Reading Week

Well as the title suggests this has been a reading week with no school so have spent the entire week on the golf course.

Some reading I did manage however was the Higher Education Funding Council who have promised £407 million to Uni's to "widen participation and cut the drop out rate". It goes on to state how monies should be used to help and support students with few or no qualifications cope with degree level studies. Ok, two points.....what the bloody hell are students with no qualifications doing on a degree course and why don't they invest the money into good teaching. This might just help improve the chances of students not quitting Uni through sheer boredom or the notion that these beholders of academia sit in ivory towers and talk in a language aimed about three feet over their heads.
Under the scheme the Uni of Teeside is to be given £11 million to tackle this. Now 11 million is a lot of cash by any body's standards.....if you break it down it would fund the tuition fees of over 1'200 people who might actually want to do a 3 year degree, rather than spending it on people who don't or quite simple can't. What is the obsession with pushing people further up the education ladder when actually it is much better to advise people that this is indeed their floor and would they kindly get off. 11 million quid would secure the jobs of over 400 people for a year at Nissan who were made redundant, it could pay an average mortgage on Teeside for a year for over 3000 people...you start to get the picture!

I can only speak from my experience at the University of Contempt but its no wonder people drop out. If it were an animal the vet would have shot it a long time ago, if it were a private business, operating in the real world it wouldn't need a recession to kill it off, ineptitude and incompetence would have done the job many moons ago. The bit I don't understand is, now that we as students pay for this crap, why is it accepted? Why is this place still untouchable, why do we have no right of recourse.....value for money...how would you measure that in an education setting?

Prison interview today....now that was an experience, but hey the sun shone and it didn't look such a bad place. Everybody seemed really friendly on the staff side so I just have to wait for security clearance.....minimum 22 days wait, will keep you posted on this one but fingers crossed.

Keep Aa'had