Bloody Students!

[Hurler on the Bitch]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11727998

Well done to the local students who condemned the violence in London today. However, just one thing? Who the feck paid for ye to travel to London for the protest. I would be suprised to hear that you have worked many late nights in some local bar to subsidise your soiree (plane, accommodation, expenses etc). Methinks that Mummy and Daddy - or Heaven forbid the Students' Union - paid for your freebee. Bottom line is that the fees are going up and this annual protest (second Wednesday every November) was just another excuse to seem 'radical'. Same every year. Get a life or more pointedly GET A JOB!

[pintsofguinness]

at least they get off their hole to protest while everyone else sit and moan.

[Tony Baloney]

at least they get off their hole to protest while everyone else sit and moan.

It'll achieve f**k. I remember all the crusties holding a skint demo in Belfast when we were at Queen's c.1998. We went on a pub crawl instead - much more useful activity.

[pintsofguinness]

at least they get off their hole to protest while everyone else sit and moan.

It'll achieve f**k. I remember all the crusties holding a skint demo in Belfast when we were at Queen's c.1998. We went on a pub crawl instead - much more useful activity.

Maybe not but it's better than sitting and moaning on internet discussion boards about the mess the place is in.

[screenexile]

They have every right to protest it's a f**king disgrace the way young people and in particular low income families are being treated by the Conservatives. Just over 10 years ago Students got a grant to attend University now they will have to fork out in excess of 30grand for a 4 year degree??

It's elitist and completely unfair. What they should be doing is making the rules more strict on who is entitled to what. Anyone pissing their education away should be getting their loans revoked or cancelled after a year. They should also ban these "full time" courses that last 9 hours a week for 3 years as they are total bullshit. Tell Uni's to get their houses in order rather than depriving ordinary people the right to a decent education!!

[Gabriel_Hurl]

They have every right to protest it's a f**king disgrace the way young people and in particular low income families are being treated by the Conservatives. Just over 10 years ago Students got a grant to attend University now they will have to fork out in excess of 30grand for a 4 year degree??

It's elitist and completely unfair. What they should be doing is making the rules more strict on who is entitled to what. Anyone pissing their education away should be getting their loans revoked or cancelled after a year. They should also ban these "full time" courses that last 9 hours a week for 3 years as they are total bullshit. Tell Uni's to get their houses in order rather than depriving ordinary people the right to a decent education!!

Leave Quantity Surveying alone 

[screenexile]

They have every right to protest it's a f**king disgrace the way young people and in particular low income families are being treated by the Conservatives. Just over 10 years ago Students got a grant to attend University now they will have to fork out in excess of 30grand for a 4 year degree??

It's elitist and completely unfair. What they should be doing is making the rules more strict on who is entitled to what. Anyone pissing their education away should be getting their loans revoked or cancelled after a year. They should also ban these "full time" courses that last 9 hours a week for 3 years as they are total bullshit. Tell Uni's to get their houses in order rather than depriving ordinary people the right to a decent education!!

Leave Quantity Surveying alone 

Does it take 9 hours a week to count a locka bricks?? Never would have thought that

[Aerlik]

Education is a right, not a privilige.  Perhaps if a bit less (read a fcuk of a lot less) money was spent pandering to the whims of ringmaster Uncle Sam, the education and health services would be in better shape.

[thewobbler]

Education is a right, but only to a certain level.

I'm sure some people on here feel that this right should extend all the way through 3rd level education, but thankfully these people aren't in charge of economic policies.

If we're going to give everyone of questionable academic ability, or questionable academic effort, the right to "read" media studies at tin pot institutions, then it should only be with a levy attached.

Ultimately, if everyone has a degree, then it isn't worth having.

Labour has spent the past 15 years pushing as many people as possible into universities for two reasons: a) to brag about a meaningless statistic that shows the country is getting smarter, and b) to keep dole queues down.

[ziggysego]

at least they get off their hole to protest while everyone else sit and moan.

It'll achieve f**k. I remember all the crusties holding a skint demo in Belfast when we were at Queen's c.1998. We went on a pub crawl instead - much more useful activity.

Maybe that's why. Rather than a united student front, some of yas fecked off to the pub to get slaughtered!

[mackers]

Education is a right, but only to a certain level.

I'm sure some people on here feel that this right should extend all the way through 3rd level education, but thankfully these people aren't in charge of economic policies.

If we're going to give everyone of questionable academic ability, or questionable academic effort, the right to "read" media studies at tin pot institutions, then it should only be with a levy attached.

Ultimately, if everyone has a degree, then it isn't worth having.

Labour has spent the past 15 years pushing as many people as possible into universities for two reasons: a) to brag about a meaningless statistic that shows the country is getting smarter, and b) to keep dole queues down.

You're right but the deciding factor on whether you should be able to go to university shouldn't be decided on the ability to pay huge fees. It should be based on academic criteria. Get all the media studies/politics (3 hours a week) courses into the Colleges of Further Education. Increase the grades required to get into university courses, that'll stop the wasters who piss the government/mummy and daddys money away for three years.

Education is a right to all levels for suitable courses.

[Newbridge Exile]

They have every right to protest it's a f**king disgrace the way young people and in particular low income families are being treated by the Conservatives. Just over 10 years ago Students got a grant to attend University now they will have to fork out in excess of 30grand for a 4 year degree??

It's elitist and completely unfair. What they should be doing is making the rules more strict on who is entitled to what. Anyone pissing their education away should be getting their loans revoked or cancelled after a year. They should also ban these "full time" courses that last 9 hours a week for 3 years as they are total bullshit. Tell Uni's to get their houses in order rather than depriving ordinary people the right to a decent education!!

Agree 100% SE, I started at the Poly in 1989, and got a grant of about £500 a term, got me through without a pile of debt as I was working on sites in the summer/easter etc, If i was at school now I( and my parents) would have to think long and hard if it was worth it going to University and come out of it with upto 20-30 grand of debt.( also in my day brick counting was 8 hours a week , 4 on a Monday and 4 on a Friday- I kid you not!!)

[thewobbler]

Mackers, unfortunately this is a bit like the 11-Plus argument.

Ultimately in education, when places are limited for any institution, there are only two clear methods for deciding who gets a place.

a. Academic selection
b. Financial selection

But when the overall system panders to egalitariasm - in that everyone must have the same opportunities at all times - what happens is that academic selection largely becomes irrelevant. Everyone ends up in the same place anyway. Schools get bigger, standards go down.

So an elite is created, in order to ensure smaller classes, better teachers, etc. That costs money, and that's when financial selection becomes the sole dictating factor in education standards.

Cue uproar from the less well off. The government intervenes and the elite is gradually brought back into line with the masses. Except at this point, the government can't afford to keep the masses in line, so the first levies are brought in.

Meanwhile, the elite reforms, except this time fully private, and with an even bigger financial undertaking required to join. The government keeps getting involved to bring them inline with the masses. This circle keeps turning until it reaches a point where the government just can't afford to intervene anymore; they can't send anyone to £25k a year colleges, it's just not financially viable.

And what's left behind is a hierarchy for third level education, in which only the truly rich can afford to attend the top universities, only the rich can afford to attend the good universities, only the middle class can afford to attend the decent universities, and so on.

Then ultimately, everyone with academic acumen has to pay for the privilege of third level education. The rich pay more, the poor pay less. But everyone though is worse off, and everyone's future career paths are in no small way determined by their parent's wealth.


The simple solution is to cap university places, remove fees, and make entry 100% based on academic selection, then to throw anyone out who abuses the privilege given to them. Yes, this means that hundreds of thousands of people will never get to experience waking up naked in bus shelters. But everyone in the country will have an equal opportunity to earn the right to do exactly that. It's the most equal system, even if it's not egalitarian.

[mackers]

Your last paragraph basically sums up my point. 
Gather up all the "piss-head" courses (using a more pc term) and farm them out to the Colleges of Further Education. Cap both the number of university courses and numbers allowed on them and remove the fees.  The academic criteria to get onto these courses will rise and if wee Johnny has had to work his butt off to get onto the course he's unlikely to spend much time naked in the bus shelter in a drunken mess.  Therefore the most academically gifted students will get onto the courses not the richest.

[Rois]

They should also ban these "full time" courses that last 9 hours a week for 3 years as they are total bullshit. Tell Uni's to get their houses in order rather than depriving ordinary people the right to a decent education!!

There's BSc Accounting at Queen's gone then.  Though I have to say, there weren't too many "naked bus shelter" characters in my class - all bar one or two had jobs by November of final year and most had to get 2.1s to guarantee them, so there wasn't an awful lot of slacking.