£3.4m library fines for Midland students

Jan 8 2012 by Anuji Varma, Sunday Mercury

STUDENTS at three Midland universities have been fined a whopping £3.4 million for failing to return their library books on time.

Wolverhampton University, which has around 23,000 students, took £1.25 million from people attending its courses over the last six years. It is the third highest amount charged by a university in Britain.

Birmingham University collected £1.1 million in fines from those among its 26,000 students who flouted the rules – the sixth highest in the country.

And Nottingham University, which has 40,000 students, pocketed £1 million, and came seventh in the poll.

Topping the table was Leeds University which had fined students £1.8 million.

With fines as little as 10p for each day a book is overdue, it shows that students are returning thousands of books late each year.

And more than 300,000 books remain unaccounted for from universities across the country.

In order to avoid paying the full price to their university for a new copy, some students are turning to the internet and buying replacements from Amazon.

The figures were revealed in Freedom of Information requests to all of Britain’s universities.

They were asked to supply details of the amount of fines issued, the total received and the number of books unaccounted for from its libraries for the six academic years from 2004/05.

In total 101 universities responded to the request but many were unable to provide details of the amounts they fined students for returning books late.