IN DEFENCE OF STUDENT POLITICS

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged 1968, activism, anti-apartheid, climate change, criticism, featured, fossil free, higher education, Hogwarts, marketisation, medicine, mental health, nurses, NUS, palestine, politics, postgraduate, precarious labour, privilege, science, social work, solidarity, stereotypes, student activism, student debt, student politics, students, students' unions, teachers, trade unions, vietnam war, voting, working class.

By Bradley Allsop

The only way to make the word ‘politics’, that great indicator of all manner of corruption and trickery, more contemptible is to plonk the word ‘student’ in front of it. It almost feels like you‘re not pronouncing ‘student politics’ right if you do it without a sneer, or at least a shudder. Student politics has an image problem.

AN OPEN LETTER ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION OFFICER

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #UEAVotes, accountability, conference grant fund, Courage Project, democracy, featured, HEFCE, Martin Marko, mental health, pg (su), PGR, PGT, postgraduate, postgraduate assembly, postgraduate committee, postgraduate education officer, student politics, UEA, UEA SU, UEA Union Council.

The following is an open letter, from a UEA Postgraduate SU volunteer who wishes to remain unnamed, received by The Norwich Radical on 13/03/19. We reproduce it here in full:

It is with deep regret that I write this statement concerning the conduct of one of our elected representatives at the UEA Students’ Union, with whom I’ve worked closely with over this past academic year: Martin Marko, the Postgraduate Education Officer currently standing for re-election. I feel compelled to write this given my responsibility and accountability to postgraduates at UEA as Chair of Postgraduate Committee. While I regret having to comment on Marko’s performance, his lack of professionalism has forced me into a position where either I remain silent and allow him to go unchallenged, or I speak up and make known my experience of working with him this year. It is important for me to make clear that this letter is in no way a comment on the Student Union’s electoral processes nor an endorsement for any other candidate. Nonetheless, given Marko’s decision to stand for re-election, I feel obliged to publish this letter.

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.

BEYOND TUITION FEES #11 – MUCH TO LEARN, MORE TO DO

Posted on July 12, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged activism, adult education, associate tutors, Beyond Tuition Fees, campaigning, capitalism, co-operatives, Community, consumerism, corbyn, crisis, exploitation, featured, food, Free Education, government, higher education, housing, international students, labour party, learning, market, marketing, marketisation, neoliberalism, NUS, postgraduate, profit, resistance, strategy, student activism, student debt, students' unions, tuition fees, uk, unions, universities, university management, university staff, utopia.

By Bradley Allsop and Rowan Gavin

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. In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green have brought together perspectives from across the sector to explore the possibilities of post-fees HE. In the final instalment, the series editors summarise the visions for the next chapter of UK HE that the series has laid out.

There is more energy, debate and innovation on the left now than there has been for decades. Capitalism’s multiple crises, and the inability of its defenders to respond to them, are beginning to translate into tangible political opportunity. This series sought to capture the essence of some of this historical moment and direct it towards thinking about what we want our university campuses to look like, beyond the staple progressive policy of scrapping tuition fees. A project in unashamedly utopian thinking, it recognised the very real possibility that free tuition might be a reality in the near future, and sought to explore how this requires the left to think practically about what comes after and where our energy should be focused next.

EDUCATION IN ADULTHOOD – BEYOND TUITION FEES #10

Posted on June 26, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Access to Higher Education, adult education, apprenticeships, Beyond Tuition Fees, casualisation, childcare, colleges, corbyn, distance learning, evening classes, featured, further education, higher education, Labour, Labour Party Manifesto, learning, living grants, National Education Service, Open University, phD, postgraduate, schools, tuition fees, universities.

By Dan Davison

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.

Being a PhD student is an oft-frustrating experience. As well as bearing the brunt of rife casualisation in the education sector, at times I find myself longing for release into the ‘real world’, having been a student for so long. Despite these frustrations, I have recently come to appreciate how much I have learned in my years as a postgraduate. Not just what I was taught on my Master’s and PhD courses, but also what I’ve gained from my access to university resources, including library collections and online databases, and the opportunity associate with other educated people from different walks of life. In terms of both scholarship and life experience, I have learned far more in my postgraduate mid-twenties than I ever did from my undergraduate years.Continue Reading

EXAMS SHOULD BE ABOLISHED – HERE’S WHY

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged A-levels, assessment, campaigning, capitalism, casual employment, ChildLine, commodification, consumerism, counselling, education, employment, exam abolition, exams, featured, further education, GCSEs, higher education, hourly-paid tutors, knowledge, marketisation, May '68, mental health, mental health services, national curriculum, NSPCC, Paris '68, phD, postgraduate, postgraduate tutors, revision, schools, skills, stress, student activism, student mental health, teachers, UCL, UCU, undergraduate, universities, university drop outs, workforce, zero hours contracts.

By Dan Davison

Examinations are woven into the fabric of student life. From the ‘Key Stage’ National Curriculum assessments I sat in childhood through to the tests I took as a Master’s student, every stage of my education has known the familiar cycle of revision, testing, marking and grading. It was not until I became a precariously employed university tutor that I realised how dangerously uncritical we are of that cycle. By this point it seems so natural to make people sit exams at various points in their lives that it scarcely occurs to the public consciousness that students and teachers might be better off without such a regimented approach to learning.

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, collective action, consumer law, consumer rights, consumerism, contact hours, corbyn, counselling, course closures, education, Free Education, funding, government, higher education, Labour, market regulators, marketing, marketisation, office for students, picket lines, policy, postgraduate, postgraduate education officer, postgraduate tutors, precarious contracts, profit, public, regulation, research, risk, specialist courses, state-funded education, student protection plans, students, students' unions, Success as a Knowledge Economy, taxation, tef, Tories, tuition fees, UCU, UEA SU, uk, UK Research and Innovation, universities, university collapses, USS strike, utopianism.

By Maddie Colledge, UEA SU Postgraduate Education Officer

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.

CW: Mentions suicide

It’s common for arguments in favour of free education to be dismissed as abstract or utopian, and for students who promote it to be belittled as naïve. I fear that in our attempts to try to portray the significance of free education, we have fallen into a trap where the concept has become so expansive and broad, and the term so overused, that it has lost all meaning. We need to move away from talking about ‘free’ education, and towards articulating a vision more explicitly centred on ‘state-funded’ education or ‘public’ education. For me, the description ‘free’ makes the concept feel distanced from the viable possibility of education funded through public taxation, and does us no favours in making it reality.

REFLECTIONS FROM THE PICKET LINE

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #USSstrike, academia, academic staff, City University of London, education, featured, imposter syndrome, marketisation, media, media bias, pensions, picket line, postgraduate, postgraduate tutors, strike action, teaching, tuition fees, UCU, union ballot, universities, university staff, USS.

By Alex Powell

During the UCU strike over the proposed cuts to the USS pension scheme, I was on the picket line almost every day, rising early to join colleagues all over the country in standing outside university buildings and telling those who tried to enter what we were fighting for. Often, the media attempts to portray strikers as lazy, suggesting that they simply cannot be bothered to do their jobs. Other times strikers are represented as greedy, suggesting that they are already doing far better than the rest of the country and now they want more. I want to offer another perspective – direct from the picket line – charting how being on strike has strengthened my relationships with colleagues, raised morale among staff and made me a better teacher.

WEEKENDS MATTER – WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN ACADEMIA

Posted on November 9, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academia, academics, email, higher education, KEF, mental health, postgraduate, REF, research, students, tef, weekend, wellbeing, work, work-life balance, working conditions, working life, workload.

by Alex Powell

From the outside, it may appear that students and academics have pretty comfortable lives. We can largely work how and when we want. I frequently lie in past 10am and often come back home after just a 6-hour working day. But despite appearances, this doesn’t mean that we have it super easy. As I am finding more and more, maintaining a good work-life balance can be a real struggle – a struggle that academics and students around the world are all too familiar with.

CANAPES, CONFERENCES AND CLASS DISCRIMINATION – ACADEMIA IN 2017

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #LiberateMyDegree, academia, academic culture, accessibility, Aristotle, assessment, BME, BME academics, bursaries, casualisation, class, conferences, curricula, disability, disabled academics, discrimination, diversity, education, erasure, exclusion, hidden costs, higher education, history, legislation, Lisa McKenzie, Louise Richardson, LSE, middle class, minority groups, NUS, politics, postgraduate, poverty fund, psychology, recognition, Sally Hunt, scholarships, sexual harassment, state funding, student support, subsidies, truth, UCU, understanding, universities, VC salaries, Vice Chancellors, women academics, workers rights, working class, working class erasure, working class movement.

by Bradley Allsop

CW: mentions sexual harassment

A teacake and a portable phone charger. Unlikely objects to trigger a tirade against the state of academic practices in the UK, but here you are, about to read one anyway.

postgraduate

AN OPEN LETTER ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION OFFICER

BEYOND TUITION FEES #11 – MUCH TO LEARN, MORE TO DO

EDUCATION IN ADULTHOOD – BEYOND TUITION FEES #10

EXAMS SHOULD BE ABOLISHED – HERE’S WHY

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

REFLECTIONS FROM THE PICKET LINE

WEEKENDS MATTER – WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN ACADEMIA

CANAPES, CONFERENCES AND CLASS DISCRIMINATION – ACADEMIA IN 2017

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