Lazy Students » Features

ZOMG, THEY’RE TEACHING TERRORISM!?!?!

Duncan Robinson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:29:37 +0000

My head hurts. I just spent 20 minutes reading the comments in this article and I need to lie down. It’s by Rizwaan Sabir, a PhD student who was arrested for downloading an Al-Qaeda manual (and being a bit brown). That seems fair enough, you might think: surely someone who downloads such a manual deserves it? Except Sabir was studying for a PhD in terrorism. He was thus arrested for doing a fundamental part of his degree.

In his piece, Sabir points out that this is a bit silly. People need to be able to study terrorism to understand why it happens and even work out ways to stop it. This point was sadly missed by hordes of commentators, who left missive after missive declaring:

Y R THEY TEAHCIHING TERRORISM AT UNIVIERSTY?!?@!

Or something along those lines. CJCJC said:

Beyond parody.
This sums up the current academic mindset in a nutshell.
Teaching “terrorism” as an academic subject while turning a blind eye, indeed actively refusing to co-operate with the police, to the radicalisation taking place right under you noses.

It’s political correctness gone literally mad. polishsupporter said:

I mean what does studying terrorism teach. There a lots of angry people in the world and lots of martyrs who are prepared to blow themselves in the name of some bogus interpretation of religion.

Innit. Except for the terrorists who aren’t religious. Or those who don’t commit suicide. Hang on, this terrorism thing is slightly more complicated than it looks. kevwell was more suspicious:

One does have to wonder why there are those who are so interested in Islamic extremism & terrorism, that they wish to study it at university.

Yes, bit funny that. And all those historians interested Fascism. And what about Chemists? They like chemicals. What are explosives made out of: chemicals! QED.

Anyway, head over to The Guardian and give yourself a giggle.

Don’t worry: your university is not trying to kill you

Duncan Robinson — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:11:32 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote: “Following Mutallab’s alleged actions, there will probably be a purported crackdown on ‘extremism’ within universities.”

Today, as predicted, the Daily Telegraph contains an editorial jumping on this bandwagon, pointing the finger at universities for failing to fight Islamism. Its headline is the completely reasonable: “Academic liberalism is a danger to life”.

The editorial states that “institutes of higher education in London have consistently provided sanctuary for Islamist students who parrot the hate-filled rhetoric of al-Qaeda and its allies.” The editorial also blasts “liberal British academics” for their “habit of diverting any discussion of terrorism away from Islamism towards the evils of Anglo-American foreign policy”.

“Again and again, speakers have been invited and rooms provided so that, in the name of free speech, vulnerable students can be indoctrinated,” the editorial continues. The Telegraph, however, is being misleading – as many of its education news stories are. Universities are not designed to fight extremism. They are there to teach and facilitate learning. They are not there to censor.

Students at universities are no more susceptible to extremism than any other young person. UCL did not teach Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab to allegedly strap explosives to his legs and kill 250 people. “Perhaps they picked up their expertise in a British university laboratory”, asks the editorial. Or perhaps they typed ‘how to build a bomb’ into Google. None of the 7/7 bombers had a BA in Bomb-making.

The only way universities can fight against extremism is through giving their students the critical faculties not to be indoctrinated. Banning speakers won’t help. Nor will banning courses that might improve a student’s bomb-making skills (which is surely the next step up from the Telegraph’s innuendo above). Academic liberalism, despite the Telegraph’s claims to the contrary, is not a danger to life.

Heads roll at the Student Loans Company

Duncan Robinson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:05:10 +0000

After months of incompetence and thousands of students stranded at university without any money, two members of the Student Loans Company have resigned. The man who oversaw the entire sorry operation remains, however.

The two who took the buck were Wallace Gray, the SLC’s ICT director, and Martin Herbert, the marketing and customer services director. But Ralph Seymour-Jackson, the Chief Executive – who described 50,000 students being without any funding as ‘reasonable’ – is still in charge.

Seymour-Jackson, the man behind the cock-ups

There is a logic to forcing out the persons responsible for ICT (which was one of the main reasons for the delays) and customer service (which has been indescribably crap). But the failure wasn’t simply down to some dodgy software and crap communication with ‘customers’, it was systemic.

A number of dumb ideas caused the cock-ups. My favourite has got to be that the ‘SLC staffed its call centres to meet average demand throughout the year, rather than putting extra staff in place in busier times.’ In other words, a systemic problem.

The scanning equipment failed and the decision to process applications by hand was taken far too late for many students – particularly the ones who were income assessed, i.e. the ones who really need the money. Again, a systemic problem.

Also ‘board members were unaware of many of the company’s problems, partly because key information was not revealed to them by the executive, but also because “the non-executive directors did not challenge the executive team sufficiently”.’ Another systemic problem.

The system failed, but the man who presided over it remains. Ralph Seymour-Jackson should be sacked.

My degree? It’s just an overpriced swimming certificate…

Greg Coughlin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:29:13 +0000

Congratulations! It’s been a hell of a ride but you’ve done it! You’ve negotiated the potentially hazardous route from undergraduate to graduate, stopping off at the somewhat superfluous graduand on route. What next? Photos outside the arts block, hugs from loved ones and a quick exercise in hat catching before you are flung out into the cold with your BA clutched in your trembling hand and a worrying feeling that a three year old bubble might have just burst.
Then you move back home.

It would be churlish to say that nothing’s changed. You are armed with three years of character-defining experiences, of intellectual rigour and of social development. You are a completely different person to the one who left three years earlier. And let’s not forget the old degree, you’ve definitely got that: there’s a picture of you holding it on the mantelpiece.

Except that isn’t quite true because they don’t have scrolls any more, just certificates like the ones you used to get for swimming, so it’s actually a picture of you holding a roughly cut piece of white, plastic piping with a red bow tied around the middle. It would be glib to imply a symbolic connection between an undergraduate degree and a plastic pipe beyond that of visual similarity, but sometimes, just sometimes, when every single job that you actually want requires experience that you haven’t got because every single job that you want requires experience that you haven’t got because every…well, sometimes you wonder.

However, there is one thing that your arts degree fully qualifies you for, and has provided you with all the experience necessary. Congratulations, I hope you’re ready for post-grad, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

£83,000 for a degree? It’s possible – but only if you really try…

A rose by any other name: is a university’s name important?

Frances Allan — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:25:58 +0000

A snip at £250,000

What do Anglia Ruskin, Edge Hill, Aston and Heriot-Watt all have in common? They are all universities in the UK that are part of a dwindling group of institutions in which their name gives no clue as to its location.

So often university names are based on the city in which they are located. Not only does this tell you where the university is, the name can also give some clues as to how good it is.

There are some universities whose names a synonymous with a first class education – Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews to name a few. These are universities which everyone knows about without having to go on a fact finding mission just to establish where they are or what courses they offer.

Then there are some institutions whose names give a clue to the type of university that they are for example, the University of the Arts London, London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies – universities which specialise in a select field.

And then there are some universities that are known to be great for certain subjects, for example Liverpool is top for Veterinary Medicine according to the Times Top 100 Guide, and Bath is great for Architecture.

Finally, there are the names which are widely acknowledged to be either a)really hard to get into, b) a really beautiful place to study, or c) a particularly good city for partying in, or if they are lucky, all three.

Another example of a university which didn’t have it’s location in its name was University formerly known as Napier, which also happens to be where I ended up. I will be the first to admit that I didn’t know where it was until I looked on their website but it turned out that it was in Edinburgh, a place known for its beauty and culture.

In my second year there were some rumours flying around that the name was going to change to Edinburgh Napier University and it turned out to be true. One of the main reasons which were cited for the change was because no-one knew where it was unless you lived in the area. The university claimed that even people in Glasgow – only an hour’s drive away – didn’t know where it was.

It also meant that anyone who has either studied or worked there could stop saying the phrase ‘It’s in Edinburgh’ when asked ‘where exactly is Napier?’ So almost one year after the name officially changed, after all of the signs, leaflets, stationary, posters, website, library stamps and diaries have all be rebranded, was it worth it?

It cost a cool £250,000 and an Edinburgh Napier spokesman said: “There is evidence that the name change has led to an increased awareness of Edinburgh Napier University and that is enhancing our reputation…a record number of potential students attended our recent Open Days, while the number of visitors to the University website has also increased. The University is also receiving a record number of applications from potential students,”

He Continued: “In short, the name change has helped give us a platform to achieve the kind of sustainable growth that is vital to ensuring the long term success of Edinburgh Napier.”

So would it be worthwhile for institutions such as Edge Hill and Anglia Ruskin to change their names? Well yes it probably would be a good idea, because it seems that if you have not got your location in your name, you are falling at the first hurdle – attracting students.

Website sells off desirable internships for charity

Duncan Robinson — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:39:48 +0000

Yes, someone actually paid hundreds of pounds to work for free at the Daily Express

The Guardian’s Graduate section has a piece bemoaning the sale of internships and work experience. A charity, Pilotlight, have been selling placements with Channel 5 and the Daily Express, among others. (Let’s just ignore why on earth someone would want to work for either of these two companies, for now).

The Guardian’s message seems to be that this is a very bad thing. And on some level, it is. To get ahead in careers such as the media or politics, you have to spend a large chunk of your early twenties working for free. It’s difficult to keep a second job going if your full time job involves rushing around London from 8am until 8pm five days a week, picking up your MP’s dry cleaning.

So to pay for your six month stint of tea-making and dry cleaning collecting you have to: A) have lots of savings B) have rich parents, or c) live on the poverty line with a part time job. C isn’t very appealing and so people without A or B are often unable to get internships for financial reasons. Thus a glass ceiling appears for the less well off as you can’t get jobs in the media or politics without some unpaid labour. They will never become a doyen of work experience, like Tom Meltzer.

All having to pay for work experience does is remove the pretence: work experience is for people who can afford it. This is sad and upsetting but it’s true. As for Pilotlight’s auctioning off internships, it’s sad and upsetting but at least it’s in the name of a good cause.

Grim times for graduates – but don’t lose faith

Conservative’s plan to get more science grads teaching

Duncan Robinson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:02:47 +0000

How much would you have to be paid to teach these oiks?

Michael Gove, Shadow Schools Secretary, has announced a quite simple new policy to entice more science graduates into teaching science – graduates get their student loan paid off, if they go into teaching.

It’s a good policy insofar that it gets lots and lots and lots of headlines. The downside is, it won’t make much difference. Gove claims that the scheme could potentially save graduates ‘£40,000 over a lifetime’.

‘Over a lifetime’, that is not a lot of money. A grand a year over a forty year career? Will that replace the hole in a science graduate’s earnings caused by turning down Glaxo for a teaching job? I doubt it. In real terms, Gove is offering a 3% pay increase to science graduates – up until their student loan is paid off. When that debt has gone, there is no incentive.

It’s better than nothing, but why would high-achieving graduates want to embark on a really stressful career for the sake of a barely improved salary?

Gove claims that the scheme will help create “generation of teachers who have made a commitment to the long-term, and thus we will diminish the churn that characterises our system now.”

How is a short term pay increase going to ‘diminish the churn’? To be a good teacher, you have to love your job. And I mean really love it. Extra pay might cushion job dissatisfaction, but not forever – and certainly not if the extra pay dries up in a few years.

Teaching is difficult and not particularly well paid. Why would someone with a first in Chemistry go and teach at a crappy comp if Deloitte have offered them a £25,000 starting salary for a piss easy consulting job?

Gove has got the right idea: you want better teachers, give them a better pay deal. But he needs to go much further.

Sex blogger is former University of Sheffield student

Duncan Robinson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:47:06 +0000

The news that the sex-blogger and former call girl Belle de Jour was a PhD candidate at Sheffield University is quite surprising. The average PhD student is lucky if they’ve actually had sex at all – never mind having someone pay to do it with them.

Dr. Brooke 'Belle' Magnanti

Belle, or Dr. Brooke Magnanti as she is now known, was an almost penniless research student at the University of Sheffield when she went on the game. She had only the oral examination part of her PhD left to complete when she signed up to an escort agency. (There’s a joke in there somewhere.)

Less than half of all PhD students end up with a career in academia. For a while, Dr. Magnati was just another unemployed, over-qualified graduate. Prostitution was a stop-gap before she got a proper academic job. She could have done worse. Getting paid £300 an hour to have sex? It certainly beats bar work.

The Belle de Jour blog, books and its TV spin off – The Secret Diary of a Call Girl – was often criticised for glamorising the sex trade. Although, to be frank, having sex with strangers is probably more glamorous than three years studying in the Department of Forensic Pathology.

Even so, the image of an academic as a sex worker is an odd one. Prostitutes tend not to wear corduroy jackets and I’ve yet to meet a lecturer with an obvious liking for PVC. But, you never know. Being an academic is hardly the most financially rewarding career. As soon as your seminar finishes, your tutor might head off to a shady part of town and put on their red light.

Dr. Magnanti is hardly the first student to get involved in the sex trade. In a 2008 Steel Press sex survey of the university, seven respondents claimed to have worked as prostitutes. Some students have to strip, pose and shag to pay for their studies, depressingly.

Dr. Magnanti escaped from the sex industry unscathed. Now she just wants to continue her academic career. “The causes of cancer and the diagnosis rates. They’re my thing.” Now that’s sexy.

Cut, cut, cut! Teaching jobs go at Sheffield University

OMG: Why a status like this could get you sacked, LOL

Duncan Robinson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:53:11 +0000

Facebook is everywhere. The social networking website recently passed the 300 million users mark, giving Facebook a population larger than any country, baring the USA, India and China.

In the UK, nearly one in three have a profile. Due to its popularity, Facebook has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life. Similar sites, such as Bebo and Myspace are in decline, with falling revenues and declining amounts of users. But Facebook goes from strength to strength, giving a forum to people who want to put every moment of their private life into the public domain.

Employers have been aware of this for quite a while. It’s only now, however, that employers looking at social networking sites prior to offering jobs have become the norm, rather than the exception.

75 per cent of young people claimed that they could not live without the internet. Nearly half admitted that they were happiest when on the internet.

A recent survey showed that nearly half of all employers do this, and that companies really do change their decisions based on what they read on site like Facebook. In another survey of 2,600 hiring managers, 53 per cent admitted that they had not hired candidates after looking at them on Facebook simply because of some inappropriate photographs or bad spelling.

These statistics alarmed me. If my dream employer searched for me on Facebook, the first picture they would find is one of me devouring a chicken leg, caveman style.

Delve further into my profile and the intrepid Facebook stalker/future employer would be greeted with hundreds of photos of me drinking, skiing and (my personal favourite) shirtless with both nipples covered in shaving cream at Leeds Festival.

Something tells me I wouldn’t be getting that job. My Facebook page gives the impression that I am a drunk who enjoys nothing more than debasing himself at music festivals. The only upside is that, amidst all the debauchery, my spelling is impeccable.

Aside from the photos, my profile shows me to be a nerd with a penchant for foul language (even if spelled impeccably). From an employers point of view, however, bad language is a lot better than slagging off your job in statuses.

Back in February, there was a well-publicised case of an office worker sacked for revealing that she was “so totally bord!!!” at work on Facebook. The manager sacked her as he did not want the company’s name in the media, rather than for her terrible spelling. Unfortunately, he didn’t bank on the girl selling her story to the Daily Mail.

There is a simple way around this problem. Set your profile on private and no one but your ‘friends’ can view it. This means you can write whatever you like. You could even do what one girl did and write “OMG I HATE MY JOB! My boss is a total pervy wanker always making me do shit stuff just to piss me off.”

This is fine, unless you have already added your boss – as this rather dim girl had. The boss promptly left a comment pointing out that a) he was gay, b) the ‘shit stuff’ was her job and c) that she was sacked.

Having a private profile, however, is not always the best idea either. Around 50 per cent of hiring managers said that a ‘positive’ profile would make them more likely to take a candidate.

The Careers Service at Sheffield asks students to “ensure that their Facebook pages, if open for public viewing, show them in a positive and favourable light” So, if you’re the type of person with statuses like “If you can believe, you can achieve!”, or “Great brainstorming session today, guys. Go team!” leave your profile open. If you lead a normal life, keep it shut.

But who are these companies, snooping on your Facebook profile? I asked the Careers Service at Sheffield and they knew of no companies who examined Facebook before hiring potential employees. I even called a number of companies in the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, none of whom admitted to Facebook-stalking future employees.

Yet, evidently, many companies do, even in Sheffield. This summer I applied for two jobs at local bars in Sheffield that were part of the same company. One bar checks Facebook pages before hiring, the other doesn’t. Me scoffing my face with chicken must have put the former off as I didn’t even get an interview; the other gave me a job.

Employers snooping on potential employees are simply a symptoms of a more modern malaise. Facebook has caused the boundaries between people’s work, social and private life to become confused.

What was once private has instead become quasi-public, with comments that you would normally only tell real friends being relayed to hundreds – or even thousands – of virtual friends and potentially millions of stalkers, unless you specifically make them private. The instantness of Facebook generally just creates an orchestra of inanity, but occasionally the thoughtlessness with which we update Facebook can come back to haunt us.

For some, however, the instantness of Facebook isn’t enough. Sites like Twitter have emerged to plug a gap for those desperate to reveal their every waking moment to a collection of friends and ‘followers’. More than 65 million have signed up to Facebook mobile, so they can tell everyone they know (and a few people they don’t) exactly what they are up to at that very second.

And once you’ve started it’s hard to stop. Shilling for opinions on this feature I asked my friends (on Facebook, naturally), if they could live without it.

“I deactivated my account less than 3 weeks ago, and yet here I am commenting on your status – apparently, no” came one comment.

It’s unsurprising that 75 per cent of young people claimed that they could not live without the internet. In the same survey, nearly half admitted that they were happiest when on the internet.

Young people today are Digital Natives. Pretty much everyone under 25 has been surrounded by computers, the internet and instant communication since childhood.

Posting minute details of your life has become the norm, and it has consequences. It’s not surprising that employers have caught on (even if they won’t always admit to it).

You can also read this piece here, at Forge Press.

Cut, cut, cut! Teaching jobs go at Sheffield University

Duncan Robinson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:11:29 +0000

Keith Burnett protecting jobs

On 5 May this year, the Vice-Chancellor sent this reassuring email to staff: ‘I want to give you all a commitment that, here at Sheffield, I will be doing my utmost to protect jobs, and avoid redundancies.’ Sadly for the students and employees of the University of Sheffield, this was not the last email the VC sent on the subject.

Prof. Keith ‘Protector of Jobs and Avoider of Redundancies’ Burnett sent another altogether more miserable email, three months later on 17 August. ‘I am writing to let you know the outcome of the University’s recent Voluntary Severance Scheme.’ In it, he revealed that 320 staff will be leaving the University, 5 per cent of the university’s entire staff.

5 per cent might not sound like a lot, but it will directly affect your education. A 5 per cent cut in staff means fewer lecturers, fewer IT technicians and fewer librarians and lab-assistants. As a result your lectures and seminars will be more overcrowded, computers will take longer to be fixed and the university’s already under stocked libraries will be more disorganised. In other words, your university education has been made that little bit worse.

Those who defend the staffing cuts may point out that only 67 of those leaving are ‘academic/teaching’, which is just 2 per cent of the total number of doctors, professors and teachers at the University. They will argue the student’s education is no worse. They are, however, completely and utterly wrong. Lecturers cannot lecture without an array of support staff. I remember a lecture in first year that was ruined because the lecturer (a very clever bloke, but one I doubt knows how to change a light bulb) could not get PowerPoint working and no one was available to come and fix it. With fewer support staff, events like this will only become more frequent. Quite simply, with less staff the University will be worse.

Less staff also means fewer quality contact hours. What needs to be stated again and again and again is that students are paying more and getting less. While ‘The Protector of Jobs and Avoider of Redundancies’ may dismiss criticisms that students are getting a worse deal (describing them as ‘perceptions [that] are not necessarily based on evidence’ – a description that is not necessarily based on evidence, either), the fact of the matter is that there are more students and fewer lecturers. This is hardly likely to increase standards. If anything, the University is treading water and if senior management continues hacking at jobs the University’s standards will sink.

Unfortunately, my moralising and whining does not solve the £25m hole in the universities budget that must be plugged. In total, the Voluntary Severance Scheme has managed to cut £13m from the University’s staffing budget (which is almost enough for an Arts Tower refurbishment). The University still needs to find £2m more if it is to reach its target of reducing the staff budget by £15m. This means that – if the university continues on its current strategy of shuffling people into a room and leaving them with a brandy and a revolver (for it is ‘voluntary’, after all…) – there are more job cuts to come.

Such a strategy shows a real dearth of ambition from the university’s leaders. They fix a short term problem (a budget shortfall during a recession) by creating a long term problem (dragging down the university’s standards). Job cuts are not the only possible solution; they are a pessimist’s solution. Oxford and Cambridge have both launched well publicised fundraising drives and have raised hundreds of millions of pounds in the process. Without any Oxbridge glamour, the University of Alberta in Canada rose around £300m in 5 years. And yet sorry old Sheffield is hacking its staff down to size to raise a paltry £15m. Rather than pushing more staff towards the door, the University needs to set up an effective, well publicised fundraising scheme. Prof. Burnett needs to get rid of the pessimism and show some ambition.