GRADE INFLATION, VESTED INTERESTS AND THE FAILURE OF MARKETISATION

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged competition, degrees, employment, featured, government, grade inflation, HESA, higher education, marketisation, media, Sam Gyimah, tef, Tories, tuition fees, universities, university vice chancellors, vested interests.

By Robyn Banks

Grade inflation is back in the headlines this week, with universities minister Sam Gyimah announcing that it will be incorporated into how universities are ranked under the Teaching Excellence Framework. There is statistical evidence to back up this policy change – according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the number of first class degrees being awarded has grown by 18% between 2012/13 and 2016/17. Whilst it is statistically true that grades are inflating at the university level, there are a number of issues with the current discourse around grade inflation that are not being properly addressed by HE decision makers.

BEYOND BURNOUT: TOWARDS COMPASSIONATE ACTIVISM

Posted on August 14, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged activism, burnout, campaigning, compassion, competition, cooperation, featured, grassroots, health, identity, mental health, movement, neoliberalism, politics, postgraduate, protest, social comparison.

By Anonymous

Being an ‘activist’ is a crucial part of my identity. It can be a difficult thing to be, in a society where ‘politics’ is a dirty word and its practice is often at best frowned upon, but I’m glad I’ve made it to this place. To be part of wider movements, making friends with incredibly talented, dedicated and inspiring people and, in my own flawed, stumbling way, trying to make the world a little bit better, is an enormous joy and privilege that not everyone gets to enjoy.

ANOTHER HIGHER EDUCATION IS ALREADY HERE – BEYOND TUITION FEES #8

Posted on May 12, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged 1963 Robbins Report, 1997 Dearing Report, 2010 Browne Review, academics, administrators, adult education, AntiUniversity NOW, authority, Beyond Tuition Fees, borders, capitalism, competition, corbyn, course closures, employability, featured, Free Education, grading, grassroots, higher education, Labour, Leicester Vaughan College, mental illness, metrics, Mondragon Unibertsitatea, nationalism, neoliberalism, privatisation, privilege, radical imagination, social inequality, Solidarity Acadamies, state funding, student debt, student loans, students, teaching, tuition fees, UCU strike, uk, Universidad de la Tierra, universities, university management, workers rights, workplace abuse.

By Sarah Amsler

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

‘The university’ is a fertile space within which to practice radical imagining and world-making today. I do not mean that actually-existing universities, in the UK or elsewhere, necessarily provide space for such work. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the spaces for critique and creative thinking in higher education have shrunk as forces of commodity fetishism, privatisation, competition and authoritarian modes of control have permeated university governance. Continue Reading

BLINDED BY IDEOLOGY – TWO YEAR DEGREES REVISITED

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged career focus, class, class divide, competition, cuts, economics, education, fast track degrees, first time buyers, Free Education, free school meals, government, grades, HE policy, higher education, ideology, interest, isolation, lower socio-economic backgrounds, market economics, mental health, mental health services, middle class, minority government, module diversity, money grab, overwork, state funding, student debt, student finance, student loans, student support, student welfare, students, teaching, teaching quality, The Student Room, time pressure, Times Higher Education, Tories, tuition fees, two tier system, two year degrees, underfunding, wealth inequality, working class, working class students.

by Robyn Banks

Back in March, the MinoriTory government announced the idea of running fast track two year degree courses in the hope of saving students money. Last week the Times Higher Education supplement revealed that surveyed students from lower socio-economic backgrounds would be more likely to take this option up if it existed. Could the Tories’ apparently hare-brained scheme in fact be justified?

AN IDEA: SOLVING THE HOUSING CRISIS

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged architects, banks, competition, external, homes, house builders, housing, housing crisis, housing prices, idea, income, Labour, local councils, new housing, royal engineers, rural communities, technology.

by Craig Hall

No one can argue that we have a housing crises. There are too few homes usually costing too much, often in the wrong places and often of poor quality. Not to mention rural communities suffering with cost of housing soaring beyond their means or the beach side type, dead in winter, consumed as second homes. These are all symptoms of a much bigger problem with the banks and house builders profiting from existing model.

The paradox of this is two fold. On the one hand you are asking builders to build more houses for less money, on the other, you’re asking the banks to lend money on lower borrowing because more houses will reduce prices leading to lower borrowing. It’s not rocket science.

So how about an idea which would reduce the costs and supply the demand in the right place and of the best quality? Oh, forgot to mention it would also generate, not cost, local councils with additional income.

GAME OF LOANS

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Community, Inter|national, Student and tagged business, coalition government, competition, consumer, education, education system, education tax, game of loans, Game of Thrones, graduates, inequality, live within our means, loans, monopoly, Pokémon, Queen, student experience, student loans, students, tef, tuition fees, tuition fees hike, UEA, university, university fees, University of East Anglia, university of manchester.

by Sam Naylor

I’m sure there were resounding cheers from students and would be university slackers when universities across England began detailing their 2017 tuition fee rates. Some places, like the University of Manchester, have already stated that 2017 students can enjoy a mild increase to £9,250 per year of undergraduate study, whilst institutions like our local favourite UEA have been more cautious on their website assuming a 3% inflationary increase year-on-year (which is pretty much the same thing but it’s like Manchester has included a picture of the middle finger whereas UEA has written hahaha in small letters.)

Some might think that the universities of Manchester, Kent, and Durham are jumping the gun a bit as MPs are yet to vote on the increase in parliament but I’d rather see it as an eager sign of increasing students’ experiences rather than a money grabbing exercise. We will all remember being constantly instructed by our most benevolent regime to ‘live within our means’ and that acquiring debt is terrible for a country but a must for university students.Continue Reading

competition

GRADE INFLATION, VESTED INTERESTS AND THE FAILURE OF MARKETISATION

BLINDED BY IDEOLOGY – TWO YEAR DEGREES REVISITED

AN IDEA: SOLVING THE HOUSING CRISIS

GAME OF LOANS

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