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Government want students to do community service – and pay for it themselves

James Waldron — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:49:51 +0000

David Lammy, the Minister for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has this week come out in support of a scheme for compulsory civic service for students. Based on a report by the think tank Demos, university students would be required to complete 100 hours of community service in return for the state subsidy of their education in the form of loans and grants. Mr Lammy stated: “In a consumerist age young people need more opportunities to develop an ethic of service to others.”

Adding insult to injury, not only would students be expected to find extra time their busy lives to perform this mandatory service like the drunk drivers, vandals and petty thieves of this world, they are to pay for the privilege. The estimated £450 million cost of the scheme would be funded by raising the interest paid on student loans.

When questioned, Dr Sonia Sodha (who no doubt enjoyed a student grant) stated: “This will be a fair levy on those benefiting from state subsidised education”. Gordon Brown has recently put his weight behind similar initiatives suggesting he would like to see all young people complete 50 hours of community service before their 19th birthday, and with the Conservatives proposing similar schemes for sixteen year-olds this initiative could well get the go-ahead.

Whilst the hypocrisy of a generation that received free university education, wasted public money on wars of dubious legality and destroyed our country’s economy now expecting the nation’s undergraduates to perform civic service in return for our education is obvious, it is compounded in the case of the Rt. Hon. David Lammy. Not only did he receive state funding for an undergraduate degree at SOAS in London and a Masters at Harvard Law School, the MP for Tottenham has also claimed over £25,000 pounds in second home allowance despite being a London MP. That’s quite a lot more than the £8000 pounds my degree is costing the government, Mr Lammy.

What particularly irks me about this scheme, however, is the fact that the government sees fit to tell me what to do with my free time. I am a busy student in the 3rd year of a 4 year science degree. I have 2 full days of labs a week, another couple of days of lectures and that’s before I even begin to write lab reports, essays or presentations. In my free time I’m racing and training for a marathon and volunteer with the Red Cross, as well as helping to run a youth group for children with learning disabilities and working full time in the holidays. Last week, I did in fact spend about 20 hours helping prepare a stall and awareness campaign for World Aids Day, so no doubt I would be well on my way to my 100 hours and yet the idea of someone legislating to force me to do so just boils my blood.

P.S. I just can’t help thinking that perhaps if Mr Lammy spent less time telling the nation’s students what to do and partook in a little more studying himself he might have avoided his embarrassing performance on Celebrity Mastermind. He scored a grand total of 13 points, and let slip that he thinks Henry VII is the son of Henry VIII and that Marie Antoinette and her husband Pierre were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. If anyone’s interested in having a laugh the footage, look below:

Why shouldn’t medics and engineers pay higher fees?

Duncan Robinson — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:20:36 +0000

According to Lord Browne’s report into tuition fees a degree is now worth ‘just’ £2,500 a year to ‘graduates’. This equates to £100,000 over a lifetime, after tax. This figure, however, doesn’t include student debt. So, is university worth it, from a purely financial point of view when student debt is included?

Yes.

On average, students graduate with £20,000 of debt. This is repaid when your earnings reach £15,000. Effectively, as a graduate you pay a 9% graduate tax on all earnings over £15,000 until your student debt is cleared. So, let’s say you’re earning £22,000 a year in your graduate job, you will be paying back £630 a year. In fact, until you’re earning £43,000, the ‘graduate premium’ will outweigh any student debt repayments.

‘Aha!’, the critics may snarl. ‘So the current system penalises successful graduates?’ Well, no. It’s difficult to earn £40,000 a year without degree. Try becoming a doctor, lawyer or engineer without a degree. Their graduate premiums are of course higher. Plus, they pay back their student debt quicker.

The fact is some degrees are worth more than others. Putting an exact figure on how a much a ‘degree’ earns you is pointless. Engineers and medics, for example, will nearly always earn more than history graduates. My degree has less of a premium as it gives me fewer valuable skills. I can’t build bridges or perform surgery; I can sift through lots of data and read quickly.

How fees are paid for should reflect this. Expensive degrees, with lots of teaching like engineering and medicine, should have higher fees paid for by a graduate tax on high earning graduates. It’s unfair that arts student have to pay the same as science students for considerably less teaching and resources. Students with these more expensive, skills based degrees tend to earn more as a result. They should thus pay enough fees to cover the actual costs of their degree, if they can afford to. Should doctors and engineers earning large salaries not chip in a little extra for their education? If not why not?

At least you’re having a better day than this guy…

Duncan Robinson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:13:25 +0000

There is pain. Then there is ‘dog biting you flush in the balls’ pain.

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STOP PRESS: NEWSPAPER EDITOR IN NEPOTISM SHOCK!

Duncan Robinson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:51:17 +0000

There’s a bit of a hoo-hah on Twitter about the revelation that – and you might want to sit down before hearing this – A NEWSPAPER EDITOR HAS EMPLOYED HIS OWN DAUGHTER! That’s right, The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger pulled a few strings and got his daughter a job. Prior to Rusbridger’s disgraceful actions, journalism had of course been a nepotism-free zone. Journalists were recruited entirely on merit rather than lineage, in this happy age of flying pigs.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian

Martin Bright, the political editor of the Jewish Chronicle, finds it ‘astonishing’. The only thing that is astonishing, however, is Bright’s astonishment. During his long career in journalism this isn’t the first time Bright has come across nepotism in the industry, surely?

Private Eye revealed this case of nepotism months ago in its ‘Streets of Shame’ column. The only reason the Jewish Chronicle has picked up on it is because Isabella Mackie (she, rather tactfully, uses her mother’s maiden name) had a foolish pop at Melanie Phillips in the section of comments she was meant to be moderating.

Now why am I writing about this on Lazy Students? Well, a lot of the people who write for and read this website want to become journalists. I do too and it is very annoying when you read about people getting enviable positions based largely on who their parents or friends are. Sadly, this is a part of life.

If you want to be a journalist and your mummy or daddy doesn’t run the paper, then be prepared to work hard. Get work experience. Beg for it. Make yourself useful to the point of harassment. Start a blog. Write lots. Oh, and be lucky. If you have the talent and the desire (and a little bit of luck) you will get where you want to be – no matter who your parents are.

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Nice one, Exeter

dinelson — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:26:59 +0000

Poor fuckers.

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Extreme whale watching

Duncan Robinson — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:14:37 +0000

Like a lot of graduates, my friend Sterling Chan hasn’t managed to find a job in the recession. So he’s spent a lot of his post-university summer fishing, on the west coast of Canada. In the video below a humpback whale gets a little too close for comfort. (Skip to 1.10 in for the good bit.)

Rather than worrying about nearly being rammed from his boat by a massive mammal, Chan said “I kinda hope he doesn’t swim into my lines. I don’t think my rods are rated to land humpbacks.” Badass.

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More student debt hyperbole

Duncan Robinson — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:45:01 +0000

Student debt is set to rise to £23,500, according to the Push, the university guide. This is quite a lot of money, but as I’ve argued before, it’s less than you think. It’s certainly less than the £83,000 the Telegraph argue that a typical three year BA will cost once tuition fees increase. Here are a few reasons why things aren’t so bad:

Firstly, student debt is the cheapest type of debt. It’s inflation linked and thus you simply pay back the real value of what you’ve been given.

Headlines decrying debt nearly always ignore the fact that when you graduate, you get a qualification that sets you apart from over half the population – and if you bother to do well and get a 2.1 or first, you’ll be ahead of 75% of the population. And that if you do very well and get a first, you’ll be ahead of at least 90% of the population.

And, okay, £23,500 is a big figure if you have to pay it back all at once. But you don’t. Bailiffs don’t arrive at your digs the second you graduate and nick your television. If you earn £16,000 a year, you will pay back £90 a year. That’s less than £2 a week. When you earn £20,000, you will pay back £450 a year. That’s £8.50 a week, when you’re earning close to £400 gross. If you earn less than £15,000 you pay nothing.

The only possible consequence of constant gloom-mongering by bodies like the NUS is that poorer students will be scared off from university because of the debt. There are many reasons to not go to university, but debt simply isn’t one of them. Ignorance about the true cost of university – and how it is paid – is such that huge amounts of bursaries aimed at poorer students go unclaimed. This is the real disgrace. Organisations like Push.co.uk should concentrate on enticing poorer students into university, rather than doing its best to scare them off.

Are universities open to all?

Chris Stokel-Walker — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:22:16 +0000

The arguments I made in a previous article about university education brought about some debate from a friend of mine. Natasha Sinton collared me and said that she can’t really disagree with the “yearning by both major political parties to get more working-class kids into tertiary education”. Thanks to the wonders of MSN (the summer holidays mean she’s gone home to Lancashire and can’t physically attack me for saying these things) we had a debate over the merits of university for all.

Tash: I agree with the government trying to help working class people into university.

Chris: Well I don’t disagree with that, but I disagree with it when it means that my degree, which is quite good, is made worthless because people can get degrees in hairdressing.

Tash: I don’t think it will because people will see the difference between them – the vocation degrees and diplomas and things are obviously different. It’s just making practical education as valid as academic education, which is what a lot of the population is going to be using. It’s making it so people who are good at their jobs but don’t have anything on paper to say so can set themselves apart from others like you can in an academic context.

Chris: But why can’t colleges offer vocational degrees and not universities?

Tash: They do.

Chris: I know.

Tash: They’re trying to get people into some form of further education.

Chris: So why don’t they do that and universities keep with more academic subjects?

Tash: Well I imagine unis like ours [Newcastle University] will do, but places like Northumbria maybe will do vocational things – as they did when they were polytechnics. Also because people who want to do hairdressing or whatever have just as much right to the experience of living in a different city and everything else which goes with the studying as people like us who want to learn about books for a few years.

Chris: But there are colleges for that.

Tash: I thought the target wasn’t necessarily for degrees – it was for some kind of further education; so staying at a college or whatever and doing it part time while working like a friend of mine is planning to do would come under than category.

Chris: What about GNVQs?

Tash: It’s a different but equally valid kind of learning to classroom based GCSEs, and one which is of a lot more use to the large percentage of the population who will go into practical jobs and people who are good at practical things but never quite got on with school. They’re not devaluing education, they’re just modifying it.

Chris: But is it not better for people who are good at practical things to do the shorter courses rather than three years of degrees and take on that debt?

Tash: Hmm. So where actually does degrees in hairdressing and stuff?

Chris: [after a quick Google search] The University of Derby and the University of Greenwich for two. Most of the places are colleges, which makes me wonder why universities do them too.

Tash: I don’t see how it makes a difference to you and your degree whether other people do theirs in a college or a uni?

Chris: It makes a difference because people don’t look at specifics, they look at generalities. So if people read an article that says that your university offers courses in stand-up comedy or something ridiculous, they associate that with academic easiness. Plus I also question whether it’s worthwhile for people to take on thousands of pounds of debt for a vocational degree they can do for less at a college.

Tash: That’s up to them though – it’s not up to you to say that they should study at wherever. And it’s not okay for people to study degrees like that as opposed to us studying Sex and the City?

Want to join in the debate? Leave us a comment.

Monkey completely owns dog, twice

Duncan Robinson — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:18:10 +0000

Sometimes talking about higher education can be dull and depressing. No one likes paying tuition fees, and even fewer people like talking about it. So here’s a monkey taunting a doggy.

Cheeky monkey.

Congratulations!

Duncan Robinson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:10:02 +0000

Be proud, kids.

Hat-tip: Dizzy

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