Posts Tagged: University of California


21
Nov 09

Tories!

From a recent item on the website of the British Conservative Party:

Universities have been forced to spend thousands of pounds helping students make ends meet as a direct result of the collapse of the Government’s system of student finance.

Willetts said the Government “still refuses to take responsibility” for the situation. “Ministers urgently need to get a grip on the crisis so that students are not forced to drop out and those that start university in January get their money on time”, he added.

Just thought it would be fun to note that, while the ‘moderate’ Republican government of California finds itself dismantling one of the best public university systems in the world, the other best public university system is getting support for student funding, from putatively conservative politicians. In other words, while one set of conservative politicians are willing to eviscerate the entire system, the other is looking to prevent tuition increases in a way that would be hard to get American or even Canadian liberals to approach seriously.

Just nice to be reminded what counts as conservatism south of the border–and everywhere else.


20
Nov 09

UC

Well, they did it. The University of California–perhaps the best public system in the world, give or take that of the UK–raised tuition for next year by a pretty shocking 32%.

It’s hard to say anything new about this–it’s a generally tragic event, and, along with budget cuts, stands to do permanent damage to the system. Top-tier professors are, I gather, already grumbling about moving on.

I would indicate only that at least this is getting attention. The comparably slower decline of Canadian public universities into massive classes, lower standards, and almost no face time between professors and undergrads (an important thing, some bizarre arguments notwithstanding), is pretty dead as a public issue here. Yes, student walk out once a year (about two weeks ago, I think), and that probably gets some prefunctory press, but that’s about it.

If you set out to kill the system slow enough, in other words, no one sees you coming.


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