LETTERS Architectural details
Sir: Roger Thompson of NELP (Letters, 14 September) suggests the Architectural Association is spendthrift, in that its costs have multiplied threefold since 1978-9, whereas costs in public architecture schools, he says, have increased less than a third. He confuses two very different fi- gures — real costs, and subsidised public- sector student fees.
Since the independent AA School re- ceives no public money, in spite of being the senior and largest architecture school in the country, its fees have to be the same as its real costs, including capital charges. This is not the case with public-sector architecture schools. Their fees to students have long been notional and very low, and even their present fees to foreign students, so dramatically raised by the present gov- ernment, still have a subsidised element.
This can be seen by looking at compara- ble figures for 1983-4, the latest year available for published DES statistics. The unit cost to the national purse of educating architecture students in the UK, excluding capital charges, was in that year £4,831. If one guesses at capital and establishment charges, for which statistics are not col- lected, the very least addition to cost per student is likely to be of the order of £2,000, making a total unit cost of around £7,000. Typical polytechnic fees to foreign students that year were £3,406, to British students £486. AA fees to all undergradu- ate students that year, including provision for capital charges, were £3,750.
It is clear therefore that AA education continues to be substantially more econo- mic than the public sector. Mr Thompson might with equal reasoning assert that the great public schools must be spendthrift because it costs more to go to them than to a comprehensive.
Alvin Boyarsky
Chairman, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London WC1
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