May 08, 2005
Top-up fees make UK second most expensive place to study
Education in Britain cannot truly be considered affordable and in most respects lags behind some allegedly expensive countries such as the United States.The cynic might point out that this is exaggerated by the weakness of the American dollar...
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April 11, 2005
MPs savage Labour education strategy
The national literacy strategy, the foundation of the Government's education policies, is almost certainly flawed, fails one child in five and needs to be urgently reviewed, a Labour-dominated committee of MPs said yesterday.
I could be cynical but no, literacy is the key to most social policy, and literacy is a much bigger problem in the UK than many admit.
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April 02, 2005
Nothing like a bit of confidence in the system...
Now if we could only find out what percentage of University staff wouldn't send their children to their employer...Permalink # | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
University allegedly 'cracks down' on plagiarism
In one department alone - the veterinary faculty - 73 of the 628 students were investigated for allegedly copying or fabricating material... Many of the students were made to resubmit their work, although only one was ultimately failed by the faculty.
There are only two ways to crack down on plagiarism: failure and expulsion. As long as you don't make students pay, and believe me students know exactly what they can get away with - this is not 'ignorance', most this is straight out cheating - they will always play the system.
Once you start expelling students [or making them repeat the whole academic year, after paying a hefty re-registration fee] then they'll stop cheating.
The point that these articles repeatedly miss is that refusing to deal with cheating [which is effectively what this institution is doing] is most harmful to the students who actually do their work. And to the institutions themselves - a University which doesn't take plagiarism seriously isn't worthy of the name.
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March 15, 2005
Scottish parents reject local schools
Ah, the joys of living in Scotland...
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February 17, 2005
Heriot-Watt in 'devalued degrees' row
On the back of some rather dubious "research" [after all, only the lecturers and the external examiners know how good/rigorous a degree actually is...], we get the usual drivel about University expansion watering down degrees etc. etc. etc..
Translation: assuming that degree standards have held firm [and are roughly comparable across UK universities, as is supposed to be the case...], Heriot-Watt has fewer very good and excellent students than many other universities...
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February 10, 2005
Student sues university...
Translation: he [the student] had to take notes because he [the student] hadn't done the preparatory reading etc.. If he'd done the reading he'd already be familar with 80% of the lecture material and wouldn't need to be taking 'complete' notes.
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November 23, 2004
Our next Rector??
The rector is elected by students to represent their interests...
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November 14, 2004
Fees and 'foreign' students from south of the border
But it wants to go further and impose even higher fees for medical courses because so many English students come here to study medicine then return south, leaving a shortage of doctors in Scotland.
While I hate to ever admit that 'student' leaders are right [particularly as the National Union of Students - the NUS - doesn't even represent all universities, not to mention all students...] if the Scottish Executive was really concerned about admission rates of English students in particular courses surely they could just have a wee chat with SHEFC, the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council about it???
After all, the odds that English students would come up to Scotland to do a law degree and then move back to England does rather beggar belief [as the English and Scots have separate legal systems].
The real issue is that some Universities orient their medical schools more to English students than Scottish students, and as the English and Scottish school systems are markedly different this is a serious structural disadvantage Scottish students face.
PS: I wonder when everyone who's so upset about the lack of dentists in Scotland will start asking questions about why the University of Edinburgh was allowed to shut its Dental School in the early 90s...?
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November 04, 2004
More adventures in bad math
Degree grades 'in need of update'
But critics remain unconvinced, saying top grades are becoming easier to achieve.
Two fundamentally opposed ideas, both true. If you give out Firsts [the 'top' degree grade in the UK] to the top 5% of students, and you then increase the number of students by 50%, logically you will be giving out 50% more firsts. If you're still only giving them to the top 5% though, your 'standard' for granting grades hasn't changed, hence "no deterioration in quality".
Given that your increase in student numbers has [generally] resulted in far larger numbers of relatively weak students, more students who would have got 2.1s will now be getting 1sts. And since many departments have decided on their own that they aren't giving out enough 1sts, the fundamental basis for UK degree classifications has completely changed over the last decade.
Bit late for that.
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October 08, 2004
Postgrads and the real world
Postgrads choose industry over academia
And where exactly is the story here? Isn't this what you would intuitively expect? Does the Guardian really think that people who do PhD's love academia? Haven't they heard of bills, mortgages, children?
Perhaps more to the point, don't they recognise that the UK's funding councils are explicit in their desire for PhDs not to stay in academia but to venture out into the real world?
It's not a wonder that so many leave academia, it's a wonder that so many stay in the first place...
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September 24, 2004
New students
One of the interesting things about being at a different University [and this is the fourth I've worked for...] is watching how the academic year starts and how the new students react to their new environment - be they frosh, freshers or whatever else you call them.
It's interesting to sit on the subway surrounded by clearly nervous 17/18/19 year olds clutching their campus maps and campus guides and going through what must be completely incomprehensible course and program documentation.
If I didn't know any better I'd say I was feeling nostalgic...
But for a great bit of insight into what it's like starting out check out Aaron's Stanford experience - Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.
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September 20, 2004
Which is worse, the school system, or our opinion of it?
You never know if it's true, but there is more and more evidence that the educational system in the UK is almost completely broken - or, more to the point, that the media and the middle classes think so.
On one hand you have 27% of parents paying for extra tuition as they think so little of what their children are getting [and the Telegraph is right to ask if "improved" exam results are the product of good teaching or of extra tutoring].
And on the other you have the people who are paid to 'run' the educational system - a job that've manifestly failed to do, going by the lack of skills of students entering universities, bleating that they don't want funding from sources they don't approve of - see Tycoon's bid to save sink schools snubbed - as it would weaken their grip on the educational system:
The strategy, apparently, being to fail most students.
That being said, there are [and always has been] a number of students who are determined to fail all by themselves. It will always be difficult to develop a really strong educational system in a society where so many are overtly hostile to education.
But on the bright side, at least things aren't this bad. Yet.
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September 05, 2004
How well do you know things...
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August 23, 2004
Missing the point #2
Huge pay rises for NHS bosses
So, the NHS can't get good management staff and think they need to pay more and so have hired the Hay Group to tell them how to recruit and retain and pay staff.
Now, in a similar vein Universities also have huge managment problems, with a tradition of promoting the incompetent, being unable to identify and or recruit good managers, with a bizarre HR system that seems to be designed to ensure that administrators/managers cannot build a case for internal promotion through expanding their remits, taking on new roles, supervising staff etc.. And who designed the HR/promotion system UK universities use?
Yes, it was Hay.
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August 12, 2004
Many graduates in unskilled jobs
BBC NEWS | Many graduates in unskilled jobs
And this surprises who, exactly, aside from the BBC? If your aim is to get 50% of the population into Universities, you will end up with the Ontario model, where most people who serve you in shopping malls have been to university.
University as a learning experience, yes, but perhaps not an educational one.
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July 20, 2004
Searching for postgrads...
Scotsman.com News - Top Stories - Foreign student headhunters bag thousands in fees
Sayeth an anonymous source: "it will not be long before some of the more popular postgraduate subjects start to turn back perfectly good domestic candidates"
Rubbish. "Perfectly good domestic candidates" are as rare as hen's teeth for most postgraduate courses, and the overseas students complain like hell if there are no UK students on courses...
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May 10, 2004
One in ten Scottish households...
Scotsman.com News - One in ten Scottish households have no bank account
Interesting bit of research this. Says he. :-)
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