Third of 8 weekly articles documenting bias in “The Cambridge Student”: Lent 2009 Issue 3.
TCS’s statist bias is well known. This week, an article on government funding for universities was entitled “Give with one hand, take with the other”, despite there being no taking from universities involved whatsoever. The sub-title was “£700 million extra investment criticised as too little” (!). The “take with the other” referred to a reduction in student grant funding. Of course, the government aren’t “taking” anything, merely giving less of other people’s money than they previously were.
The £700 million increase to £7.8 billion next year is an almost 10% rise on £7.1 billion this year. However, the article claims the increase “barely accounts for inflation”! Well, we know that the government are inflating the currency at ludicrous rates, but the official CPI measures inflation at only 3.1%, down from 4.1% in November. Even if the actual rate was double that, a 10% rise in spending is still a huge increase in real terms.
TCS seems to think that it would be wrong to maintain government spending at present levels – it must increase, perpetually! Obviously government spending on universities as a proportion of national output can’t increase forever, otherwise eventually we’d be spending everything on universities, and nothing on anything else! They really haven’t thought this through.
On page 13, there was a comment piece on the just-ended “occupation” of the Law Faculty by some nutters.
“Last Friday at around 7pm a small group of protestors [sic] entered the law faculty and refused to leave. Like so many student protests in Cambridge, this could have ended with issuing an obligatory and unrealistic list of demands to the university, a photo-shoot with the student media and then… nothing. Everyone goes home because, hey, they’ve got an essay in for Monday. Except this time something was different.”
Oh really? It seems to me that the protest fits those criteria perfectly: unrealistic demands like “We demand that Cambridge University issue a statement which condemns Israel’s action in Gaza” and “We demand that Cambridge University grant a minimum of ten scholarships to Palestinian students every year”; a photo-shoot with the student media, and now everyone’s gone home, accomplishing nothing. “This is the largest, most protracted protest of 21st century Cambridge”. Well, that wasn’t particularly hard: they accomplished it with 30 people and six days.
The Editors “feel there is much to be praised” in the actions of these trespassers. They found them “sleep-deprived, hungry, but undaunted. It takes organisation, guts and conviction to spend your weekend – and much of your week – in a cold, dull building, potentially to the detriment of your degree. The Cambridge Student admires the protesters for their dedication to politics and their own ideals”.
What dedication to politics? These people weren’t engaging in politics, but blackmail. Their message was, give in to our demands or we will not leave. Good on the university for turfing them out.
On page 15 there’s an interview with John Prescott. Uninformative tosh. Says Prescott: “having produced the most sustained growth of any European economy, we [had it] undermined by greedy bankers and financial institutions”. Labour produced sustained economic growth? Well, Tony Blair thinks it was luck! Any real economic growth was hindered by Labour’s policies, and most of it was fake growth caused by too low interest rates. The interviewer doesn’t call Prescott up on this. Maybe it’s because the interviewer didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the interview? Or maybe it’s because the interviewer was Pete Jefferys, Secretary of the Labour Club!
Excellent article about education vouchers on on page 12 though: “if schools select on academic aptitude, they will draw from an eclectic mix of different backgrounds, which is far favourable to the current system where your geographical location, or your level of economic privilege, usually determines which school you attend.” Quite right.
Interesting response to last week’s TCS Hugo. I agree that I was too lenient with Prescott but I only had 7 minutes with him in the end and so didn’t really have much choice but to let him ramble in order to get enough content. Although I think ‘uninformative tosh’ is perhaps a bit harsh!
With regard to the Gaza protesters, I’m glad we took the position we did. Although certainly there was an air of farce to some aspects of the occupation I felt, having spent a lot of time there for TCS, many were genuine in their convictions. Indeed, while CULC and CUCA stand aside debating their constitutions other students tackle (however effectively) real, substantive issues.
I’m afraid I wholly disagree with you about the vouchers article. It was oversimplified, naive and unproductive. In a week where the social divide at universities was highlighted, do we really want to make our already divisive schooling system more so by creating more “choice” – choice, that is, for the upper middle classes at the expense of everyone else.
Sorry I missed the policy meet yesterday, hopefully we can have another before the end of term.
Hi Pete,
The policy meet is today.
Fair enough about Prescott. I added “uninformative tosh” as an afterthought, and you’re right, it is too harsh.
We have disagreed about vouchers before. You never do back up your claim that they will only produce choice “for the upper middle classes at the expense of everyone else”. At the moment, only richer-than-average people have the choice because only they can afford it. Vouchers give money directly to everyone. So then everyone can afford it.
Via Douglas Carswell, I think much of the article may be based on this interview with Milburn in The Times on 17th January 2009.
Hugo
I particularly liked the Editors’ sentence (my emphasis): “In retrospect, while the Law Faculty is a suitable building to occupy with a big lobby, Cambridge law students, who are all-too-often more concerned with their careers than justice, were never going to warm to a principled socialist demonstration“. Delicious.
[...] Cambridge University Conservative Association, for their efforts in exposing bias in the University newspaper. Their sound blog reports weekly on what they describe as the [...]