5/29/2008 7:36:00 AM
Timothy Garton Ash; The Guardian 29 May
Europe resists US-style college fees but, as Oxford fundraisers know, we need to find that kind of money to competeI divide my academic life between two universities, Oxford and Stanford. In 2006, Stanford announced a fundraising "challenge" with a target of $4.3bn, or about £2.2bn at today's exchange rates. This week, Oxford launched a campaign to raise at least £1.25bn, the largest ever by a European university.Behind Oxford's bid to play in the US-style university funding superleague there hovers a larger question: will Europe, the cradle of the modern university, have any truly world-class research universities in 10 years' time? That is itself part of a still bigger conundrum: how can Europe hold its own in an increasingly non-European world? At the moment, Europe is represented in the top 10 of the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of world universities by four institutions, all of them British: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, London and University College, London. In the rival rankings produced by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, only Oxford and Cambridge make the top 10. The other eight are American, but China intends to have one up there soon.Oxford cites as the context of its campaign "a world of uncertain state funding and growing global competition". I see that fierce competition for the best academics and students every week, whether I'm in Oxford or Stanford. This is as much a global market as that for computers, oil or financial services. Oxford is hanging in there but, frankly, only just. For the best and brightest younger academics from all over the world, honeystone quadrangles, high table and an incomparably rich intellectual tradition will go only so far to compensate for lower salaries, higher house prices and heavier teaching burdens than you would find at, say, Stanford. Money is by no means the only key asset in this globalised market, but it helps. Public funding of higher education has increased under New Labour, after a terrible decline under Margaret Thatcher, but it can't do the whole job for a greatly expanded university sector. It brings with it bureaucratic and political strings, and will probably fare badly in the current public expenditure squeeze. Anyway, financial and intellectual independence march together, as Oxford's campaign brochure notes in a paragraph pithily entitled Freedom
Guardian
GOING TO UNIVERSITY IS NOT ALWAYS THE BEST PATH
Letters; The Times 29 May
A degree is not the only route to success
Sir, I fail to see how lowering the A-level standard for non-middle- class students’ entry to university can lead to a “world-class education system in England” (“Schools to be graded by number of pupils going on to university”, May 27). Are top universities going to water down the content of the course as well? Will these students be allowed to achieve equal marks for lower-level work? And is there not a greater risk of dropout with the student feeling a failure? All this just for happy government statistics. There may be many reasons why young people choose not to apply for university and the Government and education system should be looking at ways to encourage all forms of education. Part-time degrees have been considered second best for far too long. They enable students to earn while they study and to ensure that they are happy with their career choice before committing themselves to the time and money involved. One size does not fit all.
Deborah Jones
Caldicot, Monmouthshire
Sir, I know of no teacher who would discourage high educational aspiration in any student, but I do know of many families for whom the prospect of their offspring incurring thousands of pounds of debt at university is, frankly, terrifying. That so many — not so few — low-income families choose to make enormous sacrifices in order that their children may reap the benefits of higher education should be regarded with wonderment and gratitude by the State and not used as yet another opportunity to criticise schools for matters over which they have no control.
Michael Mounsey
Ollerton, Notts
Sir, Ranking schools according to the number of pupils they send to university just reinforces the prejudice against vocational qualifications in this country. The National Council for Educational Excellence’s plans may have the noble goal of getting more young people into university, but it does so at the expense of those students who don’t want to pursue a degree or aren’t suited to a more academic way of learning. Degrees are not the only route to success but initiatives like this make it difficult for young people to believe. The NCEE’s focus should be on all education rather than just academic education, as it is the National Council for “Educational” Excellence and not purely “academic” excellence, after all. If schools are to be judged on how many students go to university, young people will continue to force themselves down potentially harmful educational paths not necessarily suited to them and parents will continue to encourage their children to go to university without looking at all the options available, ultimately benefiting no one.
Andy Powell
CEO, Edge
London W1
FE/HE/ Skills
E-mail a friend |
del.icio.us| Bookmark|
Permalink |
Comments
(0) |
Post RSS