AIBU to have submitted 2 fake applications to The New College of Humanities today?

[ManateeEquineOhara]

Namely Agnes Nitt and Draco Malfoy.

Am considering doing Bart Simpson in a sec. I hate elitism.

The fuss as far as I am concerned, Xenia, is that this is an institution which is planning to make money for investors by not investing in the usual university facilities. As students cannot get a good education without these facilities (e.g. a decent library), it means they will be inconveniencing other students who are less well off than themselves. There may be a fee paid for this, but I'd be surprised if that provides more library places for the students at that other institution. It sounds to me as if these people are hoping to make a quick buck off the backs of others.

cory it's not intended to be there as an alternative choice for those with an offer at Cambridge, it's intended for high calibre student's who don't get an offer.

UCl is bound to have made the decision than the money flowing in to it by 'leasing' their library facilities will advantage their own students more than the sharing will disadvantage them.

I also thought that there was intended to be a genuinely philanthropic scholarship scheme set up for high-achieving under-privileged students (though I wonder whether the two groups will polarise or cohere).

YABVUI OP.

The big objection to me is the fact that ACG claims NCH is his response to the lack of funding and general demise of HE today. I'd have thought the obvious response to that would be something rather more philanthropic, not to create a means for him and his investors to make a big profit.

It's also pretty cheeky, though perfectly legitimate, to use UoL programmes, created using public sector resources, rather than attempt a collaborative with another institution which is what all (bar two) of the private institutions do.

Students will be able to use Senate House library (not UCL's) - the charge is around £30pa for a student registred on UoL's External Programme. I would hope that the £18k would include this..... Whether UCL has agreed to rent some of its rooms out I don't know, but would be surprised if they had done their timetabling for 12/13 now - so I doubt there is any contractual agreement at the moment. I know the other Bloomsbury Colleges will almost certainly not be renting their rooms out to NCH.

NCH's website also had some very misleading claims, although these have now been removed after objections (about students' access to facilities including NUS). Grayling still seems to think NCH students will get loans fromt eh SLC though, which they won't. I suspect he has seriously underestimated just how many administrative hoops he will have to jump if his College really is going to be just like Oxbridge (or any other University) in terms of experience. And, like Xenia, I doubt anyone with any common sense would send their child there without knowing its reputation.

Finally I wonder about the quality of academic staff he will be able to attract. Most career academics need research grants and PhD students and an REF profile to progress their careers - none of which will be accessible to an NCH academic, so he'll end up with semi-retired hourly paid tutors, not quite the glossy renowned faculty he thinks he'll get.

Oh, and what's wrong with protesting by sending in fake applications? (Agnus Dei anyone?) It's a legitimate form of protest, or do folk think it something is not going to affect them directly we shouldn't have an opinion? And I'm sure manatee is firing off applications and responding to this thread in her own time - as am I BTW.

Grendlesmum - in that case, I apologise.

I still don't understand the extent of the fuss. The inconveniencing of UCL students, if it occurs, is a matter to take up with UCL. The other potential pitfalls seem to be problems for Grayling and his investors and those apparently wealthy students who will be buying their way into a degree course - as if that never happens already - not the public in general.

As for the threads suggesting Grayling should have put his energy into a philanthropic venture (he is, purportedly, providing bursaries) or into making changes at Birkbeck (how should he do that exactly?), how many of us are putting our money and energies into philanthropic endeavours? Why such censure for an undertaking that affects us not a jot if we choose not to apply there?

No doubt they've enough put aside to pay a decent wage to their admin staff, and you're just doing your bit to keep them busy.

titchy I dont necessarily agree with that re progression. I am a deputy hod and am not even published.

Slipshod - 'Why such censure for an undertaking that affects us not a jot if we choose not to apply there?' Starving children in Africa affect me not a jot too.... Dictatorial regimes in the middle east affect me not a jot....... Closing down of social service providers affects me not a jot.....

The point is he is using facilities (i.e. the degree programmes, Senate House library) provided for from public funds, and using them to make a profit. He is absolutely not concerned about the future of Humanities in HE at all. He is charging £18k becuase he thinks the market will bear it and it will be a nice little earner for him asnd the other big names to retire on (let's face it most of them are approachin retirement age). He is also misrepresenting NCH to prospective punters on the website.

However, I can't somehow see his venture working in the long run.

Fair enough Mrs K - but as a general rule of thumb being published is good for ones career.

How have you managed that mrskravitz? You must be in a teaching dominant university then? Which is what this one will be effectively.

Research and teaching usually go hand in hand. For one just doing reseach makes you read more, let alone being able to give good experience to students, talk about your own work etc.

What concerns me more is that degrees are going to be bought. If you have enough money you will get the degree as I bet there will be a high expectation to pass students regardless.

And more teaching? Students dont need more teaching. A university should be a mentor and inspiration not a teacher. Lectures should be short and focussed to inspire and raise questions not tell students everything they need to know. The whole point of a university education is to encourage free thinking, critical analysis, independent study etc

All in favour of false applications, that's quite funny and rather harmless. My objection is not against private institutions; it's more that I am disappointed to see so many distinguished academics jumping ship at such a critical time, revealing such a lack of commitment to an even vaguely egalitarian HE system.
As for it being an alternative to Oxbridge, surely this is a joke. How can they compare the quality of individual and group tuition at Oxbridge with being taught for one yearly hour by a non-research active star professor? Both Oxford and Cambridge are also about the broader experience and the constant social and intellectual interactions one is exposed to - something which is unlikely to happen within the confines of a small and exclusive institution.
More likely to attract students who never had a shot at entering either Oxford or Cambridge.

Crystalglasses - no, I realise wasn't clear about who I was referring to.

I don't know what course your DD / friend's DD is on, but it sounds like she's got a lot of spare time, in addition to all the reading around the subject she should be doing out of class. Has she checked to see whether there are additional classes she can take for free or very little at the University? e.g. language course, IT classes, creative writing, public speaking? She may well also find that if she wants to go to more classes or lectures that aren't on her course, a polite email to the lecturer will mean she's extremely welcome.

My tutor told me in my first year that you should treat your degree like a 9-5 job, and that if those were the hours you did, you were doing neither too little nor too much.

She should also try and focus om wider development ... societies, sports, volunteering ...

Tichy and others - using facilities provided for from public funds is not new - look at the health service. It would be great if we could all return to the benevolent state of the 20th century, but that's not going to happen.

However, peppapig, I really don't think that any academic is going to sanction the buying of degrees; buying academic time is a different matter and in all universities it has been a tradition that visiting academics from other universities are paid to deliver single lectures or a series of lectures on their research or specialist topics.

Whether you like it or not, more and more university lecturers are expected to have a higher education teaching qualifications because the degree courses are becoming ever more prescriptive, with course modules, learning objectives and the like, with mountains of administrative work thrown in. Student attendance registers are kept for seminars, with fairly draconian measures (eg repeating a year) taken in the case of any student habitually missing any - possibly because there are so few seminars anyway.

Grendalsmum and peppapig, when did you go to university?

peppa I have had 20 years industry experience. This gives me a much greater scope to give students examples and encourage free thinking.
FWIW I probably teach max 4 hrs a week, if that.

Did a quick search for articles about the NCH and found this , which was written by someone who I knew well when we were both undergraduates. I think she's talking sense.

Personally I'd far rather send my kids to a university that's independent of the interminable social engineering obligations foisted by government after government on HE institutions in this country. If that means I either have to save hard, or else push my kids to do well enough to get a scholarship, so be it.

I think it's a good idea. Please submit an application under the pseudonym I.P. Freely and one for Amanda Hugenkis.

I also teach a regulated profession so we have to include a certain degree of content laid down by the registration bodies.This teaching (I dont know why that seem to be said with a sneer?) isnt didactic. Its done in the way mentioned - to direct, inspire and encourage critical and free thinking.

I have to do a marketing session tomorrow. Trying to explain what we offer for £9K, cant wait

Slipshod - 'Why such censure for an undertaking that affects us not a jot if we choose not to apply there?' Starving children in Africa affect me not a jot too.... Dictatorial regimes in the middle east affect me not a jot....... Closing down of social service providers affects me not a jot.....

titchy - and your point is...? are you seriously comparing the opening of a private college, fully funded by fees paid and independent of the state (except possibly rental of state funded premises) to any of the above? Or are you comparing the likes of Grayling and Steve Jones to Mugabe and Gadhaafi perhaps?

slipshod - the point was that a lot of things don't affect us as individuals, but that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't protest about it in any way we see fit. God help us as a society if we only ever protested against things which affected us directly.

One last point on NCH - it's worth pointing out that it isn't just a college for the Humanities that Grayling purports to be saving. They also intend to offer Law and Economics! I suspect, as with most HEIs, it'll be these two that are the cash cows, with a handful of students doing the Hisory degree (identical to the half price one at Royal Holloway )

mrskravitz - ahh that makes more sense!

crystal I was at uni from 2000 to 2010 (and have worked in one in various academic positions since 2003). Why?

Oh and I sympathise with the marketing. What we can never seem to get across is that nothing has changed. We havent put our 'prices' up - it has always cost between 8 and 9 k to put a student through a year of university but now we dont get that top up funding. We are not charging extra because we feel like it / can