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

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Namely Agnes Nitt and Draco Malfoy.

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

Has anyone emailed them to tell them to be extra vigilant with silly 'suspect' names?

It's been in the newspapers. I think they're aware.

I can never understand people who spend their time telling others not to take action about something they care about. Why do you care so much about telling someone they are wrong, that it's worth spending your time telling them they are wrong spending their time? It's ludicrous. Why not go and spend your time doing something you do care about rather than telling others they are wrong

I didn't say I'd want mine to go their either. In fact I said above it seems to take employers abotu 50 years to form a view on what is a good univesrity. Is it even older? If we went back to about say 1940 when they introduced grants presumably the pecking order of universities then would be pretty similar as now Oxbridge, Durham and the Bristol and other RG ones with a view that the red brick modernish universities weren't quite so good perhaps. Has that ever changed?

I doubt this new place will have a huge impace immediately although if they have the good contacts with industry then that might swing it for some people. I just don't think there will be enough people to make it a goiod place. If you want to do rowing or needlework club or chamber choir there just won't be enough people although I suppose they'll tack them on to some University of London activities may be. If they teach them how to speak properly, make sure most of them are English, help them learn how to wear the right suit for interviews, introduce them to people etc etc that might be worth the extra £9k fee if the student is going to get a job after. However if you are going to get AAA but missed out on Oxbridge you'd still probably not want this to be your next choice.

Did I read today that it's set up as a charity? I haven't really checked but that wasn't the initial impression being given.

Durham?

Oh FGS, so spoofing NCH in order to express disdain at their wankerism is quite possibly criminal, could result in the OP losing her job, is anti feminist and is preventing us from earning enough money to send our kids there?!

As for the charity status - well private schools have charitable status...don't see them taking significant numbers of kids from poor backgrounds though.

I applaud the OP and her efforts.

Well Xenia you may not have said explicitly that you'd want your kids to go there but you did say the following: "going out there and earning enough to send their children to intitutions like this? Is that not where their duty to their children lies?". So it was kind of implied that the institution would be good enough for you and yours.

It's got nothing to do with employers either as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't let my kids go near somewhere like that partly because it wouldn't give them a decent university experience and partly because places there are clearly not won wholly on merit in open competition. University has something to do with future employment, but that's an indirect rather than direct consideration for me.

Warwick is 'new' but must surely be the hardest to get into for maths, it's not just antiquity which counts and there must be lots of other examples. And Mrs K, how come you Durham but not Bristol?

Xenia - as per your original understanding, it's profit-making (unlike private schools, which are legally not allowed to be profit-making).

Seems like an ill-thought-out enterprise to me for all sorts of reasons, and my guess is that either it will collapse altogether or it will end up as a tutorial college for overseas students.

That's nto quite true. Private schools can be profilt making and some are Any of us could set one up for profit tomorrow if we wanted to but most of them aren't profit making.

On my comment about women wantnig their children to access to particular institutions - well in capitalism women can go out there and earn enough to pay to send their children there or elsewhere. Real women don't have to live off male earnings or have their standard of living detremined by the earnings of the man off whom they live (not that it sounds like this will be the best place to go).

yellowstone, goodpoint. Bristol .
Durham fell in its ranking for next year. I didnt realise it was in the top10 though

TheSparrow. Your post is spot on. Despite what the OP said in an earlier post I still can't see how I could critisise an educational organisation which charges fees when I have done two post-grad courses I've also had to pay for

I also want to say that the OP's description of the founders of the college as 'celebrities' is bewildering. They are not celebrities in my particular universe.

Dickie Dawkins aint a celeb? Oh please...

alistron. No he isn't. Well not to my mind. He's just a fella wot wrote a book saying there's no such thing as god. I see him from time to time on the telly but he isn't really on my radar

He is a celeb He set up his own website/forum and when it didn't match his public image (i.e it went a bit mumsnet with people having a laugh) he pulled it. He does tours, he's had series on the TV and he's married to a Dr Who assistant (geek nirvana)

Mind you the funniest thing I have seen ever is Dickie reading his hate mail 'Richard Dawkins, I hope that you burn in fucking hell and get fucked up the arse by satan and his imps' Actually on the strength of that I will work 25 hours a day Xenia style and become utterly embittered and humourless in order to secure a Dawkins style education at NCH for my kids.

BTW, didn't Dawkins benefit from a FREE tertiary oxbridge education?

Ok, I believe you. He has a website. He does tours. He is married to an actress. He IS a celeb...

alistron what's wrong with a FREE tertiary Oxbridge education? You can't have it all ways you know.

If having your own website whilst being a lecturer means you are a celeb, than its brian, dr alice and me . Now I need to find myself some geek chic for a dp. (oh and write a book or go on the telly). Long way to go for me.

There is something objectionable about benefiting from the golden age of free tertiary education and then going on to attempt to provide such an education for others at a prohibitive cost.

Don't see the connection alistron. Those who benefited from a free tertiary eduation can't reasonably be preclded from making money with the skills they acquired. What do you think of medics doing private work on the side? I don't see that education is in a class of its own.

If people don't like the sound o f it (I doubt I'd send my children there as employers won't have heard of it etc) why does it matter if someone sets it up? I love living in a country where people are free to do all sorts of thigns from home education to schools where you don't need to go to lessons like Summerhill, From Eton to state comps, state grammars to religious schools. I think it's great people have massive choice. Is it just the left who want us all the same in Mao suits in jobs which pay the same whetheryou're the Chinese dustman or doctor during the cultural revolution. Mind you some of these lecturers setting up this place are pretty lefty with ridiculous long hair - ugh..

its a bit exspensive unis cheaper ish i might add as you have books lodgings food entertainment ect to pay for too my dc is going to take out loans ect i may also downsize to assist ive two dcs who will be going if they can find a place and im a carer of a disabled DH and a ds whos autistic on a low income ect somehow ill manage it but compared to my ds's Special school and the cost of that its nothing

There are some grants for students under the new £9k a year system if parental income is low although families where it is high have no oblgiation to pay a penny to the child in England at 18 and plenty don't and throw them out so it's a bit unfair to subsidise some over others like that.

Xenia it's not unfair. If a kid is 'thrown out' then he or she is classed as independent and gets different consideration under the student finance rules which I'd expect to put him or her on pretty much the same footing as a student with a parent or parents on very low income.

The universities intending to charge £9k pa from 2012 seem to have put in place very generous fee waiver and bursary schemes. Oxford and Cambridge have anyway and no doubt the rest will do as much as they can, as far as their finances allow.

Very narrow minded to judge people according to the length of their hair. It won't affect their intellect or dedication to teach.

Do kids really not have to attend lessons at Summerhill? That's very funny, given the fees.

The NCH still sounds like a college for rejects but perhaps it will surprise us all.

Summerhill if I've got the right school rightly won a High Court challenge by a meddling local authority. Not all parents believe children shiould be forced into learning. Plenty want much more force. I like that we have a lot of freedom in the UK to educate at home and the like.

I thought if a parent chooses no to support a child at university (and many many even very rich parents don't pay a penny) that child is not given the same help a child from a family on benefits gets. They all get the loan for the fees under the old and new system but I thought not the £3k non repayable grant element or whatever it is and they may not be thrown out in holidays but both parents might have moved abroad or into studio flats or have 6 lovers at home so there isn't really a place to go in the 50% of ht year which is holiadys for students. Although there's nothing tos top them working abroad all summer as some of mine have done.

Oops, sorry, was thinking of Summer Fields....That would have been funny(ish).

To be 'independent' a student will have to be living apart from his or her parents but that's what 'thrown out' does on the whole.

Very odd rich parent that would choose not to supplement the minimum a dependent student can get. If I was that student and the parents had no good reason (which they might: rubbish course, dossy child etc.), I'd be likely to move out by choice.

Yellowstone, not all of such parents are 'rich' .

All 18 year olds are adults, and parents cannot be legally compelled to support them through university.

Also, once in a career, the child of poorer parents, may well end up far richer than the child of the so called rich parent but with a much lower student debt. How is that fair?