Category: Higher Ed

COMPASS TO A HIGHER EDUCATION CURRICULUM

Paper to Student Experience Network  Sheffield Hallam 17/05/13 Patrick Ainley This paper begins by asking what is ‘higher’ about the education we claim to be giving our students and goes on to briefly examine alternatives to the traditional academic answer to this question, drawing upon the polytechnic tradition to suggest combining higher with further education and … Continue reading COMPASS TO A HIGHER EDUCATION CURRICULUM →

As applications rise, university chiefs call for quicker loan repayments

The latest UCAS  figures show a 3.5% increase in the number applying for 2013 full-time undergraduate entry to UK universities - though the figure is still down on 2011, the year before the £9000 tuition fee kicked in. Applications from 18 year olds are also up 2% and for 19 year olds 10.5%. (www.ucas.ac.uk/about_us/media_enquiries/media_releases/2013/20130130c) As … Continue reading As applications rise, university chiefs call for quicker loan repayments →

Review: The Great University Gamble                                                                                                                             

Andrew  McGettigan   The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education,  Pluto Press, London, 2013. 240pp., £16.99 pb  ISBN 9780745332932 Reviewed by Patrick Ainley              http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2013/744 Perhaps this book will at last get academic Marxists to apply their scholarship to (higher) education. It is ‘pitched at a general readership’ (ix) but this ‘tour through … Continue reading Review: The Great University Gamble                                                                                                                              →

As the Treasury recognises it’s ‘financially unsustainable’, will the university tuition fees ‘bubble’ burst?

  http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Education/article1248867.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2013_04_20). Estimates that 4 out of 10 student loans will never be repaid only confirms  The Great Reversal of education policy by Coalition education ministers Michael Gove and David Willetts.  The last thirty years have seen huge increases in participation in post compulsory education. Ironically some of the sharpest increases coming in the reactionary … Continue reading As the Treasury recognises it’s ‘financially unsustainable’, will the university tuition fees ‘bubble’ burst? →

University numbers. A Great Reversal?

Even though there are still about seven million full- and part-time students in further and higher adult education, half a million of them postgraduates, already overall undergraduate home applications to English universities were down by about 10% for 2012, though  UCAS data   still shows applications from school leavers, even those from less well-off back grounds, … Continue reading University numbers. A Great Reversal? →

‘Blue Skies Thinking’ Shows ‘Two Brains’ May not be as daft after all!

  Patrick Ainley reviews Blue Skies: New thinking about the future of higher education – a collection of short articles by leading commentators edited by Louise Coiffait, published by Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning     http://pearsonblueskies.com   Campaign for the Public University  http://www.publicuniversity.org.uk  A  sorry collection Under New Labour ‘Blue Skies Thinking’ or ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’ … Continue reading ‘Blue Skies Thinking’ Shows ‘Two Brains’ May not be as daft after all! →

Two-Brains Speak with Forked-Tongue

Patrick Ainley Post-16 Educator  Issue 63  May/June 2011 http://www.post16educator.org.uk  ‘Two-brains’ Willetts, the Tory HE Minister, is schizophrenic. One brain acknowledges that from 2012 an undergraduate borrowing £9,000 a year plus maintenance loans ranging from £3,575 to £5,288 (depending on their family’s income) could end up, once they earn over £21,000, indebted up to £83,000 at current … Continue reading Two-Brains Speak with Forked-Tongue →

OXBRIDGE REDIVIVUS

Patrick Ainley  Post-16 Educator (No 62)   http://www.post16educator.org.uk Introduction: Social immobility What is the point of different forms of indirect democracy if MPs do not represent the electorate anyway, viz. Clegg – fees? And if government and opposition are both headed by male Oxbridge humanities graduates – Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, Balls and Osborn? No wonder celebrity … Continue reading OXBRIDGE REDIVIVUS →

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen Society for Research into Higher Education (News)  http://sociologicalimagination.org The Coalition’s reaction to the Browne Review of student fees complements their slashing of 40% of higher education funding. Their new hard cap of £9,000 a year on fees leaves unfunded arts and humanities to be paid for only by those who … Continue reading Of our elaborate plans, the end →