Raising Cash

Following a two million cut in this year\'s budget, the University Health Service is looking at measures to increase its. One option is to make all students who use the Health Service meet the Service\'s GP, including patients who only need to see the nurse. The reason is that Social Security subsidises consultations with medical doctors, but not with nurses. Tone Harangen of Social Security says the introduction of such a rule would be illegal and might well qualify as fraud. May Kristin Fønnebø, the director of SiO\'s board, says that maximising consultations with GPs is common practice; she also points out that the alternative is to charge students more for consultations.

The University director has proposed the introduction of a mandatory 200 kroner fee for all students in order to cover photocopying costs. Ingrid Stranger-Thorsen, the leader of the Student Parliament, is threatening the University management with legal action. She points out that expenses for paper and photocopies vary greatly between faculties. An indiscriminate two hundred kroner fee applied across the board would therefore run counter to the Ministry for Education\'s instructions, which specifies that such fees must correspond to the needs of individual courses. The University\'s director Tor Saglie says that the fee will cover merely half of the University\'s paper and photocopying expenses, and argues that the students will therefore be obtaining their photocopies at a considerable discount.