Universities raise £50million - from fining students for overdue library books (UK)

Universities have raised nearly £50 million from fining students for overdue library books, figures have revealed. Top of the pile was Leeds University, which has raised more than £1.8 million in the last six years. In second place was Manchester University, which collected almost £1.3 million and in third was the University of Wolverhampton with £1.25 million. At the bottom of the table was Imperial College London, which collected just £26,703 in fines. 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. However, many are never returned at all as more than 300,000 books remain unaccounted for from universities across the country. Leading the way at number one was Bucks New University with 30,540, closely followed by Oxford University with 20,923 and the University of Kent with 19,613. 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 by the Press Association - Mirror