Education

Universities will have to set targets to improve drop-out rates and graduate employment or face having their tuition fees cut. Higher education institutions will also be required to boost the number of students they enrol on degree apprenticeships and technical courses, as part of a crackdown by ministers. The new measures will help to stop universities simply recruiting students on to degree courses that lead to “dropping out, frustration and unemployment”, the universities minister will say on Wednesday. Michelle Donelan will tell universities to rewrite their “access and participation plans” to include tough targets to increase the proportion of students studying degree apprenticeships and higher technical qualifications. Vice-chancellors need to submit their plans to the university watchdog, the Office for Students (OfS), for sign-off. If officials at the OfS believe a university’s plan is not sufficiently ambitious, they can reject it and send it back to the university …

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A respected professor of criminology has quit the Open University , accusing it of failing to protect her right to free speech in the face of attacks by transgender activists and their supporters. Prof Jo Phoenix claimed that she was being “harassed and vilified” by her own colleagues at the university for her views on sex and gender, including being compared to a “racist uncle at Christmas” . She launched an employment tribunal case against the university, alleging that it had failed to protect her from a campaign of “vicious bullying” by those who opposed her views, including her position that male-bodied prisoners should not be in female prison and her criticism of Stonewall’s influence in universities. Resigning from the university, Prof Phoenix stated: “The University has allowed things to escalate to a point beyond repair. My trust and heart have been broken.” She will be moving to the University of Reading to teach law and criminology, saying that it had …

[Read more...] about Professor ‘vilified’ over accusations of transphobic views quits Open University

In 1357, afflicted by plague and military disaster, the people of Siena demolished a statue of Venus. As Tom Holland explains in his wonderful history, Dominion, the Sienese were acting as earlier Christians had done, convinced that, by pulverising pagan carvings, they were exorcising demons. Iconoclasm – the destruction of graven images – has been a feature of many millenarian  movements down the ages. The latest cult to embrace it can be found gathered outside my old Oxford college, Oriel, howling at a little effigy of Cecil Rhodes. What did the nineteenth-century diamond magnate have to do with the horrible killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis? It’s a pointless question. We are not dealing with reasoned objections to the guano-encrusted statuette, barely noticed by most passers-by. We are dealing, rather, with something more like a religious cult, its members defined by common chants and rituals and by the excommunication of blasphemers. All ages sacralise certain values, …

[Read more...] about Removing the statue of Cecil Rhodes would be cowardly and anti-intellectual

The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently announced that 13 universities in the UK face "a very real prospect" of going bust. Like all such announcements in the higher education sector the news was clearly meant to be received with a gasp of fear. Worse, the IFS warned that it is our least prestigious universities that are most at risk. I don’t know about you, but on reading this news I immediately put my head in my hands and cried, “Oh no. Not our least prestigious universities. Take anything but that.” There are many oddities about our higher education system. Oddest is the presumption that the more universities there are and the more people go to them, the better our country will be. Tony Blair was merely the most notorious proponent of this idea. His target of 50 per cent of young people going to university was achieved last year. Is our country noticeably smarter or more successful as a result? Many would say not. In some ways I would say it is noticeably stupider. One …

[Read more...] about British universities have become indoctrination camps. A reckoning is long overdue

Trigger warnings have been built into a new device developed for classrooms and social gatherings that sounds an alarm when it detects offensive language and jokes. The lamp-sized gadget is an attempt to “manifest political correctness as an ideology into a product”, developers have said, and it is being trialled for potential use as a tool to moderate debate in settings like UK schools and universities. Branded the “Themis”, the device is intended to be placed amid a debate setting and to emit a warning when it is triggered by the sound of banned language, racial terms and comments about body image. Dinner parties and family gatherings could be also policed by the product, its designer has said, as the device could speak up for those at the table offended by certain topics of conversation and encourage “self-critique” in others. Zinah Issa, who unveiled the product at Dubai Design Week, told The Telegraph: “Through the use of speech recognition and sound sensors, we were …

[Read more...] about The thought police have arrived with ‘trigger warning’ alarm that goes off at every offensive remark

At St Antony’s School assembly, the choir is ­performing a song they wrote for one of the local area’s biggest employers. “Realise, Wake Up, Pay Up” was performed for London City Airport during a campaign to get local employers to pay the London Living Wage. The song was backed up by a rap about parents who never saw their children because they had to work so many jobs. Under pressure from a church primary school in one of the country’s most deprived areas, City Airport, currently in the middle of a £500million ­expansion plan, decided to Introducing the independently calculated London Living Wage of £10.55 an hour from July means a £1,500-a-year pay rise for contractors, including cleaners and security staff. St Antony’s School's choir ( Image: Phil Harris/Daily Mirror) With over 60% of the staff living within five miles of the runway, the children are in no doubt who will benefit. “Our parents will be less stressed than before,” head girl Zeruiah Adomake, 11, …

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Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan recalled that his father Amitabh Bachchan did not allow him to study acting at University in Boston and urged him to return home as soon as possible in an uncensored video. The video was shared by Kapil Sharma on a recent episode of the Kapil Sharma show featuring Bob Biswas stars. In the video, the Dhoom 2 actor said, “Jab main university mein tha, Boston mein, aur acting seekh raha tha… Maine apne pitaji se baat ki ki main actor banna chahta hoon, main training le raha hoon. His first response was, ‘Very good, wapas ghar aa jao’ (When I was studying acting in my university in Boston, I told my father that I wanted to become an actor and was training for it. His first response was, ‘Very good, now come back home’).” Amitabh explained his stance as to why he stopped his son from acting training, “You are studying William Shakespeare’s dramas, all this won’t work here. Come back here and learn the language, acting will come to you naturally).” …

[Read more...] about Abhishek Bachchan touches upon his father Amitabh Bachchan’s interference in his education

The South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who has died aged 78, led the surgical team that performed the first human-to-human heart transplant on December 2-3 1967. The operation captured public imagination around the globe, and, literally overnight, Barnard became one of the best known people in the world. Although his achievement, courage and vision should not be underestimated, the transplant was, as Barnard readily admitted, just one more step in the progress of surgery. Unlike many other pioneering surgeons, however, he had charisma - a blend of good looks, intelligence, wit, an often naive honesty and the unashamed expression of emotion - that made others want to see him, talk to him, and be with him. Born in the small country town of Beaufort West, in the Western Cape, Barnard was one of four sons of a pastor who ministered to the local mixed race, or "coloured" congregation. The family was poor but, having done well at school, he went on to the University of Cape Town …

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‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Matthew 6:34, King James Bible version. This ancient wisdom has always been a good maxim by which to lead one’s life. Look after the present, and the future will take care of itself. Yet we would not be human if we didn’t worry about the future at all, not just in terms of making provision, but also over the legacy we leave behind for future generations. The problem with much present day policy, it might be said, is it focuses too much on sustaining and gratifying the present, and not enough on building a robust and gainful future, costly climate change targets being a notable recent exception. As everyone who writes regularly about economics will know, a good graphic can often tell a story far better than words. So it was this week with a chart produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for its annual report on education spending …

[Read more...] about Jurassic Park Britain risks economic extinction

Let us suppose I am a pushy parent desperate to get my son into a good school, but I know his maths isn’t quite up to it. I hire a tutor to give extra coaching and hope it will make a difference. It hardly bears saying, but if the tutor doesn’t turn up, he or she doesn’t get paid. Or, let us suppose I am a music student whose singing or piano playing needs extra polish. I work in McDonald’s or borrow the money for a course of additional lessons. Again, if my teacher doesn’t give me the lessons, he or she doesn’t get paid either. Last week, students in 58 universities who have either taken out huge loans to pay the costs of their education, or are being bankrolled by their parents, did not receive the teaching they paid for: yet their institutions kept their money. There is an industrial relations disaster in many parts of academia. A third wave of strike action by dons in as many years was triggered by plans to cut their pensions, on top of what they claim is a 20 per cent cut in …

[Read more...] about Students should sue their striking lecturers