Holiday work is something that's overlooked too, as if no student ever needs to find themselves a job. The regulation banning term-time employment in Cambridge is cited as another reason why Cambridge students should be subsidised further. But the spirit behind the rule is no longer one of snobbery, to keep out those who need to work, but to foster the unique community that Cambridge offers its students, where they can live near to others in their college, near to their place of work, with only those distractions they choose. The doors are wide open for them, the college coffers ready to ensure that nobody has to leave their course through lack of money, or go without the necessary books. Rent rises will not affect this breathtakingly generous and unspoken situation, and Trinity certainly have deep enough pockets to increase the Newton Bursaries to accommodate them.
Access ought to mean the means of entry to a degree course, and that is the interview system.
Well folks, the only way out of this one is to put your money where your mouth is, and set rents at a means-tested level rather than pricing each room. So long as nobody is excluded from the outset, we can say that Cambridge, with its generous hardship funds, is more inclusive than any other UK university. What injustices an interviewer may perpetrate in their view of an applicant's race, accent, genealogy or shoe size may well go unnoticed and this needs urgent attention. These are real problems which need hard work and dedication to change, often at a national level. When somebody can stand up and say that they themselves have been unfairly excluded from Cambridge University on account of the cost of living, then I'll believe there's a problem.