Funny how they can award themselves all this while cutting budgets for teaching departments…
For a number of years, the present UK government has had the target of getting 50% of people under the age of 30 into university by 2010. Of course, this target will not be reached any time soon since the current figure is around the 40% mark. However, is the whole idea misguided from the start?
My answer is yes. The 50% target is artificial, not taking into account those who may prefer moving into employment or vocational apprenticeships. It also aims to push more people into an increasingly underfunded higher education sector. Cuts are already taking place at many universities around the country in anticipation of the swingeing overall budget cuts announced by Lord Mandelson.
Such cuts affect the level of education of students currently studying at university. Increasing the student population while at the same time decreasing the teaching capability of fewer lecturers seems counter-intuitive.
The student population should be allowed to grow or shrink organically depending on the actual number of people who wish to attend university. This would mean that those who don’t actually want to be at university but have been persuaded by careers advisers won’t have to endure three years of a course they are not interested in. Conversely, as long as the funding situation is sorted out (i.e. not blindly lifting the fees cap without a strategy in place), people who currently cannot afford to attend university will be able to.
Overall, this will result in an increase in the value of degrees, and more motivation within classes of people who actually want to be studying. This can only be a good thing and better than artificially inflating figures for the sake of a few league tables.
A spokesman for the lecturers’ union, the University and College Union (UCU), said: “Hardly groundbreaking or surprising stuff from the brains behind the poll tax, rail privatisation and other policy disasters.”
Over the past few years, the notion of students as consumers and universities as businesses has come to the fore. This is undeniably a theory borrowed wholesale from the commercial sector and awkwardly shoehorned into education.
If anything, it shows the absolute contempt that university managers hold their students in, despite the students being the very reason universities exist in the first place and paying for the privilege of being there. Managers have been infected by the commercial practice of maximising profits and salaries while seeing their core activities as secondary in importance.
It must be remembered that the education sector is completely separate from the commercial sector and the theories from one do not necessarily fit will within the other.
Friday saw the second part of Hustings 2010. I had honed my speech from the one given on Thursday, incorporating the answers to some questions asked to me then, and I think it went quite well overall. There were more questions this time around which I think helped to differentiate the candidates a little more.
Campaigns week starts in earnest in a few hours. This is when everybody will be out in force, giving out leaflets, continuing to plaster the campus with leaflets and generally showing their presence to students. The weather forecast is quite overcast with lots of showers and heavy rain, so it’ll be interesting to see how everything pans out.
Today, I participated in the first of two hustings events organised by RUSU to help people decide who they want to vote for.
Participating at a hustings event can sometimes be a nerve-wracking event. You have two minutes to give a speech about why students should vote for you as opposed to any of your opponents. This is then followed up by up to three rounds of three questions each. You have a minute to answer each round of questions.
Success depends a lot on how confident a public speaker you are. Some people naturally clam-up when faced with an audience they need to enthuse and keep interested. Remember that these people have been here for a while and probably want to go home.
Another tip is to definitely pick up tips from others running for the same position. I know that I certainly picked up a couple of things that I hadn’t thought about earlier and have incorporated these into my speech for the second round of hustings.
There was an emergency Student Voice event yesterday organised by RUSU. The topic of discussion was the impending cuts to student services and education at the University over the next few years in order to save more than £10 million.
Whilst the Students’ Union was right (in my opinion at least) to hold a meeting and discuss possible ways to tackle the issue with its members, there was something of an air of confusion as to what exactly the cuts will mean for students “on the ground”, where they will be made and whether the process will consult with students.
The net result was the inability to give a straightforward decision to the Students’ Union as to what we as members think, since we don’t know all the facts. Some of the worst decisions are made when large-scale assumptions form their base. Therefore, in my view, no other outcome from the meeting would be possible or even commendable.
Now I’m not saying that this is the fault of the Students’ Union; after all, they are simply relaying what scant information they can glean from the University, who are being quite secretive on the matter for understandable reasons. The last thing they want is a breakdown of closures or cutbacks being published for all to see and report on.
However, the University sometimes seems to forget that students are the whole point of its existence. As such, we should probably be one of the first groups of people to be consulted on any possible degradation of our education.
Having said that, as a student population, we have to be careful about the way in which we approach this matter. Some form of cutbacks are unavoidable and necessary in order to ensure the continuing viability of the University as an institution, especially in these economically-challenging times. It is sometimes too easy to completely dismiss these facts and blindly oppose any form of change to our environment.
Herein lies the danger that the Students’ Union will degrade its good relationship with the University. The very soul of the Students’ Union is vested in the ability to have a working relationship with the University. The breakdown of this relationship and mutual trust could cause large-scale damage to the Students’ Union and its ability to campaign that will take a long time to heal. Whilst we must not shirk back from defending our position, we must not do so at the expense of our ability to mount such concerns in the future in a constructive manner.
