University of Nottingham to suspend MFL and Music for new students.

[HPFA]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly9zwqvn53o

Also some undefined changes to nursing courses.

Define ‘nonsense course’.

Well, quite.

In no particular order:

• Taxpayers not wanting to fund a world class university system properly
• Brexit
• Resistance to paying a decent tuition fee
• 14 years of austerity and neglect
• British anti-education and anti-intellectual views/tall poppy syndrome
• xenophobia/anti-migrant populism

Late DF was a lecturer (in Continuing Education) at UofN, and the senior leadership have never valued subjects that don’t make big amounts of money, even if the teaching/research was rated excellent.
I feel like things are going backwards: as a bright lad from a working class family, he was able to study at Nottingham without incurring huge debts. Meanwhile, DN1 is on her year abroad studying MFL at Leicester, which has a lovely MFL department, also under threat.
This is a very sad day for the city where I live, and higher education in general.

All of this!

And the suggestion that we should just get rid of ‘nonsense courses’ offered by post 92 institutions is just ignorant.

I feel quite stunned at this. I did a music degree and remember visiting Nottingham back in the day as it had one of the best music departments. I never thought departments like this would close ☹️ What is the country becoming?

Agree with all of this. This is really sad to read. I did a joint honours course with MLF and spent my year abroad studying my other subject in French at a grande école with generous Erasmus funding. It was the best year of my life.

My DC are likely to take a language each at A level and are both keen to combine a language with another subject at university and have a chance to do a year abroad. It's sad to see those chances disappearing. Brexit accelerated the decline and AI is probably the nail in the coffin.

Although I disagree that AI removes the need to learn languages, I learned so much about the history, politics and culture of France from my degree and obviously the critical thinking and logic skills needed to write essays on these topics and to translate and read another language are invaluable.

Universities are run by bean counters. As someone on another thread said their SLT know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Really sad that well respected unis are feeling the pinch. I guess courses in arts, humanities and mfl are less likely to attract overseas students to help sustain them. Surprised nursing is also at risk though,

Because we have no money!

Well yes, it was a rhetorical question. It's appalling. It's everywhere.

Oh believe me I know. And while I understand the funding issues caused by the drop In overseas students and the lack of increased tuition fees I also see universities inc (UoN) who did some crazy capital type investment on fancy new buildings:buying existing buildings and spending £32million on renovations, etc.

and now due to lower student numbers and staff redundancies the buildings aren’t even needed and are being mothballed

so yes while the lack of money is true the reasons for that lack of money needs looking at.

Is that a serious comment?

Have you noticed that it's no longer easy for UK students to just get a job in Europe?

Exactly.

It feels like our whole ambitions and dreams for how we want our country to be have just got so small and mean.

We don't want our kids to go to uni.

We don't want to build houses because every town and village must stay the size it was when we personally bought a house there.

We don't want any foreigners.

We don't want to tackle poverty because it might mean the odd "undeserving" person gets a bit more than they should.

We don't want our kids to learn foreign languages - they should just use Google translate and shout louder in English.

Whatever you think of the Tony Blair 50% ambition (which he never really said but the idea was there) it did represent some kind of hope and dream for our young people.

Someone once said that Britain was becoming a care home with an economy attached. And to many of our young people it must feel that way.

The problem isn't that overseas students don't want to come, it's that successive governments are discouraging them in order to get the immigration numbers down.

Which racists don't even care about because one foreigner is too many for them.

It's all awful...as a MFL grad (not Notts) I despair at how poorly languages - and creative degrees - are regarded as disposable. And why in earth nursing was made a degree level specialty, I don't know...I'm sure there is a case for specialist nurses needing more academic routes but it's nuts to have made it a prerequisite and then not have jobs for them to go to!

DD is in her final year of a (human) geography and business degree at Nottingham and has had only 4 days of teaching this term - yesterday they were advised their lecturers are now striking until the end of term. I have HUGE sympathy for the academics, and there is a wider debate around higher education funding etc, but the poor students currently stuck in the middle have no choice and started courses in good faith, which are now not being taught.....

The government is more bothered than the racists. Polling shows that the majority of people don't see international students as part of the immigration "problem". But deterring international students seems to be the only way that the government can put any kind of brake on immigration at the moment.

This government has trashed what was left of the sector. In the less than 18 months that it's been in power, the cost of its policies has been an over £30m annual loss to my institution. For many universities that will have put them into deficit. As for the rest, they will be in deficit soon enough, expect for a tiny number of elite institutions. It will get worse because the White Paper and the international student levy are going to cause a lot more disruption to the sector - this government is only interested in what universitites can contribute to defence and industrial strategy.

My DS went there for his masters. He absolutely hated it. Yes the campus looks nice when it's sunny, but it's mostly damp and moist. The city is tiny and the university felt like a UG centric uni just based for the "uni experience". Students seemed just to be interested in getting drunk and having a good time. He felt the academic culture and environmental was lacking there. Nothing much happened, students were just interesting in going there to have a good time

Sorry he had that experience @BiglyCheese but I’m not sure you can stereotype 36,000 students that way! Both my dc are there as undergrads and they’re taking their studies seriously. It is also a very sociable uni but it doesn’t have to be only one or the other. And I’m not sure Nottingham’s weather is any worse than Manchester’s or Birmingham’s!

@GCAcademicexcept when there was recent flag mania,our uni was targeted between the two sites on campus and the incidents of racist attacks rose within the university. so just because Jo public doesn’t see foreign students as a threat doesn’t mean there are fractions that do.

Students seemed just to be interested in getting drunk and having a good time. He felt the academic culture and environmental was lacking there. Nothing much happened, students were just interesting in going there to have a good time

Yeah right ...

@Panicmode1oh my god why is this debate still ongoing about whether nurses should be degree educated. It’s old fashioned and misogynistic. We are not living in 1955! The level of skill and knowledge required upon registration far outstrips many other professions. It’s insulting and if it was a male dominated profession we wouldn’t be having this debate.

I apologise. Yes I was bad to generalise the entire student population.

For my DS his UG was in "golden triangle uni".

He went to Nottingham as he applied late and his grades were not good enough to stay at his UG uni. I think the change was big was a lot for him to take in.

He had fun in UG and in PG

@thankgoditssaturday Nursing degrees are obviously needed now 38% go to university for degrees. When 15% went clearly there wasn’t any difficulty recruiting many nurses from the 23% available. As far as I recall the first nursing degrees became available in the 1980s but many excellent nurses were trained without expensive degrees. However there was nurses accommodation and training/academics was all done at the hospitals. Not all nurses need degrees and definitely not all the work is that challenging. It really comes down to opening up opportunities and whether that’s desirable or not. As in many professions, you don’t learn more, you jettison what you don’t need any longer. Doesn’t make it harder, just different. I suspect when DM was a nurse in the 1940s, no one thought less of it because it wasn’t a degree job. Neither was teaching. We haven’t got better teachers now, in many ways, just different approaches to the job.

Wow, that is really significant. Not unlike the closures, changes and mergers that Uni of Kent has just gone through. And they merged entirely with Greenwich Uni recently. I would expect to see more universities merging in future.