Whats lib dem policy on this stuff?

Same as Lib Dem policy on anything... too gutless to matter.

lib dem policy (announced at ulu last term) is to scrap tuition fees and split degrees into 2 year "foundation" courses followed by 2 year "honours" courses. This would mean 4 years of subsidised education rather than 3 as now.

You have to email and ask for a copy of the lib dem policy. See www.libdems.org.uk

"4 years of subsidised education rather than 3 as now"

Engineering subjects are mainly four year courses already

It's now official.

[[BBC News]|http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3022459.stm]

Who's representing IC down at ULU at the moment and watching the speech?

I take it you are Mustafa...

It's just made it on to the BBC lunchtime news on 1.

I'm not at ULU. I'm in the Guilds Union office. (And yes I did watch the speech - high on rhetoric, low on detail).

This policy is aimed at the mid-classes who would pay full/partial fees, it's a great policy for them, and for the Tory party that needs those voters back.

However, the people who would suffer are those who have suffered at the primary and secondary level; bad school, bad grades, no access. This policy does nothing to ensure fair access and tries to cover that by claiming that it will lead to an educational meritocracy.

We know that education can be converted into money (in the form of a good job); this policy reinforces the current situation, where the converse is also true. Money should not be allowed to buy an education. This policy does not work for everyone, and I don't think it is designed to.

In summary, good mid-class policy, good for the Tory party, bad for education in this country.

Personal view: sounds like a good idea, but be aware of the pit falls.

It's also intriguing coming from a Party that until recently was in favour of market rate tuition fees.

"Shock as Mustafa scoops the BBC" :P

I have emailed Tim Boswell and Mary Hodges asking for a full statement to put up here and elsewhere for studens to read on the Tories' announcement.

It does look encouraging - shame we can't ditch the current plans which are aloof courtesy of Bodge, Blanket, Clart and (Bl)air.

Hey! I scooped the FT before on Live! ;-)

Hohoho. Spent hundred of pounds each for a weekend in Bornmeouth and came up with this "plan for the next general election". They should pay the tuituion working group to formulate strategies for them. Of course, the Tories have to be Anti-Euro, Anti-Fees, Anti-Foundation Hospitals, Anti-Labour to be the opposition.

Although Labour has this division from head to toe, I still have serious doubt about the twins - Ian and Duncan's leadership. I am not surprised if Labour wins again.

I am thinking to start a party called "Save British Red Phone Kiosk Party" in the future. Start at the local election first of course. Who is interested? Havent started my manifesto yet. But pretty self-explanatary. Should be the shortest suicide note in British Political History

No more media studies! Fine by me.

No, Tim, not interested.

I think we should welcome the Tories' policy.

And it is a great shame that some student leaders have got in bed with the Lib Dems. I'm here to best students for them. Not for me. And hopefully some of our student reps will soon realise this... NUS won't. So better out now!

Green Statement Here

I got interviewed by Sky News in Beit about this. They choose 4 random students - 4 Guys! 2 Conservatives and 2 Lib Dem. Nobody changed their opinion and none of us pay fees anyway! But we did say it was generally a good thing. So does this make the Conservatives more left wing than Labour?

Sen managed to get a sentence in on Newsnight last night too.

... but luckily it didn't say anything...

The problem is the State- read comprehensive education- system. It treats all people as of the same ability- ie as idiots- and doesn't allow intelligent and talented people a chance. It also has completely the wrong focus- teaching illiterate intercity fifteen year old boys about the iambic pentameter or socialist ideas on why woodrow wilson was such a good egg etc instead of teaching them something useful like plumbing or fixing cars etc. The govt, then allowed for the dumbing down of higher education by allowing fifth rate polytechnics to become Universities and allow the thick masses to come and study "madonna studies" instead of claiming the dole- thereby "reducing unemployment to its lowest level since 1975!!!"

The answer is simple. one scrap comprehensives and reintroduce technical schools and Grammars. two shut down the ridiculous institutions like Thames Valley or even some of the c**ppier members of london university eg Goldsmiths and then aim to cap university numbers to a maximum of 25 %. Those 25 % will have free education and even a grant to live on- something desperately in need here in GImperial where students pay ridiculos prices for rent as well as transport (thanks to red lights no tubes ken).

As to the lib dems they are worse than labour. They still believed in tried and failed socialist ideas of the 70's. yup have got to admit it IDS seems to be right on!

amram... i thought you were dead... (or at least retired)

well sam i was resurrected like some believe (i'd say erroneously) about one of my compatriots.

besides live was getting sooooooo dull i thought you neede a little flicker of intellectual thought provoking debate- no no no don't thank me- i am just a good samaritan or judean or both!

Amram,

I certainly agree that the comprehensive education system has many flaws, and I think it's also true that the increase in the number of people studying at universities has caused many of the current problems in the funding of Higher Education. However, I strongly disagree with your proposed solution.

I may be naïve, but I've always believed that the ideal of comprehensive education was to allow everyone (regardless of social background or geographical location) to have access to a decent education. The problem with having only technical and grammar schools is that you'd end up with people being pigeonholed at a fairly young age (and often because of where they live or because of their social background). To take (and run with) your example, an inner-city schoolboy from a working-class background might have expectations of becoming a plumber or car mechanic or whatever, but why should he not have the opportunity to be a lawyer or engineer or mathematician, provided he has the ability? If he has the aptitude and desire to be a mechanic then he should be able to pursue that, but if he wants to be a mathematician (hard though that is to imagine), then he should have that opportunity as well. This is (ideally) where a comprehensive school comes in.

The comprehensive system DOES have its flaws, but surely the thing to do is to improve its quality rather than scrap it altogether. It is flatly untrue that intelligent and talented people don't have a chance in comprehensive schools. I went to a comprehensive and I know quite a few very talented and intelligent people who have done well out of the system. I even have one or two friends who are now studying medicine at university, which is (I gather) the very pinnacle of human existence ;-)

Paul,

May I draw you to the fact that, not too long ago, the Labour party apologised to pupils that have gone through the comprehansive system, as they finally admitted that it didn't work.

I'm not trying to be elitist here, but it has been shown that in areas where there are both Grammar schools (or some other type of selective school) as well as comprehensives, everybody get's better grades. So whilst people argue that you should sepperate the intelligent ones to improve their grades, I also say that it's a good thing for the others.

I was under the impression that introducing the comprehensive system wasn't for the benefit of the pupils, but to bring about equality of pay for NUT and Schoolmaster's Union teachers (ie those in Secondary Modern and Grammar School)...or so I've heard.

Ian Duncan Who?

The whole point of a Grammar system is that it is meant to measure inherent ability, so should transend class boundaries (although in reality this is not quite true).

In fact as one of the worse problems regarding access to Higher Education is that those who are capable are not encouraged to go because of their surroundings the re-introduction of a Grammar system would probably actually improve access to Higher Education by improving aspirations.

In any class/school/course you have a problem at the 'ends' - the cleverest ones will be bored and get disillusioned and the stupidest ones will struggle and get discouraged because they're always behind (to put it very crudely). So with the grammer school system the people on the grammer school/comprehensive school borderline suffer because they're either struggling at the bottom of a grammer school or bored at the top of a comprehensive.

So if we assume that the intelligence of the general population (by some definition and measure) takes on a distribution with lots of people being of average ability, quite a few just either side and then a very small number at the ends (e.g. a normal distribution perhaps?) as opposed to splitting neatly into 2 groups then there are a large number of people falling on your 'middle' borderline.

I went to a comprehensive school and academically speaking did pretty much as well as I could have. I also suspect that my social awareness and inter-personal skills (can't think of better words) benefited from mixing with people of a wide range of abilities. Schools are not *just* there to develop people academically.

"it has been shown that in areas where there are both Grammar schools (or some other type of selective school) as well as comprehensives, everybody get's better grades."

Actually, areas of England with grammar schools actually have *worse* grades overall (because people who are good at some subjects but bad at others get dumped in the secondary moderns).

On another note, what worries me with the tories' policy is that it means closing down academically inferior courses. That sounds fine to you, because it won't affect any of you (nor will it affect me at UCL), but these "bad" courses are often the only ones that people from less privileged backgrounds can get into. Lower socioeconomic groups are underrepresented in good universities like the UoL colleges (and please no one suggest that the poor are genetically predisposed to low intelligence). Closing the ex-polys will only serve to make university even more elitist. Rather than happily see the new universities and "media studies" courses consigned to history, perhaps some extra funding for _all_ institutions would help redress their uncontested mediocrity. The Conservatives have managed to make abolition of fees seem regressive and repulsive, which is quite an achievement.

In mitigation... the tories have attacked the dogmatic 50% target though, which is eminently sensible.

Er, that's not just Tory policy - its Imperial College Union policy! And if there is an imbalance of "socioeconomic groups" at UL colleges (and anectdotally this seems to be true) I suspect that this due to living costs rather than anything else.

Saying more money for all is all very well, but the only place that "more money" is coming from is students. With that in mind, we'd rather have the same amount of money and more per student place. People who have frankly been tricked into doing a university degree by the government and aren't going to get anything out of it except mountains of debt should be encouraged towards new vocational qualifications which will be a) useful for getting a job, unlike a degree in media studies and b) much cheaper to provide, since employers should pay for much of them.

That's the theory anyway. In reality, they need to fix the secondary school system at the same time of course.

Right, but what worries me is the way you are prepared to see access to university, which is already bad enough for lower socioeconomic groups, reduced further. Media studies is b*llocks, I don't think anyone's disagreeing with that, but to say that the poor should be happy just to get access to vocational training would be a monumental backwards step. If that means I'm criticising ICU policy, then so be it.

My point is the new universities might be less bad if they got more funding and more support from government. Abolishing them is the easy option, and the wrong option. After all, where would you stop - abolish all post-92 institutions? Abolish half? Abolish all HEIs except Oxbridge? There's a logic to abolishing places that can go much further than intended.

In what way do "lower socioeconomic" groups have less access to University comnpared with others?

Labour bandies this around because of their obsession with social engineering the like of which this nation has never seen before.

Quite frankly access to University should be by brains and not bank balance and wealth should be taxed not learning. And it has been labour that introduced up-front tuition fees payable by the student; which was rulled out by Blair in the run up to the 1997 General Election.

Now, it is true to say that so-called "lower socioeconomic" groups are more debt averse. But that is a different thing altogther isn't it?

It's a fact that there are more ABC1s at university than C2DEs. That's for one of two reasons. Either they're less intelligent, which I'm not prepared to believe, or they don't have the opportunities we (I'm generalising here) do.

Labour bandies this around because they want to make people forget they excluded the poor in the first place by abolishing grants.

oli,

Would you happen to have the ratios of ABC1s and C2DEs which get good a'level grades?

And at this point lets introduce the argument over whether university education should be penalised for shoddy schooling...

Some reasons why C2DEs are less likely to go to University than ABC1s:-

1. They're less able to afford it. Getting rid of the 'less good' Universities could mean more money for maintainance grants /scrapping tuition fees for those that do go to the remaining Universities and thus increase access for poorer students.

2. If people's parents/grandparents/aunts&uncles have been to University then they're far more likely to consider it and want to go / expect to go themselves and more likely to get encouragement to go from their family.

In my view however, more money needs to be found for higher education generally. Whether we have qualifications dressed up as a degree from a Polyversity or a vocational qualifications of some sort (is there any reason why can't we have degrees in woodwork? - it'd be a good PR stunt for vocational courses! ;-)) from a Polytechnic then it still needs to be funded somehow unless we have on the job training paid for by employers. In which case, we need to come out and say that's what it is. Following on from that, is there any reason why employers should pay for vocational training and not degrees?

Getting rid of courses/Universities is also quite tricky because then you have the question of by what measure you decide if a course is 'good' or not. A-level entry grades and hence 'quality' of the intake? Or how useful it is to industry/business? In which case I can see Media Studies could well be hailed as useful by PR/Adversiting/Media whilst many traditional subjects like History/Religious Studies are not. This of course leads to the issue - is the purpose of higher education purely to train a workforce or is it also to enrich society by educating those who are bright enough in subjects that interest them and develop 'softer' knowledge and skills that will serve them in later life? Or would the traditional subjects be kept whilst the newer subjects (more prevalent in the polyversities) are ditched? In which case, do you not think Higher Education should adapt as society changes? It seems very snobbish to ditch a degree course because it's not been taught at Oxbridge for the past 50 years.

I remember it being said (I've no idea how true it is) that one of the reasons for ditching the grammer school system was that the grammer school system was set up for a society that needed lots of good vocational personnel and a few 'clever' people for managerial type jobs but that now industry/business's workforce requirements had changed and the move to the comprehensive school system and turning polytechnics into universities was supposed to be in response to that and provide the right sort of workforce.

Closing down the newer Universities seems like quite a facile argument to me. More money needs to be found whether for existing courses or vocational ones. Which means tax increases (I can hear you all laugh now!) or looking to industry for money.

(this is from a metal bashing perspective, cos thats what I know best...)

Industry has learnt it needs to save money to compete. So, the obvious thing to do is stop training people. Afterall, with the decline of the engineering firms, there are less firms, and so companies can recruit new staff (to replace retirees) from this work force so there is no need for the huge intakes of apprentices every year whihc used to be required to fill in the need for more staff in the years to come.

I suspect a large part of the infrastructure to support this kind of training has disappeared as the need for it has slumped. Technical Colleges have rebranded as Regional Colleges, and started to offer degrees....

These schemes are now probably kept going as companies again need to find good, skilled workers, and also as the govenrment now funds it in part.

In my opinion this is a case of a need for funding accross the board. I am sure that people on vocational courses dont count as unemployed, so there is no need to send then to uni...

... which leads me to a great idea for someone who is bored. look at the rate of increase in numbers of students, the variation in the number of unemployed, and the general number of people in the possible workforce (i.e. working, in higher eductaion, or unemployed) does sending lots of people to university suddenly reduce the level of unemployment? oh, and whats cheaper, an unemployed person or a student?

Regarding Access to universities from varying socio economic levels:

Interesting fact from the White Paper on the Future of Higher Education:

6.3 “It is worth noting that students from lower socio-economic groups who do achieve good A-levels are as likely to go on to university as young people from better-off backgrounds"

To me, that seems to be saying that the problem with university access is that people from lower economic backgrounds are going through the state education system, which is, on average across the entire country, not as good as the private system in terms of getting pupils to get high A Level marks.

That's the only conclusion I can reach, given the assmuption that inteligence is indepdent of wealth of parents (which I think is a fairly reasonable one).

As to why this may be, it's probably many things. But all the teachers I know think the current state system overloads teachers with paperwork and administration and spends money badly.

In other words (assuming I'm not mising something in the White papers quote) ABC1's and C2DE's are as likely as each other to go to university if they have the same A level grades.

C2DE's are less likely to have good A level grades than ABC1's.

ABC1's are more likely to have had a private education.

I have no idea whether that statement includes application (i.e. are we ignoring all the C2DE's that got good A-levels, but got deterred from applying to university because of debt, cost of living, etc.)

"given the assmuption that inteligence is indepdent of wealth of parents (which I think is a fairly reasonable one)."

well, i assume you mean initial or potential intelligence. the results you get at a'level do depend on what sort of upbringing the indiviual recieves. This in part depends on the wealth (private or state education, and maybe to what support individuals get from their parents or others) of the parents.

so, can i propose that we can now say that universities need more funding, as they are making a loss. BUT if we want to open access to all irrespective of wealth then the problem is wealth affecting the development upto and including a'levels (or similer)

What's with all the state school bashing? I went to a state college to do my A levels where everyone did well. Although quality of education depends on the quality of the staff which is likely to be worse at the state school, it also depends on the attitudes of the students.

We had a choice of two colleges to go to: one where people worked hard and one were people could mess around. This choice is all that was needed - they both had the same entry requirements but the better one expected you to work.

clarifier:

By inteligence I meant inate potential ability. A-level does not directly measure inteligence (and the fact that people can improve their IQ scores indicates IQ tests certainly don't).

"BUT if we want to open access to all irrespective of wealth then the problem is wealth affecting the development upto and including a'levels (or similer)"

Yes, certainly. I think that the problem is that the state system doesn't have the freedom to spend money in the best possible way.

Chris:

"What's with all the state school bashing? I went to a state college to do my A levels where everyone did well."

Not all state schools are the same. With only agregate figures, we can only make generalisations. I'm not saying all state schools are bad, I'm saying that the spread is greater, and private schools seem to be better at getting pupils A's, which is not that surprising as firstly, they tend to select, the parents tend to have a lot more leverage over the school and so if a private school fails it either improves quickly or people withdraw their children/get members of staff sacked etc., and of course they tend to have more resources per pupil.

This shouldn't have to be the case: in America, land of the private everything, the main reason people send their kids to private schools is to get around the first amendment, rather than serious concerns about the academic quality of teaching (unless, of course, the concerns are that evolution is factualy incorrect, in which case the two are the same).

Just out of interest:

Why do you people continuously go on about how socially-disadvantaged kids are just as clever as Uni people, just they didn't have the opportunities we had?

I would say this simply isn't true!!! Although some of my friends were bright, I would say the majority *really* weren't there to learn! I bet that isn't true in a poncy private school.

Having said that, the ones that do do quite well *do* get put off by reputations. There's nothing more annoying than having seen people at my College who deserve to have gone to Uni not applying cos of university people, who are of less-ability but have always been pushed that way.

The answer? Good question, I don't think it's as simple as trying to get everyone to come to Uni. I fully support the "Let people who want to do vocational courses do them" policy.

Seb: "all the teachers I know..."

hardly a substantive basis for an opinion

I went to a state school. None of my family have been to University. My father left school before 16.

Labour let them down 40 years ago. I'll be buggered if I'm going to allow them to let the current 18-somethings down this time around. It is their simple corrupt concept of this idealogic social engineering which must be opposed. Nothing short of that, quite frankly.

Idris:

Agreed, but it's not the basis for a substantive oppinion. It was a piece of annecdotal evidence tacked onto the end. The "oppinion" is just noting the governments claim that statisticaly speaking, there is no difference between the likelyhood of private and state school students with the same grades going to university.

Like I said, there are probably many factors.

Ned Lowe:

I believe that is why "cultural" arguments are brought in, and that whole reality TV show/social experiment where they took the kid from an inner city "sink school" and put him in that place run by the monks that was in the papers a few weeks back. I wouldn't like to comment either way on that, having not been to a state school.

Private schools select their intake though, so they are going to get a higher average grade in the first place, assuming their selection exams correspond to the A-level exams.

As Rob alluded to a few days ago, this is going to put the NUS in an interesting position... are they going to back students by advising people to vote Conservative. (Don't hold your breath...)

I hugely doubt the NUS would. Because they would be voting to abolish the HE colleges and new universities (whose students are NUS members) to save the 'elite' universities, many of which, like Imperial are not NUS members.