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Students
Student tuition fees was the big issue in English politics today. Clegg defended his position at PMQs, while the NUS marched outside. There was potential to damage the coalition, particularly with the politically opportunist change of heart on fees by Labour.
But then it all went wrong for the students: the protests descended into violence and confrontation, and the news channels were filled with students expressing astonishing levels of entitlement. Students justifying their bully-boy tactics made for pretty unpleasant listening. I felt great sympathy for the people working in the Millbank Tower and at 30 Millbank, and in the surrounding area.
The students' message appeared to be that they want taxpayers to give them money, and if they don't, violence will follow. Isn't that a protection racket?
What a nasty bunch.
But then it all went wrong for the students: the protests descended into violence and confrontation, and the news channels were filled with students expressing astonishing levels of entitlement. Students justifying their bully-boy tactics made for pretty unpleasant listening. I felt great sympathy for the people working in the Millbank Tower and at 30 Millbank, and in the surrounding area.
The students' message appeared to be that they want taxpayers to give them money, and if they don't, violence will follow. Isn't that a protection racket?
What a nasty bunch.
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I'm more than happy for my taxes to support others' educations, as mine was supported for me. There are some uses of tax money that may be more urgently needed at times, but I doubt whether there is a better long term use of a nation's tax money than funding education.
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And education in every subject? Or only in those that have a social or economic benefit?
When you were funded through higher education, universities were for the minority of school-leavers, and you were academically able, and you worked hard and could take advantage of the education on offer. The massive expansion in higher education in the last twenty years has seen many encouraged into light-weight subjects at second-rate institutions. If we could lose the dross, we’d have more taxpayer’s money to spend on real education.
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I think more people should be in higher education than was the case when I was there; but I also think having a target of 50% of people in higher education was the wrong way to go about it. Emphasising increased funding for a strategic balance of subjects might have been a better way to go. Note balance; although I'm a scientist, I think the arts are important too, and even "light-weight" subjects have value so long as it's not everyone that's doing them. We don't want thousands of experts on the navel fluff of the Egyptian Pharaoh, but having a few probably enriches us all. (Hope I haven't offended any Egyptian Pharaoh navel fluff experts...)
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To be able to justify funding education as an investment in the future of the nation, there must be measurable results. I think it would be a much easier argument to make if the subjects being funded were robustly defended. Hard sciences and the traditionally-academic arts subjects would have no problem in justifying their funding — indeed, there are good arguments to be made for increasing the funding of some subjects.
But other subjects are much weaker. Cross-discliplinary courses that provide no more than an overview of each subject should have no place in a university. Lop out any degree course with “studies” in its title, lose any law courses that aren’t proper legal qualifications, get rid of any business courses that don’t result in an MBA. Why should vocational courses be masquerading as three-years of full-time academic study? There is a lot of chaff in universities. I just hope the cuts meet their deserving targets.
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OK, so this has drifted into the "academic vs vocational" argument, which is itself a valid and interesting one. Personally I'm inclined to agree with you to at least some extent. We desperately need to get rid of the snobbish attitude that many people have to vocational subjects, although I do think there's something to be said for a bit of cross-pollination: give the vocational people some academic grounding, and give the academic types some experience of more practical matters.
I suspect what happened is that the universities, desperate for money, spotted a niche in the market, and used their academic credentials to entice people onto courses which should probably have remained as practical training programmes. But I can't blame them - they were encouraged to do so by the government of the day, and they needed to find some money from somewhere.
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Yes, absolutely.
... light-weight subjects ... dross ...
That depends on what you mean by "light-weight" and "dross" - they're not well-defined concepts, and you'll get a different set of answers depending on who you ask. I'm extremely dubious about the validity of management and business studies (it all seems like nebulous, hand-wavy nonsense with little connection to what it purports to describe) whereas I think classics should be more widely studied, but I suspect I'm in the minority there on both counts.
Jack Cohen said something in a talk I went to a few years ago: Most people think that the end product of a PhD is a neatly typeset, bound thesis on the shelf in the library. But it isn't, the real end product of a PhD is the person who's done the PhD.
And I think it's the same with any programme of education: the real point of studying isn't to learn a specific corpus of facts which may or may not be relevant to something the general public consider important; it's how it changes the student, what it does to the way they see the world around them, how it enhances their ability for critical thought. Which benefits all of us: god knows this country, this world needs more people who think carefully about stuff.
For example, the five years of Latin I did at school have had no direct practical or economic benefit to me, but they enhanced my appreciation of language, my understanding of grammar, and have made the world a richer and more splendid place for me as a result. The same goes for the various texts they made me study for GCSE English Literature, even though I completely hated it at the time and really didn't get along with the teacher (Mr Charters).
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It is a pity that the cuts are falling across all institutions; I would prefer to cosset good universities and close down the worst.
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I'm certainly happy for my tax money to be spent on funding education for everyone, to as high a level as is useful to them; furthermore I have no objection to people learning less practical subjects, as long as they learn something. And if a more vocational route suits some people better than a traditional academic one, then they should be allowed to do that too. There are many far less useful things that our tax money gets spent on, at least education provides a decent return on the investment.
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