Archive for the Politics Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

University Admissions in Uncharted Territory

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , , on October 26, 2011 by telescoper

It 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.

1 Comment »

Who needs the University of Wales?

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , , on October 12, 2011 by telescoper

I 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.

59 Comments »

Where were you on 9/11?

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags , , on September 11, 2011 by telescoper

I’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…

29 Comments »

Dare to Be Dumb (via Climate Denial Crock of the Week)

Posted in Politics with tags , on September 5, 2011 by telescoper

I 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.

Dare to Be Dumb In “Confessions of a Climate Change Convert”, D. R. Tucker explained the change in consciousness that came to a conservative writer after seriously looking at the evidence for  anthropogenic climate change. Today, he offers another insight into the conservative's climate quandary. The amusement parks I visited when I was a child had signs indicating that one had to be “this tall” in order to go on a ride. Viewing the endless stream of op-eds and … Read More

via Climate Denial Crock of the Week

42 Comments »

No Pasaran

Posted in Biographical, History, Music, Politics with tags , , , on September 4, 2011 by telescoper

Yesterday’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.

30 Comments »

Acting and Clearing

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags , , , , , , on August 14, 2011 by telescoper

Now 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.

2 Comments »

Riots: the only solution…

Posted in Politics with tags , , , , on August 11, 2011 by telescoper

Looking at the news feeds during my last evening in rainy Copenhagen, I see that the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Milliband, has weighed in with an armful of brand new platitudes he obviously acquired during the riots, including a dig at so-called “academic” studies into the causes of violent disorder.

I think this is a big mistake. A serious academic study would undoubtedly reveal a deep sociological  connection between mob violence of the type recently experienced in England and the soccer hooliganism of the 70s and 80s.  The pioneering research discussed in the following news clip offers a radical suggestion for solving the problem of youth violence.

2 Comments »

Keep the home fires burning

Posted in Biographical, Finance, Politics with tags , , , , on August 9, 2011 by telescoper

I’m in Copenhagen, yet again, for the third time in as many months, this time for a  workshop arranged by the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute. It’s my talk this morning, in fact, so although I’m up early I haven’t got much time to post. I have to work on my talk to see if there’s a way I can make it all fit in 30 minutes!

Copenhagen is a pretty familiar place to me, but this has to be the most unsettling trip I’ve ever made here. I’m not talking about the long delay at Heathrow airport before we took off; I’ve come to expect that. The airport clearly can’t cope with the level of traffic it is supposed to handle during the summer months, so you have to reckon on at least an hour delay inbound and outbound. Sitting on the tarmac for an hour while being told over and over again that it will be “just a few minutes” really does bring out the grumpy old man in me. Still,  at least I didn’t lose any luggage.

No, the reason this is such an unsettling trip is that back home in Blighty all hell seems to have broken lose, with riots in the streets of, first, London and now apparently Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. I was also on the march in 1990 that turned into the Poll Tax riot. I was appalled by the violence that day and got myself and my friends away from trouble as soon as it flared, but it has to be said that it did lead to a change in the law, something Parliament had failed to achieve.

Back to the present, I note that the Tesco at Bethnal Green, where I used to live, has apparently been looted. I hope all my friends in London are keeping themselves safe.

I don’t think there’s anything I can say about these riots that wouldn’t be ill-informed, unhelpful, or even downright stupid. I am however old enough to remember that such things have happened before, in deprived inner-city areas, including Liverpool and Bristol. The circumstances were similar too.  Given the public spending cuts that have hit community programmes extremely hard,  it doesn’t surprise me that some have decided to lash out, especially at the Police,  whose criminal collusion with the media over phone-tapping and draconian tactics in dealing with lawful protests has turned many others against them .

I find it hard to separate these signs of social disintegration from the large-scale economic landscape. The huge level of debt accumulated by banks during the Credit Crunch of 2008 has now been absorbed by governments across the globe, who are attempting to deal with it by cutting public spending rather than raising taxes. Meanwhile the bankers have accepted their bailouts with glee, paying themselves bonuses by the bucketful and no doubt squirreling away the dosh in the Cayman Islands. If the state sanctions greed on that scale, is it surprising that people at the bottom of the heap decide to join in by looting the local supermarket?

The young  have the right to feel particularly disillusioned. The current generation has lived beyond its means for too long and, realising it too late, is trying to pay for it by mortgaging the future. The opportunities our young people, especially those from less affluent  backgrounds, can look forward to, in terms of education and jobs, will be much poorer than my generation.

I’m not usually one to endorse the view of the Daily Telegraph, but I think this piece hits the nail pretty much on the head. As Karl Marx would have said, it’s all about alienation, and I can tell you it’s not just the “underclass” that’s feeling it at the moment.

None of which is to condone the violence: you can be angry with the looters and the arsonists and those engaged in wanton destruction, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to understand why it’s happening.

But I’m very afraid that there’s going to be a lot more of this. The sovereign debt crisis is far from over. In many ways it has only just begun. There will be deeper cuts in public spending, greater inequality, greater social divisions and more upheavals like this. I think we’re in for a rough ride. I’m just glad I’m no longer young.

24 Comments »

Cardiff News

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , on July 12, 2011 by telescoper

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about local affairs, but the emergence of three items of news in the past few days has given me an opportunity to remedy that.

First, and hot off the press this morning, is the news that Cardiff University has at last decided who its next Vice-Chancellor will be after the incumbent,  David Grant, retires next year. The lucky winner is Professor Colin Riordan, who is currently Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex (which apparently exists). His background is in the humanities, and his speciality post-war German literature. Since his previous institution doesn’t have a Physics Department, we’re probably  safe for a few years until he finds out Cardiff has one and decides to close it.

Anyway, Professor Riordan became a Vice Chancellor for the first time at the age of 48, which is the same age I am now. Maybe I should be climbing aboard the gravy train? I hear there’s a vacancy as Vice Chancellor at the University of Essex. I would apply, but I fear I have all the wrong vices…

That brings me to yesterday’s news that Cardiff University, along with all the proper most other universities in Wales, is to charge annual tuition fees of, you guessed it, £9K. This is despite recent reports that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) was set to refuse permission to set such high fees. I always thought it was inevitable that Welsh universities would want to charge as much as possible to bring funding levels closer to those in England, but it remains to be seen what effect the new regime will have on student recruitment.  The £9K level is substantially higher than the Welsh Assembly Government’s initial estimate of £7K so it also remains to be seen what the implications are for the WAG budget. We live in interesting times…

However, not wishing to end on a down note, I’ll finish by passing on a bit of up-beat news. Apparently – according to the esteemed National Geographic Magazine – Cardiff is one of the top ten places in the world to visit in 2011, coming in at Number 6 in  this rigorously compiled and totally objective league table. I’m usually a bit skeptical about such things, but who could possibly disagree with the ranking?

1. Muskoka Orange County, Ontario, Canada
2. Patagonia, Argentina
3. San Juan Islands, Washington
4. Minneapolis, Minnesota
5. Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
6. Cardiff, Wales
7. Stockholm Archipelago Sweden
8. Azores, Portugal
9. Roatan, Honduras
10. Istria, Croatia

Hang on a minute. Minneapolis? At Number 4?

6 Comments »

Welsh fee plans up in the air…

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2011 by telescoper

I had just finished the exciting job of marking my examinations and collating all the results with coursework when I noticed a rumour circulating on twitter about the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) having rejected plans by all Welsh universities to charge higher fees than the basic £4K laid down by the Welsh Assembly Government. The rumour later developed into a story on the NUS website and then on the local BBC News, Wales Online and the Times Higher.

In case you’re not up with the intricacies of Welsh Higher Education policy, universities here in the Principality will, from 2012, be allowed to charge fees of up to £9K per annum (as in England) if and only if they have approval from HEFCW for plans relating “to widening access and to improving the student experience.” Note there’s apparently no requirement of providing a better education in that. As a mere university teacher I have no idea at all what has gone into Cardiff University’s plan nor do I know why it is deemed satisfactory. Such things are done by our lords and masters in the University administration.

It does seem strange, though, that the process works this way, i.e. that HEIs have to produce plans that they hope will be accepted by HEFCW. Why doesn’t HEFCW simply tell the HEIs what they have to do to be able to charge the fees? I wonder how the clear the guidance from HEFCW was. It might be a case of “Read my mind to see what I want, and if you don’t give it to me I’ll shoot you”.

Universities wishing to charge £9K (which is, predictably, nearly all of them) had to submit their plans to HEFCW by the end of May. Several universities did so, including Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Bangor, and even Glamorgan, who all want to charge the maximum £9K. HEFCW has now announced that none of them meet the standard needed to charge more than £4k. There’s still quite a bit of time for universities to amend their plans before the deadline of 11th July, so this is by no means the end of the story, but it has certainly set alarm bells ringing where I work!

The point is that the Welsh Assembly Government is heavily cutting the funds it allocates to Welsh Universities from 2012, so if institutions are not allowed to charge sufficiently high fees to recoup that loss then many departments are going to be in really big trouble, especially those teaching expensive subjects.

Education Minister Leighton Andrews is quoted as saying

I asked for Hefcw to be thorough and robust when scrutinising the fee plans submitted by our higher education and further education institutions. It is clear that they have been and I heartily endorse this.

There are a number of ways of reading the lie of the land here. One is that it’s actually a sensible process of consultation between individual institutions and HEFCW. Since this is uncharted territory for both there may well be things that need to be clarified on both sides, and HEFCW may therefore be engaging in a sensible process of consultation and iteration in order to help institutions produce acceptable plans. It could also represent an element brinkmanship, so the Minister and HEFCW can be seen to be flexing a bit of muscle, in contrast to the situation in England, where it appears the government has no power to prevent institutions charging higher fees. I always felt it was inevitable that Cardiff, as a Russell Group University, would want to charge £9K, but I can imagine Leighton Andrews being irritated by places like Glamorgan wanting to charge the same.

Whatever game is being played, it’s a very dangerous one and the stakes are very high. The Welsh Assembly Government has already indicated it will pay the fees of any Welsh domiciled students wherever they study in the UK. For the most part that will mean £9K per student per year for Welsh students wanting to study in England. If Welsh universities can only charge £4K per year for students coming from England to Wales then there will be a huge imbalance in funds flowing in and out of the higher education sector. In effect, the Welsh Assembly Government will be subsidising English universities at the expense of Welsh ones.

Currently the number of English students coming to Wales exceeds the number of Welsh students studying in England. The WAG’s plan relies on a net influx of funds to offset the cuts in central funding needed to pay student bursaries. However, English students do not come in equal numbers to all Welsh institutions. More come to Cardiff University than, say, Bangor. So how will this extra income from England benefit the Welsh HE sector generally? Is the proposal to cut HEFCW funds to Universities who succeed in attracting English cash cows students and redistribute the dosh among those institutions that don’t? That hardly seems equitable to me.

I’m certainly not in a panic about this news, although I may be on July 11th when we find out the final outcome. In the meantime, as a humble academic at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to such matters, I’ll get on with my teaching and research and pray that those in charge actually know what they’re doing…

20 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »