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The Welsh University Funding Debacle Continues…

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags , , , on February 24, 2015 by telescoper

Although I no longer work in Wales, I still try to keep up with developments in the Welsh Higher Education sector as they might affect friends and former colleagues who do. I noticed yet another news item on the BBC a week or so ago as a kind of update to another one published a few years ago about the effect of the Welsh Government’s policy of giving Welsh students bursaries to study at English universities. The gist of the argument is that:

For every Welsh student that goes to university across the border the fee subsidy costs the Welsh government around £4,500.

It means this year’s 7,370 first-year students from Wales who study in other parts of the UK could take more than £33m with them. Including last year’s students, the total figure is over £50m.

According to the latest news story on this, the initial estimate of £50M estimate grew first to £77M and is now put at a figure closer to £90M.

I did in fact make exactly the same point about five years ago on this blog, when former Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews announced that students domiciled in Wales would be protected from then (then) impending tuition fee rises by a new system of grants. In effect the Welsh Assembly Government would pick up the tab for Welsh students; they would still have to pay the existing fee level of £3290 per annum, but the WAG would pay the extra £6K. I wrote in May 2010:

This is good news for the students of course, but the grants will be available to Welsh students not just for Welsh universities but wherever they choose to study. Since about 16,000 Welsh students are currently at university in England, this means that the WAG is handing over a great big chunk (at least 16,000 × £3000 = £48 million) of its hard-earned budget straight back to England. It’s a very strange thing to do when the WAG is constantly complaining that the Barnett formula doesn’t give them enough money in the first place.

What’s more, the Welsh Assembly grants for Welsh students will be paid for by top-slicing the teaching grants that HECFW makes to Welsh universities. So further funding cuts for universities in Wales are going to be imposed precisely in order to subsidise English universities. This is hardly in the spirit of devolution either!

English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay full whack, but will be paying to attend universities whose overall level of state funding is even lower than in England (at least for STEM subjects whose subsidy is protected in England). Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England. If the new measures go ahead I can see fewer English students coming to Wales, and more Welsh students going to England. This will have deeply damaging consequences for the Welsh Higher Education system.

It’s very surprising that the Welsh Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, who form part of the governing coalition in the Welsh Assembly, have gone along with this strange move. It’s good for Welsh students, but not good for Welsh universities. I would have thought that the best plan for Welsh students would be to keep up the bursaries but apply them only for study in Wales. That way both students and institutions will benefit and the Welsh Assembly’s budget will actually be spent in Wales, which is surely what is supposed to happen…

Well, the changes did go ahead, and now the consequences are becoming clearer. The Chief Executive of Welsh university funding agency HEFCW, Dr David Blaney, is quoted as saying

“…in England, English students have to get a loan, so the top universities there have £9,000 coming from each student and also funding from the funding council.

In Wales, a lot of the funding council funding is now spent on the tuition fee grant and that means there’s less money available to invest in the Welsh sector than is the case in England,” he told BBC Wales in an exclusive interview.”

This also mirrors a concern I’ve also discussed in a blog post, which is that the Welsh Government policy might actually increase the number of Welsh students deciding to study in England, while also decreasing the number of other students deciding to study in Wales. Why would this happen? Well, it’s because, at least in STEM subjects, the tuition fee paid in England attracts additional central funding from HEFCE. This additional resource is nowhere near as much as it should be, but is still better than in Wales. Indeed it was precisely by cutting the central teaching grant that the Welsh Government was able to fund its bursaries in the first place. So why should an English student decide to forego additional government support by choosing to study in Wales, and why should a Welsh student decide to do likewise by not going to England?

I really hope the Welsh Government decides to change its policy, though whether an imminent General Election makes that more or less likely is hard to say.

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Is the 2015 General Election being rigged?

Posted in Brighton, Politics with tags , , , , on February 14, 2015 by telescoper

Just a few months ahead of the 2015 General Election (and some council elections, including here in Brighton) there’s something very worrying going on with the whole electoral process. For the 2014 European Parliament Elections last year I was on the electoral roll and used my vote as normal. However, last last year I discovered to my horror that I had been removed from the register here in Brighton. When I asked why, I was told by Brighton and Hove City Council (local councils oversee the election process) that I had to register afresh if I wanted to vote this May and that to do this I would have to supply personal details such as my National Insurance Number. This despite the fact that I have been resident at the same address in Brighton and have paid Council Tax at that address for two years.  I had received no communication from anyone to warn me that I was being removed from the elctoral roll and, as far as I’m aware, had I not asked I simply would not have been able to vote in the forthcoming elections.

I assumed that this was just some sort of administrative error, but I have since heard from many other people who have similarly been summarily kicked off the electoral roll for no obvious reason. One has to be wary of anecdotal evidence about things like this, but the issue seems to be a national one, related to a botched attempt to move to individual voter registration, as opposed to registration associated with a residential address. People move around much more than houses do, so there is much more information to track. The new system has been rushed through without the resources needed to support the vastly increased complexity of keeping track of individuals. For the 2015 elections over a million people who should be eligible to vote will will be absent from the electoral register, and this will mostly be the young and mobile (including students) and those in private rented accommodation in urban areas. The potential inlfluence of this effective disenfranchisement on the election result is obvious.

The more I read about this the more alarmed I have become. I am really starting to believe that this is a cynical attempt by vested interests to manipulate the outcome of the General Election, which will hinge on a relatively small number of key marginal seats where the votes of students and other young people could be crucial. It looks very sinister.

Anyone else had trouble getting on the Electoral Register? Please let me know through the Comments Box.

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Luqman Onikosi

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , on January 27, 2015 by telescoper

Yesterday my attention was drawn to the case of Luqman Onikosi, a postgraduate student at the University of Sussex, who is originally from Nigeria. Luqman has been granted temporary permission to reside in the United Kingdom based on his medical circumstances; he is suffering from Hepatitis B, for which far better treatment is available in the UK than in his home country. His immigration status is yet to be definitely resolved and in the meantime he is being treated, entirely according to established policy and practice, as an Overseas Student. He is therefore  liable to pay full Overseas Fees if he is to continue on his course, an MA in Global Political Economy, and currently can not afford to pay them.

It would be inappropriate for me to comment in further detail on Luqman’s case – not least because I don’t have much in the way of further detail to comment on – but I am happy to use the medium of this personal blog to draw the attention of readers to a crowdsourcing appeal that has started with the aim of collecting sufficient funds to enable him to continue his studies. You can find the website where you can find more information about the issues surrounding his case, and instructions on how to make a donation, here.

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Je Suis Charlatan

Posted in Politics with tags , , on January 21, 2015 by telescoper

This week’s Private Eye cover is spot-on about the hypocrisy of certain political leaders whose professed support free speech in France differs markedly from what goes on in their own country…

charlatan

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Mathematics, Astronomy and the National Secular Society

Posted in Biographical, History, Politics with tags , , , , on January 17, 2015 by telescoper

I imagine that a  great many people have been thinking hard recently about democracy, free speech and religious belief in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. There’s also been a great deal of stuff in the print media covering these issues. I just want to mention one thing that I have decided to do, namely to join the National Secular Society an organization that campaigns against religious privilege.

Let me reproduce a statement from their webpage here:

The National Secular Society works towards a society in which all citizens, regardless of religious belief, or lack of religious belief, can live together fairly and cohesively. We campaign for a secular democracy with a separation of religion and state, where everyone’s Human Rights are respected equally.

We work in the UK and Europe to challenge the disproportionate influence of religion on governments and in public life. We provide a secular voice in the media, defending freedom and equality as a counterbalance to the powerful religious lobby and some of the more destructive religious impulses that can threaten human rights worldwide.

The National Secular Society is a non-party-political organisation with members from across the social and political spectrum. Our Honorary Associates include MPs and peers, as well as leading figures from politics, journalism, law and the arts.

The NSS is a democratic and independent non-profit organisation which receives no funding from government or other public bodies. Our campaigning is wholly supported by our members and supporters, people like you who share our belief in the urgent need to keep religion and politics separate.

One of the National Secular Society’s very active current campaings is against the egregious Local Government (Religious etc Observances) Bill, which includes a provision that would require local councillors to attend sessions that involve prayers. This bill is wholly unacceptable to me, as it is perfectly possible for councillors of a religious persuasion to pray whenever they like, either before during or after a meeting, without requiring non-believers to be present.

I respect the right of others to whatever religious belief they choose and would not interrupt or disrupt an act of religious observance, but imposing such actions on others is simply unacceptable. I don’t think religious services should be imposed in schools and colleges, and I don’t see why this is any different.

Anyway, the general point is that I firmly believe that the only way we will ever develop a society that allows people of all cultures and beliefs to live in peace with each other and in atmosphere of mutual respect is to remove any reference to religion from our political and legal establishment. It’s a ridiculous anachronism that Bishops of the Church of England sit in the House of Lords, for example.

You’ll all no doubt be glad to know that I’m not going to “preach” about this at length here, although I may from time to time post on matters related to the National Secular Society (NSS), though hopefully in such a way as it doesn’t get confused with that other NSS the National Student Survey. I will however include a little story as a kind of postscript.

When I tweeted about the National Secular Society recently a friend of mine pointed out a curious connection between it, astronomy, and my former employer, Cardiff University. The first ever Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthsire (which eventually became Cardiff University) was a distinguished chap by the name of Henry William Lloyd Tanner, who was appointed to his position in 1883. In November 1883 there was a vigorous campaign by religious types to have him removed because of his connections with the National Secular Society (which was founded way back in 1866); you can read about it here. The campagign did not succeed, and H.W. Lloyd Tanner remained in post until 1909.

We have at least made some progress since 1883, in that nowadays a Professor would not be threatened with the sack on the basis of his religious beliefs or lack of them, but there’s a long way to go before our nation is a truly secular society.

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Fox News Facts on Twitter

Posted in Politics with tags , , , , , , on January 12, 2015 by telescoper

The following clip comes from a broadcast on Fox News:

The fact that Steve Emerson’s statement was laughably exaggerated and based entirely on ignorance (in this case of the city of Birmingham) comes as no surprise. After all, this was Fox News – a channel whose drivel-mongering is often beyond parody. It did however provoke two things that were surprising, at least to me.

One was something that is a rare commodity these days: a full and unreserved apology:

apology

It’s better not to say stupid things in the first place, but credit to him at least for doing the right thing. I gather he has made a donation to a children’s hospital in Birmingham. So there’s that.

The other surprising thing was what happened on Twitter. Some genius had the idea of setting up a hashtag called #FoxNewsFacts. The consequences were hilarious, as hundreds of people contributed tweets lampooning Fox News for its ignorance of the United Kingdom and of Islam. You can find some of the funniest ones here.

I even contributed a few myself. This one proved a particular hit:

There was also this:

and this

But my favourite was this:

I thought it was wonderful how Twitter users responded in such an imaginative, light-heartedly humorous, and sometimes downright surreal, way to something which could instead have produced pure bile. Twitter isn’t always like that, but yesterday it was a delight on a dark and stormy evening and a welcome change of mood after the depressing events of the last week. And I’m glad to say #FoxNewsFacts is still trending…so it’s not too late to have a go yourself!

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Lying is an Occupation

Posted in Poetry, Politics with tags , , on December 10, 2014 by telescoper
Lying is an occupation,
     Used by all who mean to rise;
Politicians owe their station,
     But to well concerted lies.
These to lovers give assistance,
     To ensnare the fair-one’s heart;
And the virgin’s best resistance
     Yields to this commanding art.
Study this superior science,
     Would you rise in Church or State;
Bid to Truth a bold defiance,
     ‘Tis the practice of the great.

by Laetitia Pilkington (1709-1750)

 

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Warning! Offensive Image…

Posted in Politics with tags , , , on November 21, 2014 by telescoper

van No reasonable person could possibly take offence at that tweet from Emily Thornberry, yet she has had to resignfrom the Shadow Cabinet because of it. It is beyond belief how pathetic British politics and the British media have become.

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Ice Watch

Posted in Art, Politics with tags , , , , , , on October 30, 2014 by telescoper

I thought I’d share this video about an installation called Ice Watch, which involves one hundred tonnes of inland ice from Greenland meltinging on the Radhusplads, Copenhagen’s City Hall Square. With Ice Watch, Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing direct attention to the publication of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report on the Earth’s Climate. The ice now melted, which happened faster than expected owing to the unusually warm weather for this time of year…

 

 

 

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No referenda, please..

Posted in Pedantry, Politics with tags , , , on September 20, 2014 by telescoper

One of the most interesting topics under discussion after the announcement of the results of Thursdays Referendum on Scottish independence is whether there will be another one which, in turn, leads to the question what is the proper plural of “referendum”?

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m never pedantic about such matters. Well, maybe a little bit, sometimes. Latin was my best subject at O-level, though, so I can’t resist making a comment.

Any dictionary will tell you that “referendum” is obtained from the Latin verb referre which is itself formed as re- (prefix meaning “back”) + ferre (to carry), thus its literal meaning is “carry back” or, more relevantly, “to refer”. Ferre is actually an irregular verb, so I’ll use simpler examples of regular verbs below

Latin grammar includes two related concepts derived from a verb, the gerund and the gerundive. The gerund is a verbal noun; such things exist in English in forms that mean the act of something, eg running, eating, loving. In the last case the relevant Latin verb is the first conjugation amare and the gerund is amandus. You can find a similar construction surviving in such English words as “graduand”. Note however that a gerund has no plural form because that would make no sense.

Related to the gerund is the gerundive which, as its name suggests, is an adjectival form related to the gerund, specifically expressing necessity.

In Latin, an adjective takes an ending that depends on the gender of the noun it describes; the gerundive also follows this pattern. In the example given above, the gerundive form is amandus in a masculine case or, if referring to a female entity, amanda, hence the name, which means “deserving or requiring love”, or amandum for a neuter noun. In cases where the noun is plural the forms would be amandi, amandae, and amanda. Endings for other verbs are formed in a similar fashion depending on their conjugation.

From this example you can see that in Latin amandum could mean either “loving” (gerund) or “a thing to be loved” (gerundive). Latin grammar is sufficiently clear, however, that the actual meaning will be clear from the context.

Now, to referendum. It seems clear to me that this is a gerundive and thus means “a thing to be referred” (the thing concerned being of no gender, as is normal in such cases in Latin). So what should be the word for more than one referendum?

Think about it and you’ll realise that referenda would imply “more than one thing to be referred”. The familiar word agenda is formed precisely this way and it means “(a list of things) to be done”. But this is not the desired meaning we want, ie “more than one example of a thing being referred”.

I would therefore argue that referenda is clearly wrong, in that it means something quite different from that needed to describe more than one of what a referendum is.

So what should we use? This is a situation where there isn’t a precise correspondence between Latin and English grammatical forms so it seems to me that we should just treat referendum as an English noun and give it the corresponding English plural. So “referendums” it is.

Any questions?

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