Poll Time!
Jan. 20th, 2004 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescent[Poll #235791]
Here's a hint to help you with question two: Smart, articulate girls are hot.
EDIT: I can't believe so few of you watch Newsnight. The archived copy is here. Having checked, the bit with her in starts at 24:15.
EDIT 2: Aha! here's a piece that has a picture.
Here's a hint to help you with question two: Smart, articulate girls are hot.
EDIT: I can't believe so few of you watch Newsnight. The archived copy is here. Having checked, the bit with her in starts at 24:15.
EDIT 2: Aha! here's a piece that has a picture.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Ironically
Date: 2004-01-20 04:09 am (UTC)Re: Ironically
Date: 2004-01-20 04:18 am (UTC)...Sorry.
Frankly, so far I'm most shocked that so few people watch Newsnight.
I did look for a picture so I could show people what I was on about, but no luck.
Re: Ironically
Date: 2004-01-20 04:36 am (UTC)Re: Ironically
Date: 2004-01-20 04:36 am (UTC)Re: Ironically
Date: 2004-01-20 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 05:13 am (UTC)*By increasing general taxation.
*By decreasing the number of students going to university.
May explain at greater length some time , no time now as academe is under funded :-)
I continue to say that the real problem is that this country is fundamentally anti-intellectual and does not WANT to pay for the university sector it knows rationally it needs. It . Just. Doesn't.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 05:26 am (UTC)*snigger*
I promised to helpfully explain my method in the comments
Date: 2004-01-20 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 05:58 am (UTC)The idea of differential fees makes me ranty.
Smart, articulate girls can be hot, yes. But not that one, unless she's a lot cuter than in that picture.
Oh, and the comment summary on the sidebar pushes everything across and makes the main column tiny.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 07:36 am (UTC)I think you're probably right, although if pushed I'd reduce numbers first and raise fees second.
Smart, articulate girls can be hot, yes.
*raises eyebrow*
But not that one, unless she's a lot cuter than in that picture.
Bah. At least Tim agrees with me.
Oh, and the comment summary on the sidebar pushes everything across and makes the main column tiny.
Hmm. What browser are you using? Is this new, or have you just been too polite to mention it before? :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 07:40 am (UTC)*raises eyebrow*
I didn't say smart, articulate guys weren't also hot.
At least Tim agrees with me.
Wrong in the head.
Hmm. What browser are you using? Is this new, or have you just been too polite to mention it before? :)
Firebird 0.6, and it wasn't so much politeness as forgetfulness. For some reason the title of ang's comment doesn't wrap like it does in IE.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 08:41 am (UTC)Certainly the nyomcs's were cute when I went to university. Unfortunately they were also prone to declaring how poor! they all were, when it was clear they wouldn't know what poor looked like (unless they'd opened their eyes and noticed some of daddy's employees).
(my favourite one, the girl who said she was *so poor* she could barely afford to run her car)
Sadly, Miss "pity the oppressed middle class" Prague is no exception there either. She's also a very naive girl who hasn't done the maths, or thinks tax money comes from the fairies.
If she and 50% of the rest of the country get degrees, and it's paid for by the richest 50% of the taxpayers, guess what? that means *doctors*. She's highly unlikely to save a penny by paying for it out of her taxes instead of as a loan, it'll just be harder to notice when it's hidden in the tax bill.
That said, I do think education should be free at the point of delivery and funded from taxes: if I didn't I'd be a Conservative like Tony Blair. If making graduates pay a bigger proportion of the bill than they currently pay is the goal, I suggest an extra 1% on the income tax of graduates, or 2% if they earn more than three out of four people do (yes, I'm talking about your "poor" father, Julia).
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 09:21 am (UTC)Also, let's not forget that University is not just education but also a life experience (for want of a better term), and that everyone should have the choice to partake of it, even if they, in the end, choose not to.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 09:59 am (UTC)Part of the problem is that if you're a graduate going into a non-lucrative field - say abstract research - then you'll still pay as much as a graduate going into a lucrative field such as law. Given that the proposals are that graduates start paying for their education when they're earning a salary that is hardly huge, this is not going to encourage the most able people to go into further study - they will effectively be penalised for so doing.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 11:27 am (UTC)I think you'll find that your line of reasoning was, until around 1997 or thereabouts, merely considered to be "left of centre", rather than communist :-) Politics surely has moved to the right in recent years.
As to your thoughts - I agree. I'm quite surprised at the number of people suggesting that "less students" is a reasonable solution to the cost of education (even more so given that many of the suggestees are graduates themselves). At what point does education become a privilege, not a right? At what level of income are you entitled to higher education? Already we are in the situation where nursery and tertiary education are so expensive as to not be a realistic option for many in this country. Soon we'll be suggesting that it's too expensive to educate the "poor" to GCSE or A level.... An educated society is better for us all. A society in which only the wealthy can afford a good education (which leads to the well-paying jobs, and thus money begets money) is no socuety at all - it's a market (just like good old Maggie envisioned).
(rant mode off - I'm old and unwell, that's my excuse)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 11:55 am (UTC)Comments
1.b. The other part of this calculation isn't just that universities are underfunded, but also what the universities are teaching, and how they are best serving the economy and society. It may well be that much of academia has fractional value to broader society and economy. Wicked Thatcherite thinking, I'll readily admit, but when faced with budget limitations...
2. the chick - I suppose, seeing her photo, I'd say 'meh.' Without seeing her in action, I don't know how impressed I should be. I still think my gf is cuter though. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 01:24 pm (UTC)No kidding. Tch, I remember the days when the Labour Party stood for reasonable common sense values... etc etc. :/
I'm quite surprised at the number of people suggesting that "less students" is a reasonable solution to the cost of education (even more so given that many of the suggestees are graduates themselves).
Yeah, I'm actually quite surprised and disheartened about that myself; you would have thought that those who would have most sympathy with new students entering education would be the current generation of University graduates. For me, that's not a serious option - not only am I morally inclined towards education for all, but there's also the logistical question of 'how do you determine what is a correct number of University applicants?' - something which is, I would hope, unlikely to come up on a governmental level.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 02:11 pm (UTC)The only change I would argue for, is that the post-payment fee should be standardised across the board (i.e. at a nationally fixed level for all subjects & institutions) - with the exception of a discount (20-30%) for mathematics/physical sciences/engineering (to be made up by the government), since we could do with rather more graduates in these areas.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 01:08 am (UTC)The point about the 'less students' option (at least in my mind) is that it's not based on income. The solution is not 'only the richest people go to university' it's 'all the people who currently go to university because it's the done thing but would actually be better off doing something else' stop going so that everyone who should be going can go.
It's more about 'better selectivity' than 'less students' per se; brutally, I believe that if universities were honest and rigorous in selecting students who have (a) the ability and (b) the inclination to really make the most of a degree, then the maximum percentage of school-leavers they'd be taking would be less than the number of people that are going to university now.
I suppose this sounds horribly snobbish, but I don't mean it to be; I fervently agree that everyone should have available to them as much education as they want.
Part of the problem is that the current primary and secondary system (my years definitely included) doesn't provide enough education. The level of science you have to know to pass the standard GCSE is laughable. Ditto economics, ditto languages, ditto almost everything else you can think of. I got away without learning history, either ancient or modern, after the age of 14. That should not be possible. And too much of what should be taught at schools has been defaulted to university.
So in my view, restoring the balance, and making university about those who really want further study would pretty much by definition reduce student numbers.
Re: Ironically
Date: 2004-01-22 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-23 09:29 am (UTC)Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02", to be precise).
-- Tom
no subject
Date: 2004-01-23 09:34 am (UTC)Precisely. Making people pay for their own education will drive smart, highly qualified people into careers that pay well rather than that benefit society.
Or, to pick and example that doesn't make us look quite so much like whining academics: teaching, nursing, the civil service, charities, etc.
-- Tom