to be very heartened by the student riots!

[Heathcliffscathy]

apathy be damned...I predict more riots...looks like the youth have found their teeth.

Very true northernrock. It is so depressing these days-the blinkers go on and people have tunnel vision-I think that there is very little joy in learning.

Interesting to see the view from other countries on this one. Have just been reading comments on the article in El Pais about the student protests. Interestingly, the majority of them seem to be much along the lines of "bravo por los jovenes ingleses".

My favourite comment was this one:

"Si un gobierno hace leyes contra los votantes y a favor de los super-ricos eso no es violencia. Si los votantes protestan con algo más que caminar en silencio en lugares apartados donde no molesten, como desean los gobiernos, eso sí es violencia. Los políticos siempre aparecen como los pacíficos, el bueno de la película, y el pueblo es el malo, el violento. Y la policía siempre a favor de Don Dinero."

I think 'The police are always in favour of Sir Money' just about sums it up.

I am completely with Orm and piscesmoon.

There is a lot more to a university education than the subject though.It is about being educated at/to a certain level and regardless of the subject there is a confidence that comes with debate and learning at this level which stays with you and helps you in other areas.I studied literature and philosophy and am now an interior designer so no direct link there BUT all the different people I met and mixed with sank in and made me who i am.I think everyone who wants to should have this chance and to saddle someone with a lifelong huge debt just seems wrong.

I am going to struggle to put my children through Uni, but I think the demonstrations were disgusting, and if these idiots smashing up buildings and chucking fire extinguishes off roof tops are the future of Great Briton I want a plane ticket to somewhere else where people do not behave like animals.

If they want a bloody fight give them a gun and ship them off to war

I agree with Fennel. I agree about protesting (but not rioting)

I'm not in the UK anymore, but seriously, having a high rate of people with degrees is great for a country and its future.

All the students who were inside millbank interviewed on tv news today saw nothing, absolutely nothing, no violence, no rioting, no fire extinguishers being thrown. Pointless sending such dim people to Uni, they cannot see what's in front of their eyes. They also seem to lack the courage of their convictions. If I felt good about rioting I would stand up and say so.

erm, perfumedlife - have you considered that in a huge crowd, you only see what is happening near you. Yes, things were thrown, but plenty of footage shows that most of those there were clearly shouting for that to stop.

And of course the tv only shows the 'exciting' violent bits, but that almost certainly doesn't reflect the experience of 90% of the people there, nor what they were trying to do.

It was only in front of your eyes because it was on TV perfumedlife! Of course they wouldn't see it if they were in the wrong place (or right place-who wants violence?)
Most of them were having a peaceful demonstration-sadly a few will use it as an excuse for violence and they don't care about the cause-anything will do.

"it should not just be a step on the career ladder.."
Nor should it be three years of sitting around by people who couldn't, or couldn't be bothered, to do well at school but need to be kept off the dole.

No, i am referring to people, students, who were inside Millbank, they admit breaking the windows to get in but then saw nothing thereafter, allegedly.

They probably didn't see it because the police had t cordon off the peaceful protesters to stop random elements joining the mob. They were students and lecturers, not hijackers from outside; they planned it, and it was a deliberate attack on the Tories.

Noboids. Sack them, expel them, charge them.

By the way, I agree the majority were peacefully demonstrating. Just sticks in my craw that the ones who planned this are not so quick to take the credit. Selective amnesia.

YABU, It wasn't the young people who were rioting but some anachists who hijacked the protest, Vielbce and rioting does not help.

Oh I see pisces. Liars for the cause.

They were students and lecturers. I think the association of lecturers has praised the action, including the violence.

"Nor should it be three years of sitting around by people who couldn't, or couldn't be bothered, to do well at school but need to be kept off the dole."

Exactly Appletrees. The whole idea of everybody going to university regardless of academic ability or inclination is ridiculous.

And what that does is de-value the whole idea for those for whom it is a genuinely good idea.

The question of who should or shouldn't go to Uni should be one of academic ability and desire, not one of money.

Also, if the only choice is between university and the dole...well something surely is very wrong.

'Nor should it be three years of sitting around by people who couldn't, or couldn't be bothered, to do well at school but need to be kept off the dole.'

all degree courses have minimum qualification requirements. anyone meeting those requirements surely can't be classified as having done badly at school.

what's with the general disrespect towards students?

Having been off work sick I watched the demo on tv from lunchtime - or rather I should say the lack of reporting until some students started burning placards outside Millbank when suddenly the press started to take an interest. I watched the students WALK through the door of Millbank chatting to police on the way but surprisingly??!! by the later news this was not shown. It was clear that there were several thousand students outside and several hundred inside.

Frankly I'm surprised that so many people are willing to believe the press propaganda - yes the fire extinguisher should not have been thrown by one idiot - but it was clear that the majority of students were shouting for that Not to happen - again left off the later news!

I for one support the student protest and think that a few broken windows (which lets face it the millionaire Tories can well afford to replace) is nothing compared to the violent decimating actions of this government. When my 12yr old asks me if she'll still be able to go to university I feel like smashing a few windows too and I bet others do as well.

For those who are interested here is a link to the real students who ruined it for the rest of us
twitpic.com/35njg4

Did you see the evening standard today, apparently some lecturers at goldsmith college and were part of the violent splinter group and their union pubilically condoned it! Unlike the nus who's statement condemned it, so less student bashing please

Kate, at the pic. At first I thought it was the Spandau Ballet

The worst thing about the whole UK universities fiasco - worse even than devaluing academic degrees by turning them into a Caucus Race to keep kids off the dole, and worse even then leaving an entire generation in hock for the privilege of massaging the employment statistics - is that it's another credit crunch waiting to happen.

At the root of the subprime mortgage crisis was a whole load of unscrupulous lenders giving mortgages to people who couldn't pay them back, based on the assumption that house prices would keep rising and so even if the property was repossessed the lender wouldn't lose out.

At the root of the student fees/loans scenario is a whole infrastructure and economic sector (from tutors through admissions employees, university suppliers, down to cleaners and buy to let landlords in university towns etc etc etc) that depends for its existence on money, funded by loans, made to a load of people on the assumption that their future earnings will enable them to pay it back. But with so many of them studying, the value of a degree isn't going up. So tons of them won't be able to pay it back. So what the loans structure is doing is lining up a mountain of bad debt, which - eventually - will become too expensive to sustain. And it doesn't matter how 'arm's length' the Student Loans Company appears to be, it's as much a quango as Network Rail and has the government by the short and curlies to exactly the same extent. So they'll have to write off the debt, but in response to the outcry they'll stop offering loans to all comers, and we'll be left with astronomical tuition fees and degrees only open to those who can pay.

At that point there suddenly won't be enough students. And then the FE sector will have to shrink. And this will be appallingly painful to an entire swathe of this country's economy: imagine Liverpool, Sheffield or Reading with 60% fewer students (all with loan money to burn), and then imagine the effect on cafes, housing market, grocers, pubs, cinemas, etc etc etc.

If there's something truly scandalous about the coalition's response it's not the fact that they're proposing to charge students more to study. It's that rather than tackling the longer-term unsustainability of the UK's bloated and commoditised further education sector they're continuing with the pretense that all these degrees - rather than just the highly academic few - are worth £27,000 and passing the grisly job of hacking the sector down to its rightful size along to a future Government.

sorry, ranting again

@ Harpy: There's a similar system in Germany. The difference between those systems and ours is that in Germany apprenticeships are taken seriously, and accorded their true worth as valuable and meaningful training. Here, anything that isn't 'academic' is somehow seen as second class.

What's wrong with recognising that some people think concretely, and are good at practical stuff, and some think abstractly and are good at thinky stuff? Why can't we respect crafts and trades as the seriously skilled work it is?

But no: in this country if it's not 'academic' it's worthless. So a load of perfectly decent trade trainings at the old polytechnics got turned into 'academic' degrees in the name of egalitarianism, no-one knows what their qualification means any more, and before you know it here we are, trying to justify cultural education in instrumentalist terms, because - in truth - we've cocked up so badly we can't afford it any more.