Scottish students on an English protest

[tobyaw]

Just as Newsnight told us that the NUS protest march consisted of an estimated 50,000 English students, pictures showed a banner from the University of Strathclyde. Which I found rather amusing.

Did the students and staff have neither lectures nor labs today? It seems odd to have a protest march mid-week when the participants should have been at their studies. Maybe it was their Wednesday-afternoon sporting fixture.

Comments

[lapswood.livejournal.com]

Oh Man, I didn't know you had such strong views on this. I thought I towed a strong line!

[vivdunstan.livejournal.com]

The wider university cuts are likely to affects Scottish universities too, even if the fees issue is somewhat different. So I wasn't surprised to see Scottish protestors there.

As a humanities graduate now I'm extremely concerned about the future of the department where I studied my Masters and PhD. It is one of the top-rated departments in Scotland for history research, but is very vulnerable compared with other subjects such as hard sciences and medicine.

[tobyaw]

Since they go to all the effort of rating departments’ research, they should use those ratings in targeting investment.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all surprised to see Scottish universities down there. It proves the NUS are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Wednesdays were always very quiet at uni when I was there, and protest marches were always on Wednesdays. Perhaps there is some agreed protocol for such things.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

And of course if every single student at Strathclyde is Scottish I'll be very surprised.

[tobyaw]

Ah, I hadn’t appreciated that English students at Scottish universities pay top-up fees, even though Scottish students don’t. So I guess English students at Strathclyde may have a stake in this too.

But are they covered by the proposed changes at Westminster? Or are Scottish universities’ top-up fees decided at Holyrood?