Thursday 9 December 2010

Too Much Money Has Been Thrown Away. Now What Should Have Been Funded Must be Paid For

If Angels were Members of Parliament they would vote for higher fees.  Fees should not have been levied in the first place but once the pass had been sold and an undergraduate degree was no longer tax-payer funded it's simply silly not to charge enough to give more funds to already half-starved universities.

To vote against higher fees will not return us to a pre-fees world.  It merely refuses to recognise the arguments of so many Vice-Chancellors that they cannot continue underfunding research and underpaying university teachers and expect to run first class universities.

Perhaps those who have benefitted so much from a university education can now contribute towards scholarships, bursaries and research funding so that universities can be released from constraints on their ability to raise money altogether.   We don't want the worst of both worlds - fees, but at too low a level to make a serious contribution. 

2 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

Good point.
Can't turn back time.

Have you noticed how the media, British media anyway, has been trying all day to make the lib Dems appear as cannon fodder for Tory MPs.

But if the Lib Dems hadn't made such silly pledges then they wouldn't have been under so much media pressure to explain their hypocritical actions.

Elby the Beserk said...

BQ - The LibDems have been making silly promises for years on the basis that they would never gain power. I do find it odd that, given that for a couple of months at least before the election, a coalition was a possible outcome, they weren't more careful about their manifesto.

I think that the creative tension that has to come with a coalition is a good thing for the political process, so long inured to the hard line whip - but they were dumb with this.

Regardless, I think it is a storm in a teacup, and that as the details of what is proposed are taken in, the students will look like morons. Do they really oppose making it cheaper for poorer kids to pay for Uni? Do History undergrads at Cambridge really not know what the Cenotaph represents? Sigh...