulations made this impossible. Wearing a gown was compulsory everywhere I contacted, except Birkbeck College. Ede and Ravenscroft supplies gowns to most institutions, and they point out that their charges would be lower if there were not so much variation in the gowns - they have to hold stocks of 18 types of black gown, of which nine are BA gowns. It is unclear why all the ex-polys, which used to share one design of gown, have adopted different designs since becoming universities.

Alan Jones graduated with a first in electronics and electronic engineering from Swansea. Both Alan and his wife are mature students with a seven year-old child, and heavily in debt. They could only attend Alan's graduation because his parents helped with hiring the gown, but none of them could afford to attend the receptions - at Pounds 8 and Pounds 15 each, it would have cost the family well over Pounds 100.

Aristi Monoyios, an MA graduate at London University, did not attend her ceremony because she could not afford to take the time off from her part-time teaching job. She would not have minded having to pay for hiring the gown, but objected to her guests having to pay. She pointed out that MA students rarely get a grant, so it seems additionally unreasonable to have to pay yet more at the end of it.

Cathy Turner did not want to attend her BSc ceremony at the University of North London. Having exchanged a salary of Pounds 15,000 for a grant of Pounds 5,000, she resented being asked to pay Pounds 23 to hire her gown and Pounds 14 per guest.

Universities certainly have legitimate anxieties. As the spokesman from Middlesex University said: "We are involved in a constant balancing act between conserving our funds and spending on necessary facilities."

But some institutions are recognising the need to make graduates and their relatives feel looked after.

Until three years ago, for example, Cambridge University had nowhere for people to wait if it was raining, and now provides special tenting; at Brighton University, the ceremony is followed by a party in a marquee on the beach.

While most administrators acknowledged that ceremonies were a major PR exercise, they would not generally go as far as the Higher Education External Relations Association, whose members tend to come to university administration from a marketing/PR background. Such professionals are aware of the need for their institutions to "turn graduates into alumni", that is, into people with an ongoing interest in, and desire to support their alma mater.

Highly motivated graduates, deserve to be treated well, and not neglected when, having just completed their degree, they are likely to be unemployed. So would it not make sense to absorb the cost of the ceremony elsewhere, recoup some expenses from the sale of photos and other memorabilia, and exploit the feel-good factor, which is what graduation ceremonies are supposed to be about?

Gail Chester is a writer and has just completed her MA at London University.