Violent Protests As Mps Vote To Raise Tuition Fees

[censorship]

Must be odd for the Lib Dems. For years they have been able to promise whatever they like without any realistic prospect of having to follow through. They were never going to be in government, but could pressurise the party that was going to win to 'liberalise' their policies by promising the outlandish and dragging the other parties into promising something closer (ie, to get tories and labour to promise to not increase student fees, why not say we would scrap them completely!)

Now they are in government they are being held to promises they never dreamed they would have to implement.

 

I'm surprised PK voted Liberal TBH

[ManxTaxPayer]

I'm surprised PK voted Liberal TBH

Perhaps he just does what The Guardian tells him to.

[censorship]

I'm surprised PK voted Liberal TBH

Perhaps he just does what The Guardian tells him to.

He says he reads the Guardian and votes Lib Dem, but always comes across as a Daily Mail reader who isn't going to vote again until Oswald Mosely is exhumed and starts up his old party. Just an opinion based on his fourm bleatings.

[P.K.]

I'm surprised PK voted Liberal TBH

 

Perhaps he just does what The Guardian tells him to.

 

Telling idiots what to think is the preserve of The Daily Wail!

 

For the last few weeks I've been trying "the i" and at 20 pence it's very good indeed. But when I get my Saturday Grauniad I realise what I've been missing. I think I'll give "the i" another week and then decide whether to keep getting it or not.

[asitis]

CLICK

A 20-year-old student was left unconscious with bleeding on the brain after a police officer hit him on the head with a truncheon, his mother said today.

After falling unconscious on the way to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, he underwent a three-hour operation for bleeding on the brain.

Susan Meadows, 55, an English literature lecturer at Roehampton University, said: "He was hit on the head by a police truncheon.

"The surface wound wasn't very big but three hours after the blow, he suffered bleeding to the brain.

He survived the operation and he's in the recovery room."

Mr Meadows was with a number of friends, including two lecturers, Nina Power, a colleague of his mother's, and Peter Hallward, a philosophy lecturer at Kingston University.

But as they tried to leave the area where protesters were being held in a police "kettling" operation, the second-year undergraduate suffered a blow to the head.

"The policeman offered to get him an ambulance but he was in shock and didn't know how serious it was."

She said he had been trying to get out of the "kettle" because police had announced people who were obviously not trouble-makers would be allowed to leave.

 

Aren't our policemen wonderful?

 

You have no idea of the circumstances surrounding this, on the face of it unfortunate incident so a tongue in cheek generalisation is perhaps uncalled for !!

[Terse]

Perhaps I'm a little bit cynical; but I'm old enough to remember the police acting as agents provocateurs for Thatcher during the miner' strike. At that time they were little more than thugs in uniform and it seems that protests against the excesses of a Conservative government bring out the worst in them.

[asitis]

Sadly the Police are always the tool of any government of whatever politics and are always in the firing line. I am sure there are many decent officers who were there yesterday doing the job for which they are paid and trying to preserve order, not because they were acting for the coalition but because it is a disciplined service and they were doing the job which was asked of them.

 

Next time you have occasion to seek help from the Police force I suggest you ask if they are sending a thug or an ordinary woman or man doing their job !

 

If one student has been wronged and hurt unjustifiably then that is regrettable, but the mob who the Police were trying and failing to control must bear some of the responsibility !

[Terse]

Sadly the Police are always the tool of any government of whatever politics and are always in the firing line. I am sure there are many decent officers who were there yesterday doing the job for which they are paid and trying to preserve order, not because they were acting for the coalition but because it is a disciplined service and they were doing the job which was asked of them.

 

I don't doubt that there were, just as I don't doubt that there were some who were happy to goad the protesters in order to have an excuse to inflict a bit of physical damage and throw some into a paddy wagon.

We are, I'm sure, aware that it is a minority of protesters who wanted violence - and it was also a minority of police officers who were happy to respond to it. Unfortunately, the minority damage the reputation of everyone in events such as these.

[Evil Goblin]

Perhaps I'm a little bit cynical; but I'm old enough to remember the police acting as agents provocateurs for Thatcher during the miner' strike. At that time they were little more than thugs in uniform and it seems that protests against the excesses of a Conservative government bring out the worst in them.

Bullshit.

[Terse]

Perhaps I'm a little bit cynical; but I'm old enough to remember the police acting as agents provocateurs for Thatcher during the miner' strike. At that time they were little more than thugs in uniform and it seems that protests against the excesses of a Conservative government bring out the worst in them.

Bullshit.

Thank you for sharing your customary valuable contribution with us.

[Evil Goblin]

Perhaps I'm a little bit cynical; but I'm old enough to remember the police acting as agents provocateurs for Thatcher during the miner' strike. At that time they were little more than thugs in uniform and it seems that protests against the excesses of a Conservative government bring out the worst in them.

Bullshit.

Thank you for sharing your customary valuable contribution with us.

It is more valuable than your outright lies.

[VinnieK]

I don't understand why people think fees mean that everyone will suddenly start studying Chemisty or Medicine.

I think it is because universities which specialise in sciences like those already make a lot of money from research work, and therefore won't need to ramp up their charges as much as others. That could mean people who want to go to uni, for the sake of going, may choose such a course because it is the cheaper option. Or, more likely, it will mean while people who wanted to study arts are dissuaded from attending university by the cost, those interested in studying certain sciences won't be. The numbers on science courses won't increase, but the ratio will.

 

That's not how it works, unfortunately. There's only really one university that truly specialises in Science, that being Imperial, and they're possibly one of the most money grubbing of the lot (first place going to the LSE)!

 

There are two main problems with your scenario. One is that research rarely makes a profit: grants are awarded on an individual basis to researchers for a specific problem, and at most cover the costs involved. Sure you sometimes get commercial spin offs and private investment, but these are a relatively minor source of income and all the money is reinvested back into the research infrastructure. These are awarded on a competitive basis, with something like 15 to 20% of grant applications being successful (the research councils claim it's higher, but their figures are disputed). However, all universities are expected to offer a continuous stream of research, so a large portion is actually carried out for free or a minimal amount of funding from other sources.

 

Secondly, both teaching and research in the UK are significantly underfunded. This has always been the case and is only getting worse. Science research funding has been frozen for a few years, but this doesn't take into account inflation, so this translates into a cut in real terms, meanwhile the rise in fees is not an increase in funding for universities: their entire point is to make up for a very large cut in the teaching budgets of universities and will at best have little or no effect on narrowing the gap between the costs of educating undergratuates and money received for that purpose.

 

Most universities, and in particular those whose focus is scientific research view themselves as research institutions first and places of education second. As such it's not unusual to find the reverse of what you're saying happening, that is teaching money being used to subsidise research - something which people in the academy say is only going to get worse.

 

At least they can sort of justify it; how can 4-6 hours a week of lectures for 20-25 weeks in something such as sociology justify £6000 a year.

 

I'm not sure they can. Contact hours are often still minimal for sciences, and generally even at the best there is still an apparent disparity between the amount it costs to educate the student and the value of what's being offered.

 

I studied my undergraduate degree at one of the biggest departments for my subject, and the education provided amounted to: around ten hours of lectures a week in over filled lectures of up to a hundred students in which is was near impossible to interact meaningfully with the lecturer, lectures which consisted of passively reading aloud from a tattered collection of notes which had been recycled over many years, and the level of academic support depended almost entirely on whether the academic in question could be bothered (don't get me wrong, there were a few fantastic lecturers who took their duties seriously and with enthusiasm, but there were also more than a few awful ones). One final year course was even led by a PhD student, since it's usual lecturer had buggered off on a sabbatical, and the university was incapable of or couldn't be bothered to find a replacement.

 

For the money, students often get remarkably little in the way of actual education, especially compared with their contemporaries in some European universities where the number of contact hours tend to be higher and the material more challenging (the British system, even at the best universities, tends to focus unduly on assessing bookwork and 'grinding', with exams written in such a way that more than a little hand holding goes on). Taking readiness for postgraduate study as a marker of how well a university education performs, French, Italian and especially German students of science tend to be far more prepared and in a better position than their UK counterparts, with the latter having to spend much more time playing catch up before they can do any meaningful work.

 

It's not entirely the fault of universities however. Part of the problem is that successive UK governments have introduced so much bureaucracy into both education and research at university level that a fair bit of the money goes on admin, management and a whole host of other auxilliary services and duties. As a result, students may not see themselves as receiving value for money, even in the sciences and I think there is some legitimacy to their concern that they're being milked (I certainly know of a few academics who agree with this view that what they'll get isn't worth the money they'll pay!)

[asitis]

So if I understand correctly London was laid siege to because these poor darlings will have to repay £360.00 per year after they earn £25,000 ! and if they struggle to find work they will never have to pay back anything with the debt written off after 30yrs !

 

Shit, I wish I could get a mortgage on these terms !

[cheeky boy]

Charly got a fright:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11966645

 

 

Absolute quality, gladdens the heart to see those pompous puerile parasites looking confused as an event unfolds around them that was not stage managed and populated with sycophants

 

Has restored my faith in our youth

[VinnieK]

So if I understand correctly London was laid siege to because these poor darlings will have to repay £360.00 per year after they earn £25,000 ! and if they struggle to find work they will never have to pay back anything with the debt written off after 30yrs !

 

Where are you getting these figures? £360 per year for an assumed working life of 40 years doesn't even cover two years of university at £9000 per year, and that's assuming no interest.

 

Even without interest, it would take around £900 pounds per year to pay off a four year science or engineering course over 40 years, then stick a mortgage on top of that, council tax and all the other costs of living. Hell, assuming inflation stays constant and the interest on the loans for tuition fees is pegged to that it would take about a £1000 a year just to pay off the interest from year to year.

 

Another inaccuracy is your figure for when students will begin to pay back the debt. Under current proposals they start repayments at £21,000 (currently, it's £15,000).