It was announced last week that the New College of
the Humanities will start taking applications next month for students
to enrol in the first session of three year courses for undergraduates,
starting in the autumn of 2012.This will be a ‘private’
[not funded by the government or taxpayer] college, styled on the American
elite liberal arts colleges.
With fees of £18,000 a year and estimated
living expenses of £10,000 a year, this will put the cost of a
degree at £84,000. With such a high price tag, this profit making
company is expecting their degrees to be valued by commerce as equal
to Oxford or Cambridge. Entrance qualifications are 3 A’s at A
Level, plus plenty of money.
“Appalling," said Dr Rowan Tomlinson, tutor of New College,
Oxford, giving
his verdict on Grayling's plan for an elite college that he hopes
to open in London next year. The New College of Humanities, which some
have characterised as a British Harvard, has been gathering less complimentary
descriptions from academic colleagues.
The Guardian reported ‘A new private university college founded
by the philosopher AC Grayling and staffed by celebrity professors will
teach exactly the same syllabuses as the University
of London, which charges half the price, it has emerged’.
Plagiarism
Academics complained that syllabuses listed on
the New College website appeared to have been copied from the University
of London's own web pages in a move some
said amounted to plagiarism. Grayling claimed it would help save
humanities education from cuts by bringing together teachers including
Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson and Stephen Pinker.
“Every university is worried about students plagiarising essays,"
said Justin Champion, a senior historian at Royal Holloway College,
who spotted that the titles of modules he wrote were reproduced on the
New College website.
"Here we have a whole degree programme being
plagiarised. I feel quite insulted because I wrote a lot of the syllabus.
If the University of London didn't exist and public money hadn't been
used to draw up these syllabuses, they wouldn't have been able to do
this, or they would have had to invest a lot of money."
There is a possibility that we may see more of these small colleges
[around 350 intake per year] springing up in the future. We did report
that the government were suggesting that the rich could buy a place
at universities for under achievers at £28,000
a year.
It would appear the Tory led coalition government want a two tier system
for education at the highest level, plus a benchmark with which to increases
fees. There’s nothing like using the back door to introduce even
higher tuition fees.
Coalition Admit Uni Fees Mess
The ConDems have finally admitted they have made
a mess of the increase in tuition fees. They originally calculated
that the cost per student would be £7,500, which would be paid
for by the taxpayer [something they they didn’t tell the taxpayer],
they did however soften the blow by saying that they didn’t expect
the total amount being repaid, in other words the tax payer would not
benefit from higher taxes.
We
reported that the average higher fees being charged will leave a
funding deficit of £450m, with the possibility of a cut in Uni
places of 36,000. The ConDems have already cut the number of foreign
students who can come and study here; this will help increase the funding
shortfall. A spokes woman in the Department of Business, Innovation
and Skills said the fees would remain affordable [to the tax payers
funding them] she concluded by saying’ We believe the assumptions
made when costing the policy remain valid, even if the average loan
tuition loan goes above the £7,500 they budgeted for.’ The
expected increase of 15% will be funded through even higher taxation.
The Tory led Coalition have now admitted that the average cost per student
will be £8,765, an increase of almost 17%, and that this could
mean a cut in the number of student places of around 40,000.
I will admit I got it wrong by nearly 2%, the coalitions experts got
it wrong by nearly 17%;
The sooner that parliament goes into the summer recess the better, at
least then the Liberals will have time to reflect on their treacherous
behaviour, and their betrayal of what was their hardcore voters. Perhaps
then they will have sorted out their splinter group, and try to act
as MP’s should do.
I think they may go back to their original name of ‘the Liberals’,
it took only 4 people to start the LibDems, I would have thought that
there are a lot more than 4 Libdems in the Tory led coalition, who have
some self respect left, or maybe there isn’t!
