EDUCATION AS EMANCIPATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #7

Posted on May 4, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, capital, capitalism, commodification, corbyn, cultural capital, david richardson, degrees, dissent, economy, education, featured, Free Education, government, HEFCE, higher education, Labour, labour market, marketisation, nationalisation, office for students, pedagogy, policy, professional classes, public ownership, research, society, state funding, student experience, student satisfaction, students, teaching, tuition fees, UEA, uk, UKRI, universities, university staff, workers.

By Michael Kyriacou

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 traditional arguments for ‘free education’ focus on reducing the upfront price of university courses to zero. Rather than HE being a commodity to be traded on the open market, it becomes a good paid for by the government. This kind of argument rests on a contradiction: we cannot solve the commodification of HE by continuing to assert the existence of HE as commodity, even a nationalised one. Abolishing tuition fees is undoubtedly a good thing, but to move beyond their legacy we must understand HE as devoid not only of its price but also its status as a commodity. We need to explore the potential for HE grounded not in classification or institution but in the fundamental equality of intelligences – HE without the degree.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN A POST-FEES WORLD – BEYOND TUITION FEES #1

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academics, activists, Beyond Tuition Fees, Bright Green, consumerism, cost of living, democracy, diversity, education, employability, featured, Free Education, future, government, HE policy, higher education, jeremy corbyn, Labour, Lib Dems, marketisation, mental health, NUS, postgraduate tutors, progressives, representation, sexual harassment, social justice, social mobility, strike action, student activism, student debt, student experience, student life, students, students' unions, Tories, trade unions, tuition fees, UCU strike, uk, universities, university staff, utopianism, welfare.

By Bradley Allsop and Calum Watt

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 new series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

Politics is in a very different place than a few years ago. Radical change feels possible, tangible, close. The Labour Party’s pledge to scrap tuition fees is one of many signs of this – welcome, and necessary to salvage higher education from the marketised juggernaut it has become. But just abolishing fees is not enough to fix all of higher education’s problems.

TAKING ON THE SPECTRE THAT HAUNTS HIGHER EDUCATION

Posted on April 21, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged 1968 student demonstrations, academia, academics, apolitical, arms trade, autonomy, Belfast, Campaign for Lincoln Democracy, capitalism, co-operative HE, consumerism, democracy, divestment, economics, elections, elitism, employability, fossil free, Fossil Free QUB, fossil fuels, grassroots, leisure, Lincoln, Lincoln Social Science Centre, management, market, marketisation, national student survey, neoliberalism, occupy, privatisation, profit, protests, Queens' University Belfast, student accommodation, student activism, student experience, student life, student loans, students, students' unions, SU officers, tobacco, tuition fees, universities, University of Lincoln.

By Bradley Allsop

We’ve all seen the headlines – tripled tuition fees, retroactive changes to the student loan book, the nefarious uses of the National Student Survey. Often treated as isolated issues, these policies are in reality the foot soldiers in a war being waged to undermine the very foundations of our universities, twisting them from hallowed halls of challenge and transformation into bland centres for corporate training and indoctrination. This spectre haunts academics, senior managers and even Students’ Unions alike, forcing them all to dance to the mantra of the market, to the profit agenda. This spectre’s name is capitalism.

OXFORD’S PUBLICITY STUNT WON’T CLOSE THE UNIVERSITY CLASS GAP

Posted on March 31, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged bill clinton, Boris Johnson, buzzwords, capitalism, class, consumerism, degree, discrimination, diversity, education, elitism, employability, employment, family, graduate, graduate employment, graduate jobs, graduate unemployment, higher education, history of art, inclusivity, language, law, learning, lower income backgrounds, margaret thatcher, marketisation, middle class, module guides, nss, NUS, Phillip Hammond, politics, pressure, publicity stunt, student as consumer, student debt, student experience, student life, student loans, student satisfaction, students, students' unions, SU officers, Sutton Trust, teaching, tef, theresa may, tony blair, transferable skills, tuition fees, UCU, university, university management, University of Oxford, white, working class, working class students.

By Robyn Banks

This month Oxford University, in conjunction with the Sutton Trust, launched a summer school aimed at attracting more “white, working class boys” to the university. While this has received praise from some sectors of society, it does not address the real reasons why working class people (not just boys or men) are not attending universities like Oxford.

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

student experience

EDUCATION AS EMANCIPATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #7

OXFORD’S PUBLICITY STUNT WON’T CLOSE THE UNIVERSITY CLASS GAP

GAME OF LOANS

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