By Jonathan Creasy
Roger Pertwee, a neuropharmacology professor at Aberdeen University and the leading cannabis researcher in the world, has thrown his weight behind the legalisation and regulation of marijuana.
The UK, he said, should adhere to a scheme similar to that in California, where adults over the age of 21 are able to obtain the drug with the consent of a doctor. Pertwee, who co-discovered THC (cannabis’s active ingredient) in 1970, argues that legalisation would lead to a reduction in crime associated with the drug.
By Ines Novacic
Two months after Pakistan’s flood disaster, the country’s plight is featured less and less in news coverage. Time magazine in the United States even removed the Pakistan story from its September front cover. Nonetheless, a group of students in Pakistan have greatly contributed to the aid response.
At times there is a literal glass wall between the social classes in Pakistan: the rich roll up their car windows when beggars approach them on the streets. Two years ago, a group of students from a privileged background in Lahore decided to combat social inequality by cleaning up rubbish in their city.
Shaoib Ahmed, Umar Rashid, Pawail A. Qaisar, and Murlaza K. Khwaja, organised a local clean-up movement called Responsible Citizens (Zimmeram Shehri). They used Facebook to mobilise volunteers and held weekly “Take Out the Trash” refuse collections.
Last year, the New York Times published an article about these students, and brought global attention to their work. Responsible Citizens started a dialogue between people of different backgrounds and helped them realise that collectively, their problems are the same. “You should see Responsible Citizens’ trash collection as a social experiment, not a trash-collecting initiative,” founding member Shaoib Ahmed told Trinity News last week. Shaoib is currently a fourth-year medical student at Yale University. “Initially it was just a very intriguing idea for a lot of people but eventually they realized that it wasn’t trash we were worried about and acknowledged deeper social problems in Pakistan.”
Since the organisation was established two years ago, the students and volunteers of Responsible Citizens have organised community projects to improve social inequality in Pakistan.
The country recently experienced the worst floods in living memory. Assisting the emergency response has become Responsible Citizens’ chief task. “As well as door-to-door collection, we have collected over 650,000 euro from individuals in the US, UK, Malaysia, and other countires,” Shaoib commented. “These were all people who had just heard about us, joined our Facebook group and sent us a message saying they want to donate”.
Around 70 percent of Pakistanis are between the ages of 18 and 35. “A large number of student groups cropped up on Facebook in response to the flood,” Shaoib said. Responsible Citizens registered with the government and asked the Pakistani army to assist with aid distribution. They provide a box of goods to last a family of four one week. They also regularly organise camps with free consultations and medical distribution, provided by three doctors.
“Responsible Citizens is decentralised, but not lacking in focus,” Shaoib explained. “We have one of the founding members permanently in two of the five cities we work in. Responsible Citizens started by collecting trash because it was non-controversial. It was a symbolic gesture but the underlying aim was to create a sense of ownership, collective effort and responsibility among the people of Pakistan.”
By Ralph Marnham
Six months ago, the Indian Minister for Human Resource Development, who is responsible for education, announced ambitious new plans to encourage foreign universities to set up campuses across the country, mentioning the likes of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
However, since the Indian cabinet approved a draft law to open up the country to foreign education institutions, it is becoming clear that the world’s top universities are not yet willing to make the move. This is not to say that others have not taken an interest in the project. Mid-level institutions, still far superior to the average Indian education provider, are reported to be keen.
M. Anandakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, says that “there is a high level of interest only from the Tier 2 institutions to do things in a serious manner.” He adds that the so-called Tier 1 universities “are simply not interested in setting up a campus here”. The interested universities include the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Virginia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Schulich School of Business in Toronto.
Georgia Tech has announced plans to set up a research facility in the southern city of Hyderabad, while Carnegie Mellon University is helping the northern state of Punjab to plan courses at a new university. The market does not end there, however. The University of Wolverhampton plans to teach business courses through one of its partners, Bishop Heber College.
It is undeniable that India has a large education market that can be tapped into, a fact that is not lost on the education ministry. “I think the Indian government now is more receptive to foreign universities’ setting up in India,” says Jo Gittens, director of Wolverhampton’s International Office.
Indian universities themselves have established some campuses overseas, most of them in the UAE. There are tentative signs that Columbia University in New York is taking an interest as well, following the opening of its fourth global center for research and regional collaboration in Mumbai.
It does not yet have any plans to open a separate campus in India, though. With the draft law yet to be approved by parliament, the Indian government is realising that the process is going to be a slow one.
The past few years of university-level education have been marked by numerous student protests against tuition increases. With the unrest caused by the most recent protests in California still fresh in educator’s minds, some experts are turning to technology for the solution. Across the globe, a number of universities and secondary schools are embracing the open-source and intuitive nature of the Internet to try and promote education.
Though the majority of schools, especially in largely developed countries, have been shifting more and more of their resources online, the greatest benefit may come from increased accessibility to lower-income populations.
This benefit is partially to do with the fact that technology, specifically the Internet, is largely intuitive for many young children. In 1999 Dr Sugata Mitra conducted the “Holes in Walls” experiment, which placed small touch-screen computers in various walls throughout the slums of New Delhi. After just a few weeks it became clear that children as young as eight years old were capable of basic computer operation and were quickly teaching themselves more.
This realisation has driven educational innovators to introduce more and more Internet-based teaching. In Europe and North America, for example, and to a lesser extent Asia, iTunesU has become increasingly popular. iTunesU is a programme that allows any person with an iTunes account, the popular music-downloading program, to listen to lectures from a wide variety of universities. Trinity has a number of lectures uploaded, as well as Oxford, Cambridge and many other international universities.
Some schools have moved even further online and have already seen the benefits.
In the Cempaka Schools in Indonesia students are required to have a MacBook, as well as an iPhone (which is provided by the college), that are fully integrated with the school’s servers. This meant that during the recent A(H1N1) scare, school officials were able to send everyone home, but classes proceeded as normal, albeit on the internet. Attendance was still mandatory to the online classes and assignments were still given out and completed.
The administrators responsible for these measures argue that the higher use of technology not only affords them a greater degree of independence from the classroom, it also helps their students become more familiar with the sort of technology that is likely to become more and more prevalent in the workplace. In this way, they believe, they are teaching very practical skills to their pupils.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has now stepped forward and moved over 1,900 recording of their lectures online, including assignments and syllabi. The service is called MITOpenCourseWare and it is completely free to anyone with a web browser.
In defending their decision, MIT refers to their University Mission that states, in part, “to advance knowledge in ways that will best serve the nation and the world.” By placing so much of their material online then, administrators hope to promote this goal. Of course, they also state that because MIT emphasises “hands-on experience in instruction” there is no danger of the typical, paying student becoming irrelevant.
However these new technologies are implemented, whether in high-income private universities or in less well- funded public institutes, they are sure to dramatically change the way in which education is delivered in the coming years.
Tens of thousands united on March 4 during the “Strike and Day of Action to defend Education”. Although some UC Berkeley students were turned off by the riots the week before, the day of passionate protest against education funding cuts attracted thousands of demonstrators to walkouts and teach-ins at universities and high schools throughout California. According to the Los Angeles Times the rallies were largely peaceful. In Oakland, however, about 150 protesters were arrested after they blocked a freeway, stifling rush-hour traffic.
It is clear from press reports that the central messages of the March 4 protests were heard. All the major mainstream media outlets ran articles on how the cuts to state funding have increased the cost of tuition and have put higher education out of reach of millions of students in the U.S. Another central message that was communicated successfully was the notion that groups from different educational sectors joined together and they were able to show that a powerful voting block is being formed.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the reason for the “Strike of Day of Action to defend Education” can be found in a couple of acts of desperation last year. First, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut about $600 million in overall funding for Californian Universities. Then the Universities’ regents and trustees, facing budget crises of their own, reduced programs, furloughed workers and raised tuition. Ananya Roy, UC Berkeley Professor of Urban Studies compared the 32% tuition increase over a two-year period with racial discrimination. On March 4 she said during a broadcast: “Students of color have been fighting around these issues for quite a while in the UC system … so we see this as a struggle to not only save the university, but … to make those issues of access and opportunity … visible to all.”
While at first glance the question of racism seems to be unrelated to the issue of funding, Bob Samuels, lecturer at UC Los Angeles and author of the popular blog Changing Universities, argues that it is evident from recent events at UC Berkeley and San Diego that increased racial tensions often occur during an economic downturn: “In fact, one obvious connection between racism and economics concerns enrolment policies and decisions. As many people have reported, less then 2% of the undergraduates at several of the UC campuses are African American, and although this low level of enrolment might not be blamed directly on racism, the effects of the situation is to fan racial tensions.”
A series of racially charged incidents has galvanised protests and teach-ins at UC San Diego. First, a fraternity held a party called the “Compton Cookout”, which invited people to come dressed in stereotypical ghetto attire. Then, a noose was found hanging off a bookcase on the seventh floor of the university’s library. The student involved was suspended on February 26 for her actions. While the investigation is ongoing regarding a possible hate crime, she has claimed it a “mindless” act and clarified “that it was not an act of racism”. Following these incidents Administrators at UC San Diego and the school’s Black Student Union have signed an agreement that outlines common goals, leading to an effort dubbed “Join the Battle Against Hate”.
The problems faced at Californian Universities brought thousands of students to the streets on March 4. Partly to protest against education funding cuts, but also to protest against such racially charged incidents. Similarly, as this paper has reported, in June 2009 Australian students were marching against violent attacks towards Indians in Melbourne and Sydney. Recent attacks have led the Indian government to issue a travel notice, warning its nationals to take extra precautions when travelling to Australia. Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has just returned from a three-day visit to India, where he reiterated the view that Australia has no tolerance for racist attacks.
The incidents, both in the U.S. and Australia, have caused protest amongst students against racial prejudices. Now it might be true that the student hanging a noose in the library had no racist intent. The “Compton Cookout” seemed to have looked like an innocent joke to the organisers. Similarly some attacks on Indians in Australia may have turned out not to be racially motivated. Australian police say that, at least in some of the assaults, the attackers have been fellow Indians. In the case of Jaspreth Singh, who claimed he was attacked by four men and then set alight, it turned out that he had made up his story as part of an insurance fraud that could have gained him $11,000.
Nevertheless, those incidents should not just be dismissed as innocent misunderstandings. In his book, The Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam reviews the latest studies of how racism works, and he documents some surprising findings. According to Vedantam children as young as three years old will associate positive traits with white people and negative traits with black people regardless of the race of the child or the attitude of the children’s parents and teachers. From his perspective, the only way to fight racism is to openly admit that we all harbour racist associations and we need to become aware of our unconscious tendencies.
Samuels explains how important educating against racism has become nowadays: “While the election of Barack Obama might make us think that we have moved beyond these race-based prejudices, the recent events at the University of California, San Diego reveal how we cannot simply escape unconscious racism … The interventions failed to get to the root of the problem, which is how do we teach people not to act on their unconscious racist beliefs. This need for education was evident when the student who placed the noose in the library explained that she did not intend to do any harm, and she did not think about the racial significance of the noose.” It seems that the protests on March 4 were more significant than one might think at first sight. They were not only asking for free education for everyone not depending on their social status or cultural background. But even more importantly, the protestors were raising awareness towards the fact that it is in those institutions it can be made possible to educate against racism.
ZIMBABWE
Drop-out rate soars as students cannot afford fees
Student leaders in Zimbabwe have held a crisis meeting with the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai last week after it emerged that 28% of students had dropped out of the country’s leading universities because of a lack of foreign currency to settle tuition fees. The University of Zimbabwe started its new term last Monday but students have been set tuition fees between US$300 and $1,500 in a country where the highest paid civil servant earns less than US$200 a month and unemployment sits around 90%. Zimbabwe abolished the use of the Zimbabwe dollar in February last year when the United States dollar, South African Rand and Botswana Pula were declared legal tender. This has left many students without the necessary funds to pay for tuition, forcing them to drop out.
ITALY
Foreign lecturers in Italy finally get their Pay
British lecturers that teach in Italy are finally to put decades of low pay, denied pensions and missed promotions behind them this week after a Italian court awarded seven British lecturers at the University of Padua about 300,000 pounds each in back wages following a 12-year-legal battle. The dream of teaching at ancient universities in stunning Italian towns such as Verona has proved irresistible to hundreds of British lecturers drawn by Dante and Boccaccio over the last 30 years. David Petrie, a representative of the lecturers talks of the hardships, “There are 300-400 foreign lecturers in Italy, half of whom are British, who now take home an average of 1000 Euro a month, while their Italian equivalents earn over twice that much despite six largely ignored rulings by the European court of justice on equal treatment.” Now Britain’s Minister for Europe, Chris Bryant is poised to take up the case with the Italian government after last week’s court ruling.
UK
Student suspended from oxford in UCAS APPLICATION scandal
A first year student at Oxford University has been suspended after it was discovered he forged parts of his UCAS entrance application. The student, who wan a place in 2009 to read Economics and Management, claimed to have graduated from Langley Grammar School with at least 10 A grades at A-level. He faked the relevant documents required for application, which included a forged reference from a teacher. Embarrassinglyw for the university, forgeries were not revealed until he had completed an entire term, when one college noticed some academic discrepancies in his personal record. Janet Jamieson, Deputy Headmistress of Langley Grammar School said, “He certainly did not achieve those A-level grades, nor did he achieve the GCSEs that he claimed from his previous school. This boy was a student here and that is where it ends,” Jamieson said in a statement to Cherwell, the university newspaper.
Only one in seven will get UNIVERSITY Place in 2010
More than 200,000 students in the United Kingdom risk missing out on degree courses in September after revelations from vice-chancellors that universities are freezing places. The move risks “shattering the dreams” of record numbers of school leavers competing to get into higher education on the economic downturn, it was claimed. One university leader warned that institutions were being forced to prioritise foreign students over those from the UK because they can be charged as much as 30,000 pounds a year. It also emerged that almost seven people are competing for each place at elite universities, prompting claims that more students with straight As will be rejected. Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, suggested more than 200,000 students could miss out as a result of the squeeze. “Last year about 160,000 students who applied didn’t end up going to university, this year we already know that there are about another 75,000 applying for university. So the number of students who go to university will be less than the number that actually want to go and thus there will be a lot of students this year who do not get a place.”
Gunmen have murdered 16 young students in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez in what appears to be a mistaken drugs hit. It is reported that the victims in this brutal attack were aged between 15 and 20. The shooting, a common occurrence in Ciudad Juárez, left a further 20 people injured, some critically.
Eyewitness reports describe how up to 15 assailants arrived in a fleet of 4×4 vehicles. While some of the gang blocked off entry and exit points to the street, the remaining members opened fire on several houses. An unnamed witness has described how the men, “were well armed. They went into the house and shot at everyone, you could hear the gunfire all round.”
After the attack, blood poured onto the street from the houses. Further witness reports suggest that the gunmen believed that the revelers were members of a rival gang further fuelling claims that the killings are linked to drug related turf-wars.
Due to its geographical location, Mexico serves as the main gateway for drugs to enter the USA. This is particularly apparent in Ciudad Juárez which is located right on the US border, rival cartels vie for control of cross border trade as well as monopoly over the large number of addicts who reside in Ciudad Juárez. Drug cartels show no hesitancy to resort to arms in the Chihuahuan city which, last year, had one of the world’s highest murder rates with a reported 2,650 killings.
The Mexican government has taken drastic action in an attempt to control drug-related violence. In 2006, the army were deployed throughout Mexico, an undertaking which the government hoped would curb the soaring murder rate. A total of 45,000 troops were installed, 10,000 of whom are positioned in Ciudad Juárez. Despite these measures, there have been 17,000 killings in Mexico since 2006 and the citizenry are losing patience with President Felipe Calderon. A banner left at the scene of the murders reads, “until we find who is responsible, you Mr. President are the assassin.”
Although the murders are largely between rival cartels, incidents such as this serve to diminish support in the government. The citizens of Ciudad Juárez are questioning whether enough is being done to protect innocent citizens. The outcry is not limited to fearful citizens either, the Mexican Senate has insisted that the government explain how 16 innocent people could be massacred without any form of state intervention.
On the same day as the attack in Ciudad Juárez, 20 gunmen opened fire on a police station in the Pacific port city of Lázaro Cárdenas and just a week earlier Paraguayan footballer Salvador Cabañas was left with a bullet lodged in his brain after an assault in Mexico City. The attacks are indicative of a climate of gun violence in Mexico, a climate that will escalate unless renewed efforts are made by the government.
»» 80 percent of higher education institutions were destroyed in the January 12th earthquake, it also estimates that nearly half of the country’s schools have been completely destroyed
»» UNESCO calls on international community to show solidarity and urges countries to take on students
As reconstruction begins on the recently devastated Caribbean island of Haiti education appears a secondary concern to those shattered by the loss of loved ones, homes and livelihoods.
With search and rescue operations officially over, a mere 132 people were pulled alive from the rubble, attention is turning to the distribution of aid and the rebuilding of infrastructure. Measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, the earthquake all but destroyed Haiti’s means of effective coordination; the presidential palace and many government ministries were among the collapsed buildings. With no central point of management, the country and ensuing efforts to aid it remain in chaos.
With more than 1.5million left homeless and the country all but destroyed, looking beyond the immediate effects of devastation is a difficult task. The future of Haiti, however, is a pressing concern. “Haiti can’t have a future without educated children”, Pierre Michel Laguerre, director general of Haiti’s Education Ministry states, “But there has been so much destruction, it’s a big and unprecedented challenge for us”.
The recently bulldozed Education Ministry stands as an ominous symbol for the state of education in Haiti. More than half the country’s schools and all its biggest universities have been damaged or destroyed.
In 45 seconds, the dreams of many of Haiti’s privileged undergraduates shattered. Astride Auguste was late for an examination on the fateful morning of the 12th January. The International Affairs and Management student felt the ground beneath her shake violently. A few miles away Port-au-Prince’s Quiskeya University collapsed. Many of her fellow students and academics lost their lives.
“I can’t believe it” she told The University World News. “This is a nightmare. The year has been lost. I don’t know what I’m going to do now”.
Decades of poverty, environmental disasters, violence, instability and dictatorship left Haiti a failed state: the poorest nation in the Americas.
Haiti has only recently been increasingly successful in the struggle against lack of education and illiteracy. Though only 1% of Haitian’s aged 18-34 enter tertiary education – the lowest rate in the hemisphere – the system was considered one of the best in the Caribbean.
Graduates went on to become lawyers, doctors, accountants and engineers, forging strong international links and working towards an improvement of the 53% literacy rate.
The State University of Haiti recently finished a US$2 million upgrade. It offered services to 13,000 students and employed 700 teachers. The University became an autonomous institution in 1987, severing ties with the government and uncovering itself from the blanket of dictatorial rule.
Universite d’Etat d’Haiti stood at the epicentre of important struggles for Human Rights against dictatorship in the years 1986, 1991-4 and 2002. The University’s website outlines its objective: “freedom of expression, academic freedom, freedom of management, financial freedom and inviolability of the university areas.”
80% of higher education institutions were destroyed in the quake, posing a massive impediment to such progress.
The University of Port-au-Prince, a private institution, situated in the middle class district of the Island’s capital came crashing down. “I was there on the third floor, but I escaped,” said one student, Michelet Saint-Preux, his arm bandaged and a deep gash in his chin. “I lost many friends there.”
The papers and notebooks scattered amongst the rubble and the crowd of students and relatives of the missing are the only remainders of what was once a great centre of hope and opportunity to rise out of Haiti’s poverty trap.
Many of Haiti’s future leaders and thinkers would have perished in the quake. Academia was also hard hit with the death of three of Haiti’s major feminist thinkers, Myriam Merlet, the lawyer Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan.
Conor Bohan, executive director of the Haitian Education and Leadership Programme (HELP) highlights the importance of re-establishing the education system: “Haiti needs to rebuild its educated class, the anchor of every stable economy and society.”
Bohan goes on to comment on the intellectual void left by emigrating graduates: “85% of Haitian’s with a degree have emigrated, the result of Duvalierist anti intellectual repression and 20 years of political instability.” “In short Haiti’s educated class has left and is not being replaced”.
With the country in such disarray the probability of retaining future graduates looks increasingly slim. The government held a meeting to plan a reconstruction strategy. The Haitian Education and Leadership Programme (HELP) is trying to use this opportunity to create a partnership between accredited Haitian universities and those abroad.
“Universities, long the neglected stepchild of international aid for education, need massive investment to prepare tens of thousands of Haitian students to become productive and prosperous members in the global economy,” Bohan said.
Government officials and aid groups said they hoped to overcome the rift created by the independently administered state and private education systems. Recovery appears to provide the opportunity to establish a harmonized system for the country, with a single curriculum, under the lead of the Education Ministry.
With children under 18 making up nearly half of Haiti’s population of 9 million, thousands have been orphaned. The government estimates that half of the country’s schools have been destroyed by the quake. Such a void has destroyed not only the chance of a stable education in the foreseeable future but also a place of protection and continuity for Haiti’s children. Because the public school system is considered poor by many Haitians, 85% of Haiti’s schools are private. But now many of those schools lack the financial and human resources to function properly, if at all.
The state of education in Haiti remains dire. All that remains is to start from the beginning again and rebuild the system that once looked so progressive and promising.
UNITED KINGDOM
OXFORD STUDENTS OUTRAGED BY SPOTIFY BAN
Students at the University of Oxford expressed shock last week at the prestigious institution’s decision to ban the popular music-sharing program Spotify. According to the university newspaper Cherwell, students were “baffled” when Spotify suddenly stopped working, with no explanation, last week. The newspaper quoted a second-year student as saying it was, “a discrimination against music lovers”. The university’s computer services, the OUCS banned the program as “… the use of peer-to-peer resource sharing software on machines connected to the Oxford University Network is prohibited”. The OUCS claims that the problem with allowing peer-to-peer software is that it requires an enormous bandwidth. It elaborated, “Bandwidth that seems insignificant for one user will soon add up when scaled up to many thousands of users connected to Oxford University’s networks. It is one thing attempting to justify a network upgrade on the basis of a genuine academic requirement, such as the petrabytes of data expected from CERN when their latest collider comes online.”
STUDENT ATTENTION SPAN AVERAGES A WHOLE TEN MINUTES
According to new research carried out in a survey for the technology firm Olympus, students at universities across the UK have an average attention span of just ten minutes. In a survey of 1,000 students, the average length of time a student could concentrate for in lectures was ten minutes, many blaming a lack of sleep and being overworked. Among the students surveyed, 13% admitted to missing up to five hours of lectures a week, while 17% said they had to prioritise their part-time jobs over lectures in order to support themselves. The survey suggested that when it came to student life, the majority of students are ill-prepared both for learning and for living an independent life, with money and lectures being the biggest hurdles. Meanwhile one in ten said they feared their university degree would be a waste of money, with almost a quarter believing they will not stand out to supporters once they graduate. National Union of Students president Wes Streeting said, “Given that students are graduating with record levels of debt, and job prospects are at an all-time low, it is no surprise that so many are having to take on part-time work which is adversely affecting their studies.”
UNIVERSITIES AWARD RECORD NUMBER OF FIRSTS
Official figures show that last year a record 43,000 firsts were awarded by institutions in the UK, almost double the number of a decade ago. Published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, figures also showed that almost two-thirds of graduates gained at least a 2:1 in 2009 as results increased for the fifth straight year. The figures come amid plans for a drastic overhaul of traditional degree classifications as UK universities are currently trialling a graduate “report card” which is intended to represent a more accurate picture of students’ achievements, after saying the existing 200-year-old system had “outgrown its usefulness”.
FRANCE
STUDENT GOES ON STABBING SPREE IN SLEEPY FRENCH TOWN
A Chinese student stabbed to death a 49-year-old secretary and wounded three other people in an attack at a university in France officials said last week. The 26-year-old sociology student killed the woman with a butcher’s knife and wounded three other people, one of them seriously. Police arrested the student from the northeastern city of Shenyang, “who appeared to be suffering from an attack of dementia” said public prosecutor Jean Pierre Dreno. President Nicolas Sarkozy offered condolences to the victim’s family and praised the courage of bystanders who came to her aid and managed to subdue the attacker. In a statement issued by his office, he expressed “support for the whole university community and hopes that investigations will shed light on these events as soon as possible”.
British Universities are facing cuts of more than £900 million over the next three years, according to a new report.
Leaders of Britain’s most celebrated universities have warned that government plans to cut funding will lead to a higher-education “meltdown”.
They are at risk of losing funding in public spending cuts after the next general election.
“It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world’s greatest education systems, and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees.”
The government’s arrangement to cut university funding may lead to many problems for British students and will equally put Britain’s world-class university reputation in danger.
The Russell Group, representing twenty leading research universities, said the gold standard education they offer would be reduced to one of “bronze or worse”. They continued by saying that the cuts would have “a devastating effect, not only on students and staff, but also on Britain’s international competitiveness, economy and ability to recover from recession”.
The Russell Group, which includes Oxford and Cambridge universities as well as Warwick and Glasgow among others, said the end result would be universities facing the closure of hundreds of courses, with less academic staff and larger classes. Reports suggest as many as 30 universities might not carry on in their present form if even the smallest funding cuts were introduced.
Unlike the UK, the German government has recently contributed a total of €18 billion into promoting world-class research alongside university education, while Nicolas Sarkozy has just announced an investment of €11 billion in higher education in France, stating he wants “the best universities in the world”.
The general secretary of the University and College Union, Sally Hunt said her organisation had already identified over 5,000 jobs at risk in higher education and that it was now looking at thousands more. She said, “Unless these savage cuts are reversed, we face the very real prospect of many universities being forced to close, over 14,000 staff losing their jobs and some of the biggest class sizes in the world.”
In defence, the government has noted that higher education funding had risen by 25 percent since 1997. Higher Education Minister David Lammy continued by saying it was now time for the higher education sector to “tighten its belt”.
British universities, however, have little chance of raising their own funds as they rely almost exclusively on taxpayers. British student fees by law are capped at about £4,000 a year, and endowments are generally no more than modest.
Many universities have already begun making forfeits, with the University of Gloucestershire, in the southwest of England, having to sell its new London campus. Other universities have already scaled back certain programs, especially in foreign languages. Oxford, the world’s oldest English-speaking university, wouldn’t say which, if any, of its programs might be cut if there is a reduction in funding, whereas Cambridge have acknowledged such a possibility.
The Russell Group concluded “If politicians don’t act now, they will be faced with meltdown in a sector that is vital to our national prosperity.”
