Rav Casley Gera

With the UCAS process completed and a new year of students beginning to gear up for beginning university, there’s a remarkable level of concensus in the media at the success of the Government’s contentious funding reforms. Here’s the Guardian, one of the papers most receptive to critics of the reforms in the past: [Read more →]

Am angered by article in Prospect by Robert Jackson calling for a “mixed-model” format for higher education. He repeats regularly that this does not mean privatisation, even though he advocates allowing Universities to decide salaries, fees and, by implication, admissions policies entirely independently. Quite how this differs from privatisation is not clear. Jackson emphasises the success of the US model in meeting the need for mass vocational training, arguing that a centrally-regulated model can’t match up. Of course, his fundamental concern is of cost, that further extension of HE beyond the government’s 50% mark will simply be politically untenable. He also reiterates the tired line that funding HE from taxation means “the transfer of money through the tax system from poorer taxpayers to the children of better-off taxpayers.” Although Jackson left the Tories for Labour not long ago, he’s clearly learnt the Government’s trick of only ever adopting left-wing rhetoric in pursuit of the most right-wing policies. [Read more →]