Advertising universities

In recent years more and more universities have taken to advertising themselves, ranging from the subtle such as railway station signs that tell us the suburb or town is "the home of the University of X" to the more in your face posters and billboards. I was a little taken aback the other week to discover a billboard for one university lurking under a bridge in Limehouse. You have to give the institution marks for ambition, if not quite for placing (the road under the bridge has been severed and although there's a nearby main road the board was against the traffic flow).

But however wild it may seem at the moment it's not yet reached the heights of some past institutions. Back in the days when I collected US comics I'd often come across 1960s & 1970s issues that contained adverts for the grandfather of aggressively marketed universities - LaSalle Extension University.

La Salle was a distance learning institutions founded in 1908 and lasted until 1982. More details about its rise and fall can be found at Boing Boing: LaSalle Extension University, snail-mail generations' University of Phoenix; suffice it to say it's the adverts that stand out to me the most.

Perhaps the most famous are the "Look who's smiling now!" set. These regularly appeared in magazines and the like in the post war period, telling of the success of one of the LaSalle graduates. The photograph might change with the ages but the message remained the same - here was a way to advance one's self through signing up to the university. The adverts appeared in many places, including those that even today you wouldn't expect to find universities advertising, such as comics. (That LaSalle advertised in comics is amazing in itself but it indicates one of two things. Either they were well ahead of almost every other advertiser in realising that even then comics were not just read by children but also by potential respondents. Or else they were trying to advertise to children to tell their parents. Given the tone of the adverts I'd incline towards the former as LaSalle were frequently ahead of the game.) LaSalle advertised elsewhere, even on matchboxes!

LaSalle also run some highly targeted adverts. To the right is one from a 1914 edition of the International Socialist Review. It's nicely targeted piece that knows the precise audience reading it and pitches explicitly to it. I find it hard to imagine the Open University ever running an advert like this!

Do adverts like this mean that LaSalle was an inherently left-wing institution? I doubt it. The next advert is not exactly left-wing after all!

This time the target is not the potential student themselves but rather bosses, telling them that the best way to deflect requests for wage increases was to direct their employees to LaSalle. It's a nice subtle trick, not dissimilar to adverts today that are designed to appeal to children to make them suggest the product to their parents.

Of course there were conventional pieces as well, such as this one advertising the university's home study law programme. This was the university's most popular programme but also the one that was ultimate LaSalle's downfall, as no state would accept a home study law programme as sufficient for qualifying to practice law. The Federal Trade Commission brought several actions and finally in 1980 LaSalle ended the degree before the university finally folded in 1982.

Still it left a legacy through its many graduates. As with many other distance learning institutions it did a lot to make university education accessible across society and in the era of segregation LaSalle provided a route to advancement for those to whom many conventional institutions' doors were closed. And the aggressive marketing practices have been picked up by other institutions around the world in an era where competition is ever fiercer.

You can see more adverts on Flickr at LaSalle Extension University ads.

I still believe in free education

Yes in my heart of heart I still believe that charging for undergraduate degrees is wrong. I still wish it was free for all, allowing the opportunity for anyone who wishes to advance themselves through hard work and application. I don't believe markets in education work because of the special factors (mainly the one-off choice with little scope to rechoose and the "buy-before-you-try" position).

And over the years I've put that belief into action. I've marched against fees many times. Within my party I've argued for the scrapping of fees, before, during and after the time when we held that policy (and been told by some children that I should join another party; invariably they were hardliners from the so-called Conservative Way Forward).

So it's with a heavy heart that I receive the Browne Review. And it's not just the review. One of the heaviest facts to bear is that university fees of one form or another have been with us for thirteen years now. Every year that passes makes it that much harder to abolish them altogether.

And the economic circumstances make it very hard to embark on new expenditure ventures at the present time, even if some sensible moves are made like finally consigning the 50% target to the dustbin of history. The 2005 proposal of curbing expansion and using the money saved to axe fees is simply not viable now. Invariably some form of contribution from the students is a pill that has to be swallowed.

So it's a question of how and when to obtain that contribution. Paying huge amounts up front is nonsensical. Paying afterwards, when the ex-student is earning sufficient, is about the only way. And the Browne Review recommends raising the earnings threshold before repayment begins to £21,000. Is that so bad a thing to accept?

In such a situation it's ever harder to get worked up about the precise level of fees charged or if the amount will be variable. They will not be paid up front. And the Browne Review is also recommending increasing grants to poorer students.

If the message can be got forward that nobody will have to pay until they are earning significant amounts then maybe it can work.

But I'll still dream the dream and hope that one day we can return to free education when the time is right...

The student vote - a myth?

With Lord Browne of Madingley's review on Higher Education funding being published today there will invariably be a lot of speculation about the political consequences, especially for MPs with universities and a large number of students in their constituencies. There will be endless talk about the potential impact of the student vote in the next general election.

But all too often the "student vote" is massively overrated and fails to materialise in any significant measure; a fact that many are privately aware of but reluctant to speak out about. There are several factors, some relating to the mechanics of voting, some to the students themselves and some to timing that all suggest to me that the impact will be less than people predict.

The first key factor is the poor levels of registration for many students. Because of the way the registration system works (see Rethinking voter registration for details), many students simply do not get put on the register at their term time address. Some universities won't automatically register students in halls, citing data protection. Often the annual forms are set out in vacation. Individual rooms in halls of residence are especially immune to direct mailings. And so forth. So many students simply do not get on the register; nor do they easily get a form to add themselves. And this is often not picked up because previous occupants of their homes are still on the register; whilst it's especially hard to find a good time to reach students with a manual canvass (particularly if election services have limited resources).

Furthermore few political parties devote resources to targeting student voters in their constituencies. Local parties have limited resources and often have to leave out some areas in their leafleting and canvassing strategies. It's inevitable that student halls and suburbs with a lot of students renting will be amongst these - the high turnover renders much data obsolete, the weekend exodus means a high level of non-replies, students can't easily answer for their whole household, halls are difficult to access and so forth.

(And on a local level students can often be detached from the politics of an area because local media has limited penetration - free newspapers again don't easily get to students for starters.)

And one timing factor is that some university term dates put elections in the vacation or at a push the very start of term - this year's general election was three days into Queen Mary's term-time (and still in the vacation of my first university, Kent). Throw in the summer exam season when some students don't even move back but only travel in on exam days and you can see why the election is even less of a priority. The turnouts for campus based polling stations are often pitiful.

Then there's the basic fact that a large number of students simply do not vote (just) on the basis of student funding. The left-wing stereotype of most students is a myth perpetuated by the noisiest who aren't the loudest, and instead there is a coreish chunk for both main parties, another chunk for the Liberal Democrats, a large chunk that simply doesn't bother to turnout even when the polling station is on their doorsteps and only a small amount of swing voters. And they can be swung by other factors - everything from the economy, crime and public services to the environment, international development and support for the arts. Their basic philosophy on life will also play a factor here.

Finally there's the timing in all this. Very few of the students who voted at their term addresses in 2010 will still be students voting in those constituencies in 2015 - a few current undergraduates who go onto postgraduate degrees at the same institution and those on exceptionally long programmes but that's about it. Some more will settle in the area where they're studying (more on them later) but realistically any MP who this year made a local pledge to students about how they will vote will not be facing many of those students in 2015 about the pledge. Many of the new generation will have forgotten about the pledge unless prompted. But in past elections the generations who actually had to pay upfront tuition fees and then top-up fees did not disproportionately turn on Labour at the subsequent election.

It's my guess that the reason why a number of constituencies with universities in them have swung to the Lib Dems in recent years has comparatively little to do with the voting patterns of term-time students but rather to other university influences - in particular the votes of those on the university payroll or graduates who stay settled in their university town. So what was reported in 2005 as a student vote swinging over fees could actually have been a middle class public sector professional vote swinging over Iraq. (The students themselves might bring some keen activists who can provide the energy for a constituency party but that's a campaigning influence rather than a voting one.)

Of course with everything there are some exceptions and I've no doubt someone can find an example of high turnout amongst a particular university's students, perhaps combined with a niche campaign. But broadly I expect there to continue to be no major impact of the student vote short of a major targeted national campaign that manages to make it a force to be reckoned with.

(That's not to say any proposals to raise fees won't have any electoral impact. However look not to the students on & around campuses but to the parents back home.)

Another blow for foreign languages

A while ago I blogged about how University College London was introducing a requirement that all applicants must have taken a modern language at GCSE in the battle to prevent their decline (Is this the way to save foreign languages?). It seems that the University of Cambridge already had this requirement in place, but has found it to be a barrier to its admission targets and is now dropping it. (BBC News: Cambridge drops language demand) As the requirement to take a language at GCSE was only dropped from 2004 it's only now that that will be hitting university entrance rates, but their reasoning seems sound.

As I wrote before, I seriously doubt a requirement for entry to a particular university has any impact on 13 year olds choosing their GCSE options, and if their school doesn't even offer them the option it's especially unfair on them. The way to tackle the decline in foreign language uptake, if it needs tackling at all, is to focus much earlier, rather than trying a stick that doesn't take effect for several years. Why not instead consider whether or not we're even teaching the right languages? In the modern era distance is not an issue, so the predominance of teaching French just because it's a neighbouring country could do with a rethink. Why not German or Russian or Chinese?

I'm back

Just another quick note to say I'm now back, although I've been catching up with bits and pieces.

Tomorrow sees the release of A-Level results, a godsend for journalists trying to find something to fill up space in a very slow newsweek. Good luck to everyone awaiting results and don't pay too much attention to the annual "A-Levels are getting easier!" outcry. It wouldn't happen if they came out in the same week as the Queen's Speech.

On another matter altogether, is anyone else having trouble getting Five and its offshoot channels on Freeview?

An end to the Oxbridge dominance of Downing Street?

Who was the last Prime Minister to go to a university that wasn't Oxford or Cambridge? I hear many of you rushing to Wikipedia to work this out. The answer (until Wednesday) is Neville Chamberlain (who went to Mason Science College, later the University of Birmingham). In fact he's the last university educated Prime Minister to have not gone to Oxford - the last from Cambridge was Stanley Baldwin. (The other graduate non Oxbridge Prime Ministers were the Earl of Bute who went to the University of Leiden, Lord John Russell who went to the University of Edinburgh and Ramsay MacDonald who went to Birkbeck College). There have of course been Prime Ministers who went to the "university of life" (John Major, James Callaghan, Winston Churchill and others) but the Oxbridge dominance has been there for a long time. But this week the numbers will change - Gordon Brown is an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh.

Now does this matter, many will ask? After all many non-Oxbridge graduates have headed both main parties for decades now. Gordon Brown is not known for walking away from a fight - even if he had been Oxbridge educated I suspect he would still be willing to take on the universities if the situation arises. This could have interesting ramifications for funding.

However anyone hoping that Brown will support the campaign to end Oxbridge using "MA" to sell degrees may be disappointed - Edinburgh uses "MA" for the first degree, but it is a substantial qualification, not one purchased with no academic work.

Mitchell and Webb on dodgy degrees

With thanks to Mars Hill: Mitchell and Webb on dodgy degrees for finding this hilarious piece:

A new era for university alumni?

It has been reported that new proposals are afoot for donations to universities, with proposals to support the donations privately raised from alumni. (BBC News: Universities to get funding boost) Hopefully this could help build a US style culture of alumni donations, with a favourable supportive financial regime.

Do people REALLY fall for this?

Amongst the huge amount of spam I've received today, one email was offering me an instant university degree. Reading it I can't understand why anyone's fooled:

Hi [position]!.!

Well that's a good start - confusing my name for some position I once held. Never really on bots to retrieve email addresses.

A Genuine Univers1ty Degree 1n 4-6 weeks!

With such wonderful spelling it probably is a genuine "univers1ty" degree!

Have you ever thought that the only thing stopping you from a great job and better pay was a fe wletters behind you name?
Well now you can get them!

What are a "fe wletters"? And just how do a few letters after the name in themselves provide a booster? Recruiters look at where you got the degree from, not whether or not you have some fancy letters after the name. Is having purchased a degree granted by Tinpot Theological College in some US state in the Bible Belt really going to stand out on a CV?

Within 4-6 weeks!
No Study Requierd!
100% Verifiable!

Yes I'm sure anyone Googling for details of this university aren't going to come across it on a list of diploma mills.

These are real, genuine degrees that include Bachelors, Matsers, MBA and Doctorate Degrees. They are fully verifiable and certified transcripts are also available.

Okay Americans may do things differently, but isn't the adjective "Doctoral" not "Doctorate"? In any case I'm sure a genuine "Matsers" degree is going to stand out.

You?ll htank me later?

Indeed, what a question! Whoever wrote this probably got the job by flashing a Buy It Now degree.

Finally we have this curious ending:

retire. First, they had fought their way from the battlefield, menwould dart in and slash the hamstrings of his enemy. Lucilius's eyes

And no, I've no idea what that means!

Still no change at Oxford

A postal ballot of academics of the University of Oxford has rejected proposed changes that some claim will enable Oxford to dispel certain stereotypes. (BBC News: Oxford dons reject finance reform) So once again it's no change at Oxford.

Aren't university marketing departments fantastic? 2

My attitude to university marketing departments goes through various cycles - see my previous post Aren't university marketing departments fantastic?. Currently I'm feeling rather critical after learning that my alma mater the University of Kent is to change its logo to this:

The only good thing I can say is that at least they didn't arbitarily retitle it to "Kent University".

Thanks to Marksed - an education officer and his blog for tipping me off (see the post New Kent logo exclusive).

Is this the way to save foreign languages?

University College London has announced that it is making a GCSE in a language a compulsory requirement for all applicants from 2012. (BBC News: Languages made degree requirement) With languages no longer compulsory at GCSE the numbers taking them have plummeted. But is this really the way to try to encourage people to take them?

When I was choosing my GCSE subjects at the age of 13, the last thing on my mind was whether or not I would need a particular subject to get onto an otherwise unrelated university course at one particular university (even one that is almost within walking distance of my old school) in half a decade's time. Just who makes this choice on such a basis? Indeed who would even be aware of it?

As a last ditch attempt to save languages as a subject the motivation of UCL is laudable. But frankly this is completely the wrong level to make it at.

No change at Oxford

It's almost like the lightbulb joke:

How many students does it take to change a lightbulb?
Oxford: Change?!?!

Oxford academics have rejected proposed reforms of the university's finances. Instead their votes will keep in place a 900 year old system.

Now I haven't kept up too well with the details. Often it's better for an institution to vote down a bad set of proposed changes rather than go with the mentality "something must change, this is a proposed change, we must make this change". But from what I've seen the basic principles of separating out the academic and financial side of the council and having external members of the financial council would be to the university's benefit, making it easier to raise private money to provide support for students from poorer backgrounds.

Here's hoping that good, constructive reforms for the benefit of all Oxford and beyond will be adopted (and proposed if needs be).

Who decides what "a planet" is?

The International Astronomical Union is meeting in Prague to try to decide just what officially constitutes a planet. Or to put it in real terms, to decide whether or not Pluto is one.

I'm reminded of the many lengthy debates amongst academics and students over just which is "England's third oldest university", nearly all of which seem to come down to a proposal for the key point (doors opening, charters being issues, formal conferrment of university status, formal conferrment of degree awarding powers) which conveniently gives the answer as the institution the proposer personally wants to be the oldest. Or the film The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain which shows how rigid scientific definitions can clash with popular usage and understanding. Or even the long running debate amongst some Doctor Who fans over what certain stories should be called (I'm serious - there really are people who argue this ad infinitum), where the term "official" is thrown around as though to mean "That Is The End Of The Matter" and never has any effect on the raging arguments.

Which leads me to wonder whether any decision by this meeting that ultimately says "Pluto is not a planet - that's official" will actually be accepted by the population at large. But if the definition that is eventually adopted is made with public perceptions in mind, one has to wonder whether or not the exercise is necessary at all. The public does not always respond well to scientists rewriting the vocabulary - look how long it has taken for the Brontosaurus to disappear from popular perception - and when they are starting from the point where the term is not really widely accepted as being something determined by scientists in the first place, they are especially unlikely to accept a change that changes the popular conception.

Maybe the best solution that would command popular support would be the following:

One possible resolution to the debate is for new categories of planet to be introduced. Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars would be "rocky planets". The gas-giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would be a second category.

Pluto, 2003 UB313, and any other objects passing the "roundness test", would be reclassified as a third type of planet - perhaps "icy dwarfs".

We shall see what the meeting's outcome is...

77% of students oppose the marking boycott

Following on from my earlier posts about the AUT/NATFHE marking boycott and the NUS leadership supporting the action without consulting their members, not to mention the Petition against the AUT assessment boycott, the issue has hit the headlines today. A poll commissioned jointly by London Student and the Times Higher Education Supplement has found that 77% of students oppose the boycott.

What's interesting has been the reaction of the National Union of Students' leadership:

NUS president Kat Fletcher said: "Clearly there are strong opinions circulating on both sides of the debate across the two million members that we have in higher education.

"We know that some students are unhappy with the lecturers' decision to boycott assessment and we also have clear evidence of support for the teaching unions and the actions they have been forced to take."

Ms Fletcher said the survey might have elicited a different response if it had set out all the facts.

Those who have seen Yes Prime Minister will recall the classic scene when Humphrey explains to Bernard just how to rig a survey. Presumably Kat Fletcher would have liked such a survey to be conducted instead of an opinion poll.

(Some may wish to claim the poll was rigged. However it was commissioned by London Student whose editorial line has been one of support for the boycott. The actual questions asked were "Do you support the lecturers' demands for higher pay disregarding their industrial action?" and "Do you support the lecturers boycotting the setting and marking of exams and coursework as part of their campaign for higher pay?" Furthermore the polling organisation has been identified and is one with a reputation, not a dodgey "private poll" of the kind in the Yes Prime Minister example.)

I should also note the rest of Kat's comments:

However, like all students I am concerned about the impact of the industrial action especially with the exam season under way.

I am particularly concerned that some students aren't even able to take their exams, because of the AUT policy not to set them," she said.

"We are really pleased that both sides will be getting back round the table, something which should have happened much earlier than this."

But from her comments overall it seems doubtful that the NUS leadership will respond to this clear expression of student opinion. One must seriously question whether the NUS mission values statement is being adhered to when it states:

NUS will constantly improve the lives and experiences of students in the UK: by ensuring their voice is heard and effectively represented; by developing democratic and strong students’ unions; and by providing collective benefits and access to information for all students.

Now the NUS leadership may want to argue for the trustee model of representation rather than the delegate model of representation. But traditionally NUS has gone with the delegate model of representation and it's rather suspicious to change stance just when the existing model happens to deliver a different result from the one wanted.

As well as my earlier post about Adam Sloan's experience of the boycott, here are two more individual accounts. Firstly The Independent Online Edition has Portia Hart: Why I would fight the AUT to get my degree whilst BBC News has Jacqueline Berry's account of her waiting game. Here at Queen Mary we've been lucky that the deadline for submitting exam papers fell before the boycott started, but many students are still concerned that they will not be able to graduate and take up graduate jobs and postgraduate places. At other universities students don't even know if they'll be able to sit their exams.

Let's hope this poll helps bring the action to a conclusion very soon.

The university marking boycott

Here at Queen Mary, University of London exams don't start for another week and as a postgraduate researcher I'm not directly hit by the assessment boycott by the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. However from next week I will be working as an exam attendant - if there are any exams!

The two unions have called for an ongoing boycott of academic assessment as part of their campaign on pay, but it's now reaching the exam period and really starting to directly affect students. There's also a difference in methods between the two, as the Education Guardian explains:

The AUT has told members not to mark assessments or set exams, while Natfhe is encouraging members to set exams, but refrain from doing any marking until their demands for a pay increase are met.

The boycott has seen a clear division amongst students' unions:

The National Union of Students says it will continue to support the AUT and the lecturers' union Natfhe in their push for a 23% pay increase. But individual unions are increasingly calling for an end to the dispute, which involves a marking boycott.
...
But while more than 32 student unions have signed a letter to the AUT's general secretary, Sally Hunt, backing the strike action, the website www.aut-boycott.co.uk has secured more than 300 signatures from students who are demanding an end of the marking ban.

The website says: "This action is extremely unfair to students as it may be highly disruptive and detrimental to students' educations. This website provides a petition where those opposed to this action can add the weight of their voice to the calls for this action to come to an end."

But the president of the University of Warwick's student union, Kat Stark, who sent the letter to Ms Hunt, was highly critical of student leaders who were not backing the lecturers.

Curiously the article fails to note that Kat Stark is also the NUS National Women's Officer-elect. Also, as noted before both here and elsewhere, the recent NUS Conference did not discuss the issue at all.

Something else that doesn't appear to be widely reported, though noted in an NUS press release today, is:

Last week, NUS sent a formal letter to AUT condemning their decision not to set exams and calling on them to urgently reconsider this tactic. This is the culmination of a series of meetings and conversations where NUS has voiced serious reservations about this decision.

The Petition against the AUT assessment boycott keeps on growing and it can be signed here.

Oh and Education Watch has noticed the following:

Keele University has privately admitted that scores of students could graduate this summer with degree classifications that they do not deserve under plans to beat the assessment boycott, writes Phil Baty. In a set of contingency plans designed to counter the assessment boycott by the Association of University Teachers, Keele's senate last week agreed to allow final-year students to graduate as long as they had completed about two thirds of their final year.

The senate will invoke an obscure part of the constitution that allows students to graduate under exceptional circumstances if they have obtained at least 75 of the 120 final-year credits they would normally be expected to achieve. This is the equivalent of obtaining a degree despite dropping up to three final-year exam papers.

Does anywhere else have this provision?

Council Tax exemption

As a doctoral student, I'm all too aware of how essential the student exemption from Council Tax is. However it seems not everyone has noticed it. It is especially shocking that the Liberal Democrats make a great virtue of being a student friendly party and yet their proposals for replacing the Council Tax would abolish the student exemption in the process! This whole matter just shows the true Liberal Democrat colours as a tax & spend party.

There are some Lib Dems who do not agree with the policy, such as Daniel Snowdon who argues against it. But will they be listened to?

This issue has not received much attention yet, not least because both main parties have not pledged to replace the Council Tax. But with both due to have new leaders by the next election if not much sooner, it is possible that this could happen much sooner.

Below is the motion I am submitting to the next general meeting of Queen Mary Students' Union next Thursday on this:

Students and Council Tax

This Union Notes

1. Local government elections for the London Boroughs are due to take place in May 2006.
2. Currently local government in Great Britain is financed by a combination of locally set Council Tax, centrally set business rates, grants from central government, local fines and other streams.(Hale, Rita and Associates "Who pays for local services? The balance of funding between government and councils" (Local Government Association, 2005), copy at http://www.lga.gov.uk/Publication.asp?lsection=0&id=SX1135-A781FC66 accessed 2005-11-22)
3. Council Tax raises approximately 26% of local government income but is one of the few streams a local council can vary. Consequently, an increase in spending often requires a proportionally greater increase in council tax.
4. In recent years, the level of Council Tax has received much media attention and a high level of protest. Very recently, the Local Government Association of England and Wales predicted that Council Tax could rise by as much as £100 a year.
(Metro November 22, 2005, page 2 columns 3-4)
5. Full-time students are exempt from paying Council Tax until they have “completed their course.”
(Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the Council Tax (Discount Disregards) Order 1992 (SI 1992 No 548) (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1992/Uksi_19920548_en_2.htm), as amended by the Council Tax (Discount Disregards) Amendment Order 1996 (SI 1996 No 636) (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1996/Uksi_19960636_en_1.htm) , defines a full time student as:
“A person is to be regarded as undertaking a full time course of education on a particular day if-
(a) on the day he is enrolled for the purpose of attending such a course with a prescribed educational establishment within Part I of Schedule 2 to this Order, and
(b) the day falls within the period beginning with the day on which he begins the course and ending with the day on which he ceases to undertake it, and a person is to be regarded as ceasing to undertake a course of education for the purpose of this paragraph if he has completed it, abandoned it or is no longer permitted by the educational establishment to attend it.")
6. There is ambiguity over what exactly constitutes “completed their course” for research students in the writing up and beyond phase.
7. Currently the Council Tax is one of the most controversial charges of all and there are many calls for it to be amended or scrapped.
(E.g. IsItFair – The Campaign for the Reform of Council Tax at http://www.isitfair.co.uk/)
8. One of the most common proposed alternatives is to have a Local Income Tax and some political parties have taken this up.
9. The exemption for students is not explicitly retained in some proposals for local government taxation reform.
10. The current weekly threshold for starting to pay income tax for most student jobs (approximately Tax Codes 471-500) is between £90 and £95.
(Tables A – Pay Adjustment Tables (Inland Revenue, 1993), Week 1 (Apr 6 – Apr 12))
11. Due to the way in which Free Pay works and the juxtaposition of the tax year and university vacation dates, the effective threshold is even lower for those only working during vacations.

This Union Believes

1. Students are presently financially overburdened and it would be monumentally unfair to give them the additional burden of local government taxation.
2. If the Council Tax is to be replaced, the alternative must include an explicit continuation of the student exemption.
3. The definition of a full-time student should be modified to explicitly incorporate research students in the writing up phase.

This Union Resolves

1. To lobby and campaign for the student exemption to be retained at all times, but to especially do this when there is high profile public debate on the future course of local government finance.
2. To write to relevant bodies and individuals, including but not limited to, the major political parties, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and any successor holding the Local Government portfolio, the Local Government Association, the Greater London Assembly, the Mayor of London, Tower Hamlets Borough Council and the local MP, setting out the Union’s position and concern.
3. To encourage a high level of registration and voting by students in the forthcoming local government elections to show that the student vote cannot be ignored.

The new university Conservative Society

Just a quick post to say congratulations to the Queen Mary Conservative Society, which was formally ratified by the Queen Mary Students' Union this evening.

Update on the plagarism

Since my previous post I've learnt that in the end no legal proceedings were ever instigated. It doesn't surprise me as the case came across as laughable and the idea was probably found on the internet!

Plagarism

Just over a year ago the academic media had a brief rumbling over reports that a student at my old university was sueing over failure to detect his plagarism. A Google search suggests that nothing much further was reported beyond the initial story, though there's an interesting interview with Jaswinder Gill of Gills Solicitors (the leading firm for educational law matters) on some of the issues involved.

One has to wonder why, in the age of Google, anyone would be stupid enough to plagarise of the internet. Especially at one of the leading universities for computing where they can easily track stuff down!

The case attracted a lot of attention across the internet, with several long discussions on many blogs, but very few seemed to be informed by anyone with direct experience of Kent - one honourable exception being paul haine (he prefers it capitalised that way). In general there was little sympathy for Gunn - few found the idea that the university had deliberately kept quiet while taking extra fees was in any way credible (even in the era of tuition fees undergraduate students still cost a university more than they bring in). Some of those without local knowledge wondered if the rules had never been made very clear, but from a combination of my own experience, the experience of other students (including direct contemporaries of Gunn in the same department) and even external examiners the universal view is that the guidelines are very clear and that it is repeatedly drummed home to students. About the only comments I saw in Gunn's favour were either an anonymous comment on one blog claiming he was the victim of prejudice but without substaniation and one blogger querying if giving students a rather dry handbook and expecting them to read it all is enough (well that is far from all he would have received, but even if it was I doubt a court would be swayed by the argument that the University should have made him read it out loud!).

A year on it seems nothing much happened that the media took any interest in. I suspect, given Jaswinder Gill's comments, that at that stage no legal proceedings had actually started, for whatever reason. More generally the problem of plagarism remains. I wonder if the Gunn case has had any effect on any current students.