The ThunderDragon

One third of graduates basically waste three years of their life and thousands of pounds. Now, about 30% of graduates end up in nongraduate jobs five years after leaving university, up from about 20% in 1992. This is due, quite obviously, to the [stupidly] massive increase in the numbers of students going to university.

The rise in the number of graduates seeking employment isn’t matched by an equal rise in the number of graduate jobs available. But the rise in students numbers has also meant that a large number of less academically able people have gone.

This would be a good thing, were the point of a university education simply to improve the education of the populace. But it’s not. The sheer cost of going to university - with student debt topping £3 billion - makes it more about an opportunity to improve job prospects. And for those at low-ranking universities who study arts degrees, it doesn’t do much for them.

This is why the attempt by Labour to get 50% of 18 year-olds to go to university won’t - and could never - work. There simply aren’t enough graduate jobs, as has now been proven.

I’m not at all surprised by this:

The errors were caused by a time lag between HM Revenue and Customs recognising that a loan has been repaid and informing the Student Loans Company to stop deducting money from a graduate’s monthly salary.

It means 72,000 people have been deprived of thousands of pounds until the money wrongly taken is repaid since the first students to borrow money under the system paid off their loans in 2001. (The Telegraph)

The Student Loans Company are completely useless. This I know first hand. This is just more proof.

The whole SLC system is just appallingly badly run.

They’re just not content with charging every students thousands upon thousands of pounds every year that we are at university. They want to cost us graduates an extra £500m per year interest.

It will take me more than five years before I start paying off the capital on my £9,000 student loan [plus, of course, my student account overdraft]. I will start paying off the hundreds of pounds that has been added as interest on my loan next month, so I will be about 28 before I even start paying off the capital on my loan.

Why is this? Because in 2003 the government decided to change the official measure of inflation from the Retail Price Index (RPI), to the lower Consumer Price Index (CPI) - but without changing the Student Loan interest rates. Luckily for me, I am earning more than the minimum amount for graduates to start paying off their loan - £15,000 - already, so I’m less screwed than many.

Graduates are to be used to plug the holes in the government’s finances. Because we’re easy to target and have no choice. What a bunch of bastards.

I also haven’t received any information from the Student Loan Company in at least two years. So the bastards can’t even be arsed to let me know how much I owe them, yet they’re going to start taking it out of my paycheck anyway. I hate the lot of them.

This is the brand-new lecture theatre at my alma mater. Even though I never actually went in this hall, yet alone had lectures in it [because by the time it opened, I was in my postgrad year and didn't have any lectures any more].

I have to say, it doesn’t strike me as a dustbin. Or even as my fellow former University of Essex student, Asp, describes it “a tin can”. Rather, it looks like someone has just gone over-board with the tin foil on a Blue Peter model.

It is, however, as Asp notes, “a [nice] change from the rest of the concrete jungle that is the ’squares’ structure of the University of Essex.” And it is also, as the UoE spokesman says “probably the most striking modern building on the campus.” That would be because it’s the only real modern building on campus. But even so, it’s still ugly.

The proportion of middle class children going to university has grown under Labour:

So charging loads of money for students to go to university has increased the proportion of middle class children going to university. Who’d've thunk it?! After all, when it’s going to cost so much, many “working class” people would prefer to just earn now. Especially considering the devaluing of the worth of a degree and the continual rise in the cost of getting one.

Middle class parents will be far more willing and able to financially support their offspring, and the extra loan that those whose parents don’t earn much can get doesn’t really help - since it has to be paid back as well.

So Labour have driven an increase in the middle-class domination of universities. Most certainly not what they had in mind.

Cross-posted at Educational Conscription

The Oxford Union has voted 2-1 to invite the BNP leader Nick Griffin and Holocaust denier “historian” David Irving speak in a debate. My reaction is simple: So what?

Mike Ion thinks that this is wrong because it “will only help legitimise the BNP”. Will it really? No. The Oxford Union is a student society, for crying out loud, and a debating society with it - and debates require representatives from both sides, however repugnant you may find their views. That they have invited them gives neither the BNP and their racist ideology or David Irving and his historically inaccurate Holocaust denial any more credibility or mainstream appeal. After all, the Oxford Union passed the motion “This House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country” in 1933, and yet I bet they did go on and fight in the Second World War.

Besides, it would have been extremely ironic to have backtracked on this issue and refused to have these people speak, considering that this very debate is supposed to be about free speech!

UPDATE: Tory MP Dr Julian lewis has quit the Oxford Union over this. What an idiot. Free speech means free speech. Saying that they can’t be allowed to speak at an event because most of us disagree with them is just idiotic. Just prove that their views are wrong by beating them in debate, rather than just banning them from speaking.

What need is there fore one?

So haven’t students opinions been taken into consideration before? There is little more need for a minister for students than there is for a minister for pwople with red hair. Students have few concerns that differ from the rest of the population bar those directly relating to their courses, tuition fees, or potential careers. All of these are already covered - or at least should be - by the Universites Secretary and the minister for Higher Education [whose current absurdly long title is Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education].

Students already have their “own” pressure group - the NUS - despite it constantly being run by a bunch of hypocritical socialist idiots. In fact, the entire Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills should really be focused primarily on students. There is no point or need whatsoever for a dedicated minister to do this. Having one is nothing more than an attempt at spin to try and revitalise flagging Labour Party university societies.

Students don’t want a government minister dedicated to “listening” to them, who will then just ignore them.

Also, there is quite a substabtial amount of irony in appointing a former head of the AUT lecturers’ union as the Minister for Students.

Source: BBC

University campuses are often regarded as breeding grounds of the Left. But, really, they’re not all that much so any more. Certainly in my experience at Essex, once a hot-bed a Lefty radicalism, the lecturers were far more so than the students. But I don’t think that these new posters [via Shane Greer], produced by the Young Britons’ Foundation really work very well.

They don’t really mean anything, or say anything. I think they are underestimating and over-sexualising students by proposing such posters.

Shane thinks that they are “just the ticket for university conservative groups across the UK” because they are “fun, edgy, and… exciting”. I think they’re just pretty sad, really. They don’t seem “edgy” at all, but a retreat to mere sexualisation.

No-one is going to be persuaded to join the Conservative Party by pictures of topless men or girls looking deeply into the camera. They might be by posters which actually represent what the Conservatives mean. The Boris posters that were given out last year by Conservative Future societies at Freshers Fairs last year are far superior to this offering. At least they were actually somehow connected to the party itself, and not just a transparent attempt to be mildly pornographic.

Life’s better under a Conservative - but these posters aren’t the best way to make it happen.

University courses don’t “resemble part-time employment”. Whilst students are lazy, and few do what really is “the equivalent of a full-time job”, it is nowhere near as easy as they are suggesting:

That there is a difference is the number of hours spent working on various university schemes is obvious. Some such as medicine require long hours to cover what needs to be done, while others just don’t need so long.

What this ignores is that being a university student isn’t a job. Students don’t - and can’t - do the 9-5 working day. As a student, you can and often do work at all times of the day. You also don’t have weekends “off” as there is still work that you can and possibly should do. There is no such thing as a real holiday - between terms there is always essays to write, for example, and there is always more reading around the subject that can be done. There is no such thing as time off when you are a student.

Some courses require lots of direct tutoring and others very little - but they require more unsupervised work. The time you spend working on most courses also varies week-on-week, more so when lots of independent study is required. Some weeks I could have worked just a couple of hours or so a day. But others, especially when essay deadlines neared, I could spend up to 10 hours or more working, with pretty much just toilet and meal breaks all day - and this could occur for several weeks in a row.

It also misses out the very simple fact that most students have to actually earn money as well. You either have a part-time job during term time or work a hell of a lot during your “holidays”. You may think a two/three month “summer” is idyllic, but when you have to use that time to earn enough money to live on for the next year [as the Student Loan will only just about cover accommodation - and that's if you're lucky] it really isn’t.

But concentrating simply on the hours spent studying ignores what university is really about. It is more than just a place where you get a degree, it is about getting life experience as well. If it was just about getting a qualification, it wouldn’t fulfil the needs of the nation at all. Uni is about developing social skills as well - and that is where the hundreds of clubs and societies that exist on university campuses come in. Extra-curricular activities are as important to do as the academic study, and can be as important as the degree in getting a job. They are certainly at least as important for personal development.

Anyone who considers the number of hours spent studying to be the axis along which degrees are classified is an idiot. Going to university is about far, far more than just a degree. And in many ways the degree itself is worth less - certainly at the moment where there are so many graduates - than the non-academic work you do at university that is not included in the study. being a student on no course “resembles part-time employment”. The level fluctuates, but it sure as hell isn’t just “part-time”.

Source: The Telegraph

Who is it that is discriminating - universities or the state school students?

This story is incomplete, and shows how statistics can easily be abused. It says that only 57.9% of Cambridge students and 53.7% of Oxford students come from state schools, leading John Denahm to claim that they are ignoring state school applicants. But what percentage of the applicants to Oxford and Cambridge came from state school pupils? It is the difference between them that matters.

It might be more of a “dog bites man” story to say that “Poor biased against Universities” rather than “man bites dog” type of headline John Denham provided today, but without the other statistics I mentioned above, the ones we are given are meaningless. Just because only 58% of Cambridge’s students come from state schools isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. If only 58% of it’s applicants were from state schools, then it’s probably about right. No university is going to deliberately choose less intelligent students simply down to class snobbery. They want the best and brightest that they can get, and since they receive no more money whether or not they take students from state schools, that’s who they’re going to pick - the best of the applicants.

To say that they are biased against state school students because they form only a slight majority of the students they take in is absurd. They are going to take the best applicants - whoever they be, wherever they are from.

Source: The Telegraph