WHO DESERVES TEF GOLD? AND DOES IT MATTER?

Posted on June 28, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged access, boycotts, elitism, equality, fairness, government, graduate employment, HE Act, HE bill, higher education, league tables, marketisation, national student survey, NSS Boycott, NUA, privatisation, profit, progress, reductionism, russell group, Sauder and Espeland, Sauder and Espeland boycott, student satisfaction, teaching, teaching standards, tef, TEF metrics, Tories, tuition fees, UEA.

by Laura Potts

Last week, the first set of Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) rankings were released for 2017. The TEF is fairly complicated and students are rarely informed of how it works, or the possible implications it holds for the future of education. In short, it is a framework of metrics or measures introduced by the Tory government, ostensibly to assess teaching in higher education institutions in England. These metrics categorise two areas: student satisfaction and graduate earnings / employability. A lot of the data comes from the National Student Survey that final year students are often pressured to take part in. This years’ rankings gave some unexpected results for some of the UK’s most prestigious institutes, with many not doing as well as expected – only 8 of the 21 elite Russell Group universities were awarded ‘Gold’. This suggests that we should be cautious about taking the TEF results as accurate representations of institutions.

ELITISM REFUSES TO DIE – THE UNIVERSITY FUNDING PROBLEM

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged arts, charity research funding, community colleges, Connecticut, Connecticut University System, conservatives, course closures, cuts, david richardson, education, elitism, employability, fossil free, Fossil Free UEA, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, Freddie DeBoer, government, higher education, higher education funding, humanities, inequality, Ivy League, marketisation, mental health, mental health services, pay inequality, people and planet, public funding, rent hikes, russell group, STEM, student accommodation, student activism, Student Support Services, tuition fees, UEA, uk, UK Funding Councils, UK Research Councils, university management, USA, wages, Yale.

by Robyn Banks

Last month, Freddie DeBoer wrote about the failure of the university system in the United States to equally fund different institutions across the country. Looking specifically at Connecticut, DeBoer shows how Yale, one of the prestigious Ivy League universities, fuels social inequality by receiving public funds as well as other sources for revenue whilst other, more accessible community colleges are “cut to the bone”.

QUICKER ISN’T BETTER – PROFIT BEFORE HEALTH IN TWO YEAR DEGREES

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academic staff, casual employment, conservatives, counselling, government, higher education, Higher Education Bill, jo johnson, marketisation, mental health, national student survey, PhD students, profit, research, russell group, Sally Hunt, student life, tef, tuition fees, two year degrees, UCU, UEA, undergraduate, universities, zero hour contracts.

By Robyn Banks

Last week the government announced plans to allow students to complete an undergraduate degree within two years instead of the usual three. To facilitate this fast-track system, universities will be permitted to charge £13,000 a year in tuition fees for these courses. As many have already noted, it’s easy to see what this announcement really is: another step in the marketisation of higher education. UCU general secretary Sally Hunt described it as ‘another misguided attempt to allow for-profit colleges access to UK higher education.’ The government have become less and less tactless when it comes to putting profit before the education of students.

THOUGH IT MAY BE CRACKED, THE GLASS CEILING REMAINS

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged academia, admission, BME, class mobility, conservative politics, corbyn, counter intellectual, education, equality, EU referendum, gender, glass ceiling, inequality, liberation, migrant communities, minority groups, nelson, owen smith, politics, red brick, referendum, russell group, society, students, systematic inequality, tokenism, university, weaponisaton, white fragility, working class.

by Emmanuel Agu

Classically, a university education especially one of Russell group or Red-Brick standard universities has been marked as a distinction of class mobility, we know that the those in the upper percentage of wealth in this country are typically high academic achievers. Factually that merit of class distinction has belonged disproportionately to white men; though due to a long legacy of educational reform and positive action to break down these barriers, the goal of societal equality is ever more obtainable.

As Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator states: girls are 30% more likely to go to university than boys, and that BME students remain on the top end of university admission statistics; facts that deserve much celebration as they have been attained largely without positive discrimination quotas. Yet to one who chose to who see facts at only the surface level of the wider situation; this state of affairs only upsets him. He calls on the plight of the ‘white working class men’ espousing rhetoric concerning feminism “becoming detached from equality” and should instead reach to that of bridging the between women and working class men. Similarly in national focus on the BME attainment gap Nelson states, “In spite of all we hear to the contrary, this is a pretty good country in which to be young, gifted and black.”Continue Reading

THE MISEDUCATION OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academia, academy, academy schools, accountability, autism, BAME, children, comprehensive, customer, division, dyslexia, education, family wealth, grammar school, inelligence, inherited opportunities, inner city, oxbridge, private institution, privately educated, privilege, russell group, secondary education, self improvement, social immobility, social mobility, statistics, student, theresa may, tony blair, working class.

by Candice Nembhard

When I think back on my time in grammar school education, it is not with entirely fond memories. I was a working class, BAME student, whose parents were working tirelessly to make sure my educational needs were catered for — be it my uniform, school trips or even paying the annual school fund. Even so, little could be done on their part to protect me from the overly-competitive nature of the grammar school system; an educational structure that paraded itself as a diverse and inclusive market only out of an innate self-fulfilling prophecy to produce a particular class of intellectuals.

It is this underlying vision for education that further widens the gap between the lowest earners in Britain and those that are at the top. The division of children at the age of 11 to test their intelligence further predates to a privileged notion that intelligence is hereditary, and if not, that it can be bought.Continue Reading

russell group

WHO DESERVES TEF GOLD? AND DOES IT MATTER?

ELITISM REFUSES TO DIE – THE UNIVERSITY FUNDING PROBLEM

QUICKER ISN’T BETTER – PROFIT BEFORE HEALTH IN TWO YEAR DEGREES

THOUGH IT MAY BE CRACKED, THE GLASS CEILING REMAINS

Support the Radical

Subscribe

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Support the Radical

Subscribe