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Posts Tagged ‘Higher Education’

I have read various articles concerning the various protest campaigns on Wall Street, in London and so on but haven’t rushed to write about them as they seem to be all rather soft, confused, lacking in focus or with any particular goals in mind. In simple terms they are best summed up with a statement like; “We don’t like this and it isn’t fair…”

What no one has seemed to grasped and in this I include the Bankers, Industrialists and Politicians too, is the exact nature of the problem let alone, what kind of solutions may be applicable. In a sense, we all seem similarly as frozen and devoid of ideas as the Generals were when faced with trench warfare in WWI and the significance of including the statue of Cromwell in the graphic will I hope become clearer in due course.

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We have another year where once again there has been an increase in the number of pupils achieving top passes at “A” Level. But whereas once this might have meant something significant, it means very little today and certainly doesn’t mean any student is guaranteed a place at university, if anything it means guaranteed disappointment for many. I am not interested in the arguments as to whether these exams are “dumbed down” or not but the consequences are interesting if only to further illustrate a society that has lost touch with the basics and is drifting somewhat aimlessly.

Truth to tell, that is not just true of the UK, it is likely true of most industrial and post industrial countries around the globe and shows up in business as much as in education, in some way, the process must be reversed for the sake of our environment as well as world peace.

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This week saw another “Student Protest over Fees”, yet again hi-jacked by the usual ‘undesirables’ and also the ‘Final of the X-Factor’ which saw Cher Lloyd voted out by the public phone poll with the lowest votes which was both predictable if not, rather pathetic.

However, at the end of this week, there are two clear winners and I guess, multiple losers. Simon Cowell for one of the most “brilliant vehicles/concept” of recent times with the “X-Factor” show and Cher Lloyd, without doubt an amazing and original talent who was voted off the show. The total losers this week goes to the so called students who turned out to protest (about being unshaggable ?), and in the process, even alienated their own parents.

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This blog site gets more than it’s fair share of ‘spam’ since I started it in November 2007. However and to be accurate. I think that the spam only started in late 2008 or early 2009 and it seemed to have a pattern that indicated that my site was being used in some kind of “School for Spammers” somewhere to the East of the UK and as my ‘defences’ are reasonably robust, so what ?

However and of late, things have changed somewhat and it might be worth trying to both describe and speculate upon this which is what this particular ‘blog entry’ is about plus, in only 4 days since the “Anarchists are Anonymous” started spamming using criminal spambots,  I have received about 500 spam mails.

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There will no doubt be many recriminations flying around over the next few days and whilst the Sunday Tabloids will focus on the winner of the “X Factor”, the Sunday broadsheets will grind on relentlessly about how the Police mishandled the “Student Demonstration” and the needless exposure of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to a break away group of protesters, there is only one reality:

Absolutely no one walks away from these events with clean hands and the attack on the Royal Couple was one sure fire way by which those students present, totally lost the argument…

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It seems appropriate to return to the topic of Higher Education, University and so on. Higher Education is not a “Right” as secondary education is, it is an option that should be ‘earned’ through personal ability and merit rather than an “Ability to Pay” or a Government measure based upon qualifying by a “Poverty Diktat”.

In this context and in terms of the 15% or so who could benefit from a purely academic education and providing the intake was kept to about that, via a system of grants and bursaries, most students could likely be fully funded which is never going to be the case if 40-50% of secondary school children want to go to University, end of discussion…

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A writer in the Independent today penned a piece entitled, “University is not right for everyone and that sentiment touches upon what I have felt for quite a few years now. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher/philip-hensher-university-isnrsquot-right-for-everyone-2053386.html

It is a simple fact of life that when only a few people take part in any particular activity, it tends to be ‘Fun’. Driving a car used to be fun before everyone had a car and were competing for the same bit of road space. Likewise, not only are our roads overcrowded but in these small islands subject to heavy commercial air traffic, so too are the skies. If you fancy flying privately, it is only tolerable whilst there are few other people wanting to do the same, faced with congestion and higher demand, rationing of any activity by “price or licence” is inevitable.

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