Archive for the Politics Category
Everybody Knows…
Posted in Music, Politics with tags Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen on November 30, 2011 by telescoperFor all the Saints who from their Labours Rest
Posted in Politics with tags November 30th, pensions, Politics, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sine Nomine, strike on November 30, 2011 by telescoperThis morning’s hymn is Sine Nomine, No. 641 from the English Hymnal, and is chosen in honour of all those participating in today’s public sector pension strikes.
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Posted in Education, Politics with tags admissions, England, HEFCW, Research Excellence Framework, UCAS, Universities, Wales, Welsh Assembly Government on November 28, 2011 by telescoperOnly time for a short post today, so I thought I’d just pass on a link to the latest Higher Education application statistics, as reported by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS).
It’s still several weeks before the UCAS deadline closes in January so it’s too early to see exactly what is happening, but the figures do nevertheless make interesting reading.
The total number of applications nationally is down by 12.9% on last year, but the number of applications from UK domiciled students has fallen by 15.1%; an increase in applications from non-EU students is responsible for the difference in these figures.
Non-science subjects seem to be suffering the biggest falls in application numbers; physical sciences are doing better than average, but still face a drop of 7% in numbers. Anecdotal evidence I’ve gleaned from chatting to Physics & Astronomy colleagues is that some departments are doing very well, even increasing on last year, while others are significantly down. It is, however, far too early to tell how these numbers will translate into bums on seats in lecture theatres.
A particular concern for us here in Wales are the statistics of applications to Welsh universities. The number of English-domiciled applicants to Welsh universities is down by 17.4% while the number of Welsh applicants to Welsh universities is down by 15.2%. On the other hand, the number of Welsh applicants to English universities is down by just 5.3%.
The pattern of cross-border applications is particularly important for Welsh Higher Education because of the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy of subsidizing Welsh-domiciled students wherever they study in the United Kingdom, a policy which is generous to students but which is paid for by large cuts in direct university funding. The more students take the WAG subsidy out of Wales, the larger will be the cuts in grants to Welsh HEIs.
Moreover, in the past, about 40% of the students in Welsh universities come from England. If the fee income from incoming English students is significantly reduced relative to the subsidy paid to outgoing Welsh students then the consequences for the financial health of Welsh universities are even more dire.
Although it is early days the figures as they stand certainly suggest the possibility that the number of Welsh students studying in England will increase both relative to the number staying in Wales and relative to the number of English students coming to study in Wales. Both these factors will lead to a net transfer of funds from Welsh Higher Education Institutions to their English counterparts. I think the policy behind this is simply idiotic, but by the time the WAG works this out it may be too late.
Another interesting wrinkle on the WAG’s policy can be found in a piece in last week’s Times Higher. We’re used to the idea that people might relocate to areas where schools or local services are better or cheaper, but consider the incentives on an English family who are thinking of the cost of sending their offspring to University. The obvious thing for them to do is to relocate to Wales in order to collect the WAG subsidy which they can then spend sending their little dears to university in England. That will save them tens of thousands of pounds per student, all taken directly from the Welsh Higher Education budget and paid into to the coffers of an English university.
There are already dark rumours circulating that the WAG subsidy will turn out to be so expensive that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales is thinking of cancelling all its research funding. That means that Welsh universities face the prospect of having to take part in the burdensome Research Excellence Framework, in competition with much better funded English and Scottish rivals, but getting precisely no QR funding at the end of it.
And all this is because the Welsh Assembly Government wants to hand a huge chunk of its budget back to England. Is this how devolution is supposed to work? Madness.
Follow @telescoperGoodbye Dolly
Posted in Cricket, Politics with tags apartheid, Basil D'Oliveira, cricket on November 19, 2011 by telescoperThis is turning out to be a sad month for cricket fans, for today saw the death of legendary all-rounder Basil D’Oliveira. “Dolly”, as he was affectionately known, was born in South Africa but was unable to play first-class cricket there because of the apartheid regime’s policy of racial segregation; as a “Cape Coloured” he wasn’t allowed to play what was basically a whites-only game. He emigrated to England in 1960 and was subsequently picked to play for England and quickly established himself as an excellent player at Test level. Selected basically as a batting all-rounder, and usually coming in between 5 and 7 in the order, his average was over 40, and he scored 5 centuries in 44 Test matches in a career that lasted from 1966 to 1972. These are impressive figures, especially considering that his Test career didn’t even start until he was in his mid-thirties.
His selection (as a late replacement) for the England side that was to tour South Africa in 1968 precipitated the D’Oliveira Affair, which led to South Africa being ostracised from international cricket until the end of apartheid in the 1990s. Although this episode must have been personally distressing for him, D’Oliveira behaved with great courage and dignity throughout and won many admirers on and off the field, and the warmth of the tributes being paid in today’s media demonstrate the high regard in which he was held by cricketers, fans of the sport, and by campaigners against racism.
Rest in peace, Basil D’Oliveira (1931-2011), one of the true gentlemen of cricket.
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University Admissions in Uncharted Territory
Posted in Education, Politics with tags admissions, fees, Higher Education, Leighton Andrews, UCAS, Wales, Welsh Assembly Government on October 26, 2011 by telescoperIt turns out I have a few minutes spare before going to our staff Away (half) Day this afternoon, so I thought I’d pass on another interesting bit of news that came out this week.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Services, known to all and sundry as UCAS, has released some interesting statistical information on numbers of applicants to UK universities and how this compares with the corresponding stage in the admissions timetable last year.
We’re still very early on in the process so it would be unwise to read too much into the figures available so far. The big question, however, is whether the ConDem government’s decision to raise fees for university students to £9K per annum has had any effect on the number of students applying. In fact the headline figure is that after several years of growth in overall applicant numbers, the figures for 2012 entry are down 9% on last year. Still early days, of course, but it does look like the new fee levels may be having the deterrent effect we all expected.
Another interesting thing that struck me, from Table 6 of the UCAS analysis, is that the number of students applying to study courses in the physical sciences (including Physics & Astronomy) is down by just 1.6% on the same stage last year, compared to an average of 7.9% across all subjects. (Note that this is not the same as the 9% mentioned above, because students get more than one choice of course..).
Of particular interest to us in Wales is the breakdown of applicants by domicile and choice of institution. From Table 4 we see that the number of English students applying to Welsh Universities is down 13.4%, while the number of Welsh-domiciled students applying to study in England is down by only 4.3%. If this differential persists then it will have a big impact on the Welsh Higher Education sector, because of the Welsh Assembly Government’s decision to cut funding for Welsh Universities in order to pay for its subsidy for Welsh students wanting to study in England.
It’s too early to predict what will happen to overall student numbers for 2012/13, but I’m sure planning officers in universities all around the UK will be looking at the interim figures with a considerable degree of anxiety.
Follow @telescoperWho needs the University of Wales?
Posted in Education, Politics with tags academic, Higher Education, Leighton Andrews, Universities, University of Wales, UWIC, Wales on October 12, 2011 by telescoperI couldn’t resist a quick and possibly inflammatory, comment about the University of Wales affair.
I’m not sure how much this story has spread outside Wales, but it’s relatively easy to summarise quickly. The University of Wales has had a complicated history which I won’t go into details about, but in essence it used to be the only University in Wales; my current employer, Cardiff University, for example, was for a long time a College of the University of Wales. In 1992 the special status of the University of Wales changed when the former Polytechnic of Wales became the University of Glamorgan. In subsequent years a number of institutions within the University of Wales, including the College of Cardiff in 2004, sought and were granted the ability to award their own degrees rather than degrees accredited by the University of Wales and so effectively became independent. As a consequence, the importance of the University of Wales in the landscape of Welsh Higher Education rapidly dwindled to the point where it was a “rump” of an institution accrediting degrees for just a few relatively small institutes.
Having spent some time in my career working in London, it seems to me that there’s at least superficially a striking parallel between the situation in Wales and that surrounding the former colleges of the University of London, most of which now award their own degrees rather than University of London degrees. The University of London nevertheless still exists, though I’ve never really understood why.
It tends to be the case that administrative structures refuse to die a natural death but instead try to find new things to administer. In order to justify itself, the University of Wales diversified into accrediting degrees from a host of smaller institutions both at home and abroad. To cut several long stories very short, much of its business in recent years has been dodgy to say the least. The University of Wales’ involvement in visa scams and the selling of bogus degrees are just two of the revelations that have led to many calling for the organisation to be scrapped altogether, prominent among them being the Welsh Assembly Minister responsible for higher education, Leighton Andrews.
The University of Wales “brand” has now become so tarnished that some of Welsh Higher Education institutions whose degrees it accredits now seem anxious to sever their ties altogether. The University of Wales, Institute of Cardiff (UWIC) wishes to change its name to Cardiff Metropolitan University and award its own degrees.
I think it’s quite clear that the University of Wales is now damaged beyond repair and should be dissolved, although the mechanism by which this can be achieved is unclear as universities are independent charitable institutions, not run directly from government. So egregious has been the conduct of the senior management of this organisation, however, that I’m sure a way can be found to wind it up. I just can’t see how it can possibly survive these scandals.
Unfortunately, dissolution in itself will not repair the damage already done; some institutions under the University of Wales umbrella will surely find that, through no fault of their own, a great deal of mud will stick.
Leighton Andrews has already called – rightly, in my view – for a reduction in the number of universities in Wales, most of which are small. In my neck of the woods, South-east Wales, for example, a game of musical mergers has been going on for months already between UWIC, Glamorgan and the University of Wales, Newport but no concrete plans have emerged. In my opinion the region can only sustain one world-class, research intensive university and one teaching led “new” university. Will the chaos generated by the public disintegration of the University of Wales make it easier or harder to achieve this?
But I can’t help feel sad about the inevitable demise of the University of Wales, which seems to me to be more of a tragedy than a farce. Its problems can all be traced back to the terrible decision, taken by the Conservative government in 1992, to allow the polytechnics to call themselves universities. Wales was much better off when it had one University and one Polytechnic, and neither had to prostitute itself to make ends meet.
Follow @telescoperWhere were you on 9/11?
Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags 9/11, A New Era in Cosmology, Durham on September 11, 2011 by telescoperI’m up unusually early, especially for a Sunday, because I have to finish a mountain of work for the impending meetings of the Astronomy Grants Panel. For the same reason I’ll keep this brief.
At the risk of contributing to the deluge of (mainly mawkish) reminiscences about the happenings on this day a decade ago, let me just give a brief account of my recollection. The events of 9/11 are, I suspect, etched on many a memory in much the same way as people remember what they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated.
For what it’s worth, I was actually at a conference on that day. It was called A New Era in Cosmology, and was hosted in the fine city of Durham; in fact one of the organisers was a certain Tom Shanks, an occasional commenter on this blog. What I remember is sitting listening to one of the talks – I can’t remember who it was by, and might even have been asleep – when a dear friend of mine, Manuela, came running down the aisle, stopped by me, tugged my arm, mumbled something about the “Twin Towers” and then ran back up the stairs and out of the lecture theatre. Thinking it was something to do with Wembley Stadium, I followed her out and she explained what had happened. We found a TV set, around which a crowd had already formed. I remember watching it all over and over again, even late at night when I got back to my hotel, not knowing how to respond to something of such enormity.
The loss of human life turned out to be much less than expected and was subsequently dwarfed by the tens of thousands killed in Iraq as the British and US governments used the events of that day as a pretext to carry out the invasion of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Thus the cycle of hatred spins ever more viciously. When will the next atrocity strike, and on which side?
Anyway, my point is not the politics but to invite a bit of audience participation. While I’m busy slaving over hot grant applications, would anyone like to contribute their memories from that fateful day? If so, the comment box awaits your entry…
Follow @telescoperDare to Be Dumb (via Climate Denial Crock of the Week)
Posted in Politics with tags climate change, Politics on September 5, 2011 by telescoperI came across this interesting polemic about climate change denialism and because I’m going to be too busy today to post anything original I thought I’d reblog it here.
Someone told me off last week for my “Academic Journal Racket” post, arguing that polemics never advance an argument. I disagree, actually. Polemics are good, as long as they’re good polemics.
via Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Follow @telescoperNo Pasaran
Posted in Biographical, History, Music, Politics with tags EDL, Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, No Pasaran, Zinica on September 4, 2011 by telescoperYesterday’s attempt by the so-called English Defence League (a group of violent Neo-Nazi thugs) to stir up trouble in the East End of London was the cue for thousands of anti-fascists to stage a counter-demonstration. Many were worried that this would lead to a repeat of the Battle of Cable Street, but thankfully that didn’t happen. While it’s reassuring that the number of of EDL supporters amounted to just a few hundred – many fewer than those who protested against them – it still fills me with sadness that there are even that many people who are prepared to follow such an organization. The lessons of history make it clear that the journey they want to take will lead to an England that isn’t worth defending, so they must be stopped at the outset with every peaceful means possible.
I wasn’t able to get to London for the demonstration, but if I had it would no doubt filled me with nostalgia because the anti-EDL protestors were chanting “¡No pasarán!” (“They Shall Not Pass“), a slogan redolent with nostalgia for me, from my time as a student leftie, and which dates from the heroic defence of Madrid against Franco’s fascists during the Spanish Civil War. In those days (when I was student, I mean, not during the Spanish Civil War!) I was a member of the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and remember hearing the band, Zinica, singing a song with that title (which I’ve put below). I even bought their album, Bluefields Express, which I still have.
The members of Zinica hailed from the caribbean cost of Nicaragua which was extensively settled by English people, so a number of the towns in that area have English names, such as Bluefields. Many of their songs were based on traditional English folk songs, especially sea shanties, but with a definite flavour of calypso and reggae.
Anyway, now in my complacent middle age, I thank the EDL for one thing only – reminding me of the sad fact that fascism remains a threat to which we all must be alert. Next time the EDL try to incite violence again, I’ll definitely be among those protesting against them.
No pasarán.
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Posted in Education, Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags A-levels, Campaign for Science and Engineering, Cardiff University, HEFCW, Physics, UCAS, Wales on August 14, 2011 by telescoperNow that I’m back from my trip to Copenhagen, it’s going to be back to work with a vengeance. To those of you who think academics have massively long summer breaks, I can tell you that mine ends on Monday when I will be doing a stint as Acting Head of School. That’s not usually a particularly onerous task during the summer months, but next week happens to be the week that A-level results come out and it promises to be a hectic and critical period. It’s obviously a sheer coincidence that all the other senior professors have decided to take their leave at this time…
There are several reasons for this being a particularly stressful time. First the number of potential students applying to study Physics (and related subjects) this forthcoming academic year (2011/12) in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University was up by a whopping 53% on last year. I blogged about this a few months ago when it became obvious that we were having a bumper year.
The second reason is that Cardiff’s School of Physics & Astronomy has been given a big increase in funded student numbers from HEFCW. In fact we’ve been given an extra 60 funded places (over two years), which is a significant uplift in our quota and a much-needed financial boost for the School. This has happened basically because of HECFW‘s desire to bolster STEM subjects as part of a range of measures related to the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for the regions. Preparations have been made to accommodate the extra students in tutorial groups and we’re even modifying one of our larger lecture rooms to increase capacity.
Unfortunately the extra places were announced after the normal applications cycle was more-or-less completed, so the admissions team had been proceeding on the basis that demand would exceed supply for this year so has set our undergraduate offers rather high. In order to fill the extra places that have been given to us late in the day, even with our vastly increased application numbers, we will almost certainly have to go into the clearing system to recruit some of the extra students.
In case you didn’t realise, universities actually get a sneak preview of the A-level results a couple of days before the applicants receive them. This helps us plan our strategy, whether to accept “near-misses”, whether to go into clearing, etc.
On top of these local factors there is the sweeping change in tuition fees coming in next year (2012-13). Anxious to avoid the vastly increased cost of future university education many fewer students will be opting to defer entry than in previous years. Moreover, some English universities have had cuts in funded student places making entry highly competitive. As an article in today’s Observer makes clear, this all means that clearing is likely to be extremely frantic this year.
And once that’s out of the way I’ll be working more-or-less full time until late September on business connected with the STFC Astronomy Grants Panel, a task likely to be just as stressful as UCAS admissions for both panel members and applicants.
Ho hum.
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In the Dark 