to be very heartened by the student riots!

[Heathcliffscathy]

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

TheCoalition - because students have the time and energy and hope to go and protest, in the hope that it might make a difference.

'Yes fee-free higher education for all would be great, but there is not enough money in the pot!'

The problem is that there is not enough money in the pot and I can forsee serious problems in about 50 yrs time.
Students come out of university saddled with a huge debt, they can't afford the deposit for a mortgage (even if they can afford a mortgage), they then want to settle down and have DCs of their own (massively expensive), they will be expected to work until they are nearly 70yrs (even though they may be on the scrap heap at 50yrs) and in the end they have to pay for their old age and sell their house (if ever they got one)and use up all their savings. One person-unless in a hugely well paid job-can't cover all that in one lifetime.
At the moment lots of 20/30yr olds are back home with mum and dad to save money. Parents are paying for deposits. It was in the news that parents are now helping out with a deposit for the second house when couples find their one bed flat too small for DCs.
In the future parents won't have that sort of money to help and people won't inherit because it will have all been eaten up by paying for old age.
I think that 50% at university was a silly objective-especially as a 2:2 degree is no longer respectable in the way that it was and students are coming out and getting the sort of job that people used to get at 16yrs after O'levels.
My DS2 got an apprenticeship and now has a skill for life, savings and no debt but they are like gold dust to get. He wrote over 200 letters and I was getting to the tearful stage when he just couldn't find an employer and all that careers advice could say was 'go back to school and do A'levels. Luckily he got one , literally a week before the college course started. I think that the government could do far more to make apprenticeships attractive to employers.
I think that the whole education system needs a radical re think and could give, DCs who suited it,a far more technical and practical education instead of expecting every DC to jump through the same academic hoops.
The fact that so many pupils get A and A* that universities can't decide who to take, while masses fail to get any qualifications at all shows that something is badly wrong with the entire exam system.
I also think that if fees are going up so much they could have longer terms and make degrees a whole year shorter.DS3 was off from the middle of May to October!!

Education is not a level playing field. Socio economic disadvantage is already present in children at age 3. It continues through primary school, widens much further during secondary school and by the time students are sitting A levels it's huge. These are facts not opinions.

How anyone thinks that the changes to tuition fees can do anything other than widen this gap still further is beyond me.

And to be frank calling for vocational courses and apprenticeships to replace degrees not only smacks of finding something for working class boys to do so we don't have to concern ourselves with educating them, it also ignores the very real fact that we don't have any call for these kinds of jobs anymore. Are we going to train them to be steelworkers? Miners? Builders? The construction industry is at a halt.

More students at Eto. Got 3 A grades at A level last year than students receiving free school meals did in the whole country. And our Eton educated prime minister jokes with Chinese students that more of them can now come to the UK as we'll be able tomake their fees cheaper. We should all be fucking rioting about education. We should all be fucking angry.

"And to be frank calling for vocational courses and apprenticeships to replace degrees not only smacks of finding something for working class boys to do so we don't have to concern ourselves with educating them, it also ignores the very real fact that we don't have any call for these kinds of jobs anymore."

There is plenty of call for these type of jobs. There is a big shorted of engineers in this country. DH went through the apprentice route to professional status, unfortunately nowadays you need a degree to get to the same position. It is very short sighted to believe that the only way of educating people is through university.

I'm amazed at how quickly the government's policies have angered people. How long was it between Mrs Thatcher going into Number 10, and protests? Am sure it wasn't as quickly as 5 months?

sorry shortage not shorted

Protests and marches absolutely fine - people need to get out and stand up for what they believe in or disagree with. Violence on the scale of what happened yesterday is despicable - I was listening to a policeman on the radio describing what happened to him (kicked, punched, hit with placards, spat at, bottle broken over his helmet) and its disgusting.

That has nothing to do with protesting about fees or anything else, and is all to do with mindless violence. Those people responsible have probably set back the "cause" of the genuine protesters a huge amount as now they'll all be lumped together as "that violent bunch of students, let's charge them more".

I have dc's who will be affected by this, and god knows it scares me, but however strong you feel violence like that is out of order in my opinion.

Bruffincalls for modern apprenticeships and vocational courses to be offered at school level are really not about training engineers. I agree that we could offer other options at tertiary level but poorer people will still need the qualifications to get to that level and the means to put themselves through the course and we shouldn't kid ourselves that the majority of them have either.

frostyfingers, sadly though once I would have done, now through painful experience I will never believe any police account of violence against them.

Remember Kingsnorth - all the 'police injuries' which once an MP got details through a FOI request turned out to be bee stings, policeman shutting his leg in a car door etc.

And the 'knives' that were confiscated - yes, if you confiscate a mobile canteen, you're likely to find some kitchen knives . . .

YADNBU!

Bout bloody time!! I fully support and condone demonstrations which lead to the destruction of property. Hit'em where it hurts.

Peaceful protests would be all well and good if they actually acheived anything; if you look at the USA and the way the Tea Party has hijacked Martin Luther King's memory for its own racist agenda, you can see how easily peaceful the protest of the left can be rendered entirely impotent.

I was at the anti-war march in London, Feb 2003, when i was a young pup of 21. There was easily a million of us; yet the police were giving figures of 100,000. As far as those who were protesting peacefully (as we all were) were concerned, 1 in 10 of us needn't have bothered turning up, as we were effectively written out of history anyway.

It achieved bugger all; we went headfirst into one of the most despicable and illegal wars in human history, destabalising Iraq and recruiting thousands more would be terrorists who saw with their own eyes the injustice being done, regardless of majority opposition. 'The right to Peaceful protest (and nothing more)' is a stick used by the right to beat the left into submission in this country.

How 'peaceful' is it to destroy hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs (and therefore lives) in this country because you believe blindly in all powerful market forces? How 'peaceful' is it to put compulsory purchase orders on entire villages in Wales, so you can test drones which will be used to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in other countries, via what is basically a video game? How long are we going to let these war-mongering, money worshipping bastards go on preaching to us about peace?

YANBU. Wish I could of been there. Good on 'em!

"One person-unless in a hugely well paid job-can't cover all that in one lifetime." Piscesmoon- I couldn't agree more. Dh and I are OK money wise as we were lucky enough to start Uni just as the maintenance loans were coming in and both scraped by without so no debt, we were lucky enough to buy our house before prices went silly. As a result we've managed to save. We're also lucky that pil have a gold plated final salary pension and will be able to help out a little if our dds want to go to Uni.

As time goes on there won't be such a trickle down from older generations, our dc won't be able to help their children/grandchildren in the same way.

Ahem, Riven I studied medieval english and poems at uni and now run my own department in quite a large company.

And I tell you now, the discipline of writing a coherent essay once a week with attention to detail of a hard subject means that I got where I am today because I can write business cases and documents for customers. I struggle at every recruitment round to find people who are articulate and able to write clear and concise communications on difficult subjects that can be understood by my customer base (who are not computer specialists).

Hussy, you might think differently if it were your property and your family being damaged and threatened.

Ref the police - because there are some unreliable policemen does not mean they are all unreliable liars. Would you say that all the students yesterday were violent thugs because of the group that did cause the damage - no, I wouldn't.....

I was really heartened by the demo - the turnout, the strength of feeling, the collaboration between teachers and students, the fact that it wasn't just your average NUS, middle class student activist, there were lots of FE students too...
Not elated by the storming of Millbank/violence aspect. But very glad to see students standing up for themselves.

Intergalactic good post re: peaceful protest. Yes the police lie about numbers literally every time.

I was heartened, next time I hope to be there. not rioting but protesting.

I appreciate there is a need for cuts, and that universities are fusty old institutions that often need a severe shake up. But I think this level of fees will put off far too many lower income potential students and that worries me. I hate the thought of universities becoming the preserve of the affluent.

I don't condone the violence but I fully understand, and share, the anger. Actually, I'm amazed that there were so few injuries given the size and density of the crowd. It could have been much worse.

I think damage to property is fair game, though. I've damaged a few fences in my time.

Thinking that peaceful protest is effective is a nice comfy delusion, IMO. The poll tax riots led to the scrapping of the poll tax whereas the peaceful march against the war made not a jot of difference.

My biggest concern is that future demos are going to be policed in a very heavy-handed way after this.

On balance, YANBU.

Riven - quoting from a letter in the press yesterday, concerning the 40% reduction in teaching grants to the arts and social sciences:

"The restriction of public funding to science subjects [ie. utilitarian subjects] threatens all learning. The cutting back of arts, humanities and social sciences will lessen the vitality of public life, curb creativity, narrow learning and lesson debate. Science itself will suffer from this wanton destruction. We protest against the coalition govnerment's barbaric abandonment of the idea of a university on grounds of narrow utility" Signed by tutors and lectuers at Goldsmiths' College.

Studying Medieval English is of importance to society as a whole; studying at degree level makes demands of students - focus and application and extended writing skills - that are crucial skills for contributing to society in later life. Degrees in Medieval English lead to jobs, just as degrees in Eng Lang, history, sociology, philosophy, do. Is higher learning in these arts subjects just to be the privilege of the wealthy?

These fees are divisive, and will lead to further elitism and they are to the disadvantage of those who fear being strapped to huge debt and no possibility of mortgages at the age of 18. Not a single country in Europe imposes education costs as punitive as these. In Dennmark, taxation pays for the entirety of students' time at uni - it is understood to be important and not the 18 yr old's responsibility to pay for education which will provide a highly educated workforce for the future benefit of the country.

Also, the fees are ideological. Nothing to do with the deficit, which Tories claim will be dealt with by 2014 when the full flack of fees will be imposed on all putative uni students. Raising corporation tax (the lowest in Europe) to the European average would raise all the money needed to abolish student fees and more.

I was glad to see the demo. Sorry to see some violence but from only 200 out of 52,000. And anger needs to be shown. Lots of students came down from Scottish universities (where some don't pay fees at all) to campaign on the behalf of all those who will be forced into huge debt in future years.

Elephants:

Police lie about numbers.
They lie about everything else too. (caveat, not necessarily the coppers on the ground, but those in charge)

"And to be frank calling for vocational courses and apprenticeships to replace degrees not only smacks of finding something for working class boys to do so we don't have to concern ourselves with educating them, it also ignores the very real fact that we don't have any call for these kinds of jobs anymore."

Bollocks!

DS1 is not a 'working class boy' and he is fairly sure he wants to be an engineer and is looking at an apprenticeship. Preferably in aeronautical engineering. I'd rather he did that than some soft degree just so he could say he'd been to university.

When I went to university it was still only a small % that went. And it meant that, rightly or wrongly, when I left with a degree I had a passport to a job, any job, regardless of my degree subject. Because I was one of a few! That isn't the case now if 50% of young people have a degree they arent't a rarity. So why bother? Honestly? Unless you have a desire to do something that needs a degree-level qualification such as medicine? There is so much pointless snobbery about it - it seems as if people are going because they can rather than because they need to to further their chosen career.

'And to be frank calling for vocational courses and apprenticeships to replace degrees not only smacks of finding something for working class boys to do so we don't have to concern ourselves with educating them, it also ignores the very real fact that we don't have any call for these kinds of jobs anymore. '

This is utter rubbish!
Firstly he is the first person in the family not to go into further education. He has 8 GCSEs all grade A-C, many middle class DCs are turning to apprenticeships after A'level.
He is an electrician-I doubt whether unrulysun would want someone rewiring her house who hadn't been educated!
It is very technical. I went to university and am fairly academic-I didn't understand a word of his course work.
He may go to university later to take it further.
I am as proud of him as his 2 brothers at university-and I predict that he will earn the most in the long run.
At what point in our life are we not going to call for electricians unrulysun?!
If you have a new kitchen fitted do you need someone with a degree or someone trained in carpentry?
If you want your bathroom tiled do you want someone with a degree or someone good practical. We have just had a wonderful tiler-really proud of his work-he showed me his photo album of all his jobs.
I am having my car serviced next week-I am not expecting the mechanic to be uneducated because he didn't go to university!
Yesterday I had my hair cut in a salon-the girl made a wonderful job of it. Is this a lesser job-was she uneducated?
I have never heard such nonsense!!
Of course we need more technical and practical people and they don't need degrees to do it. In fact we need far more of them than people doing degrees in media studies etc.