Thank you all for supporting LazyStudents over the past two years. I’m wrapping the website up to concentrate on other projects. You can still contact me at duncan.robinson AT lazystudents DOT co DOT uk, or follow me on Twitter @duncanrobinson.

Cheers for all the comments and all the support,

Duncan

Editor,

LazyStudents.co.uk

Related posts:

1. STOP PRESS: NEWSPAPER EDITOR IN NEPOTISM SHOCK!

According to the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, who graduated from UCL with a degree in Engineering and Business Finance, served as the President of the University’s Islamic Society between 2006 and 2007.

In a recent press release, Faisal Hanjra, spokesman for FOSIS said: “There was nothing in his behaviour during this time that would indicate that he would commit these alleged acts. During his tenure as President, the Islamic Society forged closer relationships between other student groups, of all faiths.”

Faisla Hanjra went onto say that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s fellow students and staff were shocked and horrified by his alleged actions and that the purpose of Islamic Societies in Universities is to build positive cross-campus relations.

Scotland Yard and MI5 are currently investigating whether the 23 year old, was radicalised during his three years at University. The FOSIS claim that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab has ceased contact with friends and colleagues in London, after graduating in 2008. The Federation also urges all those who can help to come forward and cooperate with the relevant authorities.

Related posts:

1. UCL student accused of plane bomb plot in the USA
2. Don’t worry: your university is not trying to kill you

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, accused of bomb plot

A student at University College, London is in custody after reportedly attempting to blow up a plane in the USA. Thankfully Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was studying engineering and not pyrotechnics: his explosives failed to go off and he ended up burning just his own legs. More here.

Following Mutallab’s alleged actions, there will probably be a purported crackdown on ‘extremism’ within universities. Since 2006, universities have been regarded as ‘fertile recruiting grounds‘ for extremists. This means we can probably expect more cases like Rizwaan Sabir’s, from Nottingham University, who was arrested for downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his PhD – a PhD on radical Islamic groups. Sabir’s case was bad enough, before it emerged that the manual was even available on Amazon, for £7.55. Sabir was held for six days, without charge.

Treating universities as fertile recruiting grounds for extremist groups has a logic. An angry, young man (of which universities often hold many) is more likely to become an extremist than someone with a secure job, wife and kids – thus universities should be watched. But universities are part of much wider communities, embedded in cities. They are not islands. Some young people might be tempted by extremism, but this could happen whether at university or not. Universities are not hotbeds of extremism. With a million students in higher education, there will always be a few nutters. There is no need to treat university populations any differently to the rest of the country.

Related posts:

1. Detroit bomber was president of UCL’s Islamic Society
2. Don’t worry: your university is not trying to kill you

For those who don’t know the full story, student loans used to be handled by the Local Education Authority (LEA). This year Student Finance England has centralised the whole process. And a fantastic job they are doing of it too: lost identification documents, applications that apparently don’t exist, and a near-useless customer support system that is facing an “unprecedented amount of calls”.

Hang on. An “unprecedented amount of calls”? They’re not running a business here. It’s not as if they’ve launched a product and unexpectedly been swamped by three times the amount of enquiries as to what they were expecting. They know how many people go to university each year; they should know, resonably accurately, how many applications they are going to receive. Granted, there’s been an upturn in applicants this year, but the difference is fairly insignificant. The system, it seems, simply can’t cope.

I’m one of the lucky ones. After trying and failing to apply online, I sent my application through by post.From there things went through relatively smoothly. Mine wasn’t means tested which means that there are no extra hoops to jump through. The fact that I spent hours in the phone queue waiting to talk to advisors (who then tried to tell me my date of birth was wrong) and an overly confusing application form, I finally got through it.

I can normally accept faults in a system providing that – if things do go wrong –  you can pick up the phone and solve the problem quickly and easily. My problems were minor on the whole, but for others problems have been much more complex. The customer support seem unable to help people too.

It remains to be seen how quickly this is solved. Today’s figures say that 50,000 students are still left without funding. With some having already started their course, the time is ticking for Student Finance England to sort things out.

Related posts:

1. Heads roll at the Student Loans Company
2. Student Debt: The Facts You Need To Know

Those of you who are musically minded might get it, others won’t. The notes daubed on the side of MIT’s Great Dome building hum the following tune: ‘Never going to give you up…’ Yup, MIT has been Rickrolled on a huge scale. For those of you who haven’t heard of this now quite dated phenomenon, go here.

No related posts.

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.

No related posts.

Ms Thompson is whining that her college has not provided her with the help in finding employment that they had promised and so wishes to be reimbursed for the $70,000 she spent in gaining her degree. The recession and the fact that jobs are thin on the ground in America is apparently their fault.

As ludicrous as the claim seems it isn’t that great of a surprise in a world where we are encouraged to seek compensation when we fall off a ladder or slip on a wet floor in the workplace. Blame culture is rife within our society as well as the urge to make money whenever possible.

Gary Axelbank, a spokesman for the college, has dismissed the claim as ‘completely without merit.’ Indeed, not since 2003 when fast food chain McDonald’s was sued for making people fat has there been a case so entirely without merit.

The only way that the college may have failed Ms Thompson is that she clearly has not learned to be independent or to take responsibility for herself. While Ms Thompson may be a master of spreadsheets, she clearly hasn’t embraced everything that higher education has to offer. As if to underline this point, Ms Thompson was joined in court by her Mommy. And not only joined by but supported by her too.

Related posts:

1. Detroit bomber was president of UCL’s Islamic Society
2. The post university wake up: a year in the life of a recent graduate

A by-product of spending a week on coaches, in restaurants and around a foreign country with GCSE students is that you get to know them. It gets awkward if you’re four or six years older than the majority of the people around you and simply don’t talk; you have to in order to get by. Which is why I feel sorry for them right now.

Over plates of pasta they told me what they’re studying, and what they want to do with their lives. Some (not many) wanted to be doctors – this was a classics trip, remember. Most were keen on teaching, writing, some sort of liberal arts career. And most of them will begin university, if their lives work out as they’ve planned right now, in September 2011.

Thanks to the freefalling economy and a yearning by both major political parties to get more working-class kids into tertiary education, it looks like they’re going to be taking on even more debt than I am right now – and that’s too much in the eyes of many.

The man who will increase your tuition fees, Peter Mandelson

Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, indicated in a speech on Monday to many leading vice-chancellors that universities needed to become more welcoming to vocational degrees as well as the more traditionally academic subjects usually taught – and to open up such places would need an increase in university tuition fees. The current legal limit of £3,225 (the figure every student has ingrained on their mind at this point in the year, filling out forms for loans) would almost definitely be raised by 2013, and theoretically could be done by 2011. The magic figure which most vice-chancellors have settled on as being the new glass ceiling is £7,000 per year.

This would allow whichever political party wins the election early next year to slash spending on higher education while allowing the restructuring and opening up of universities to more working-class school leavers. The fees would plug the money gap quite comfortably.

One of the people I talked to on that trip this past Easter had it all planned out. Breezing through GCSEs and A levels (which looks likely for her) and into Oxford (admittedly more difficult). With the basic fees rising across the board to £7,000 by the time she applies through UCAS to universities – and with the news that “research intensive” institutions (Oxford and Cambridge likely to be the first two names on the list) could potentially charge even more – this looks like a plan which could end up with double the amount of debt being taken on that a university graduate this summer would incur. With fees set at £7,000 a year, think tank Universities UK calculate that the average student would leave university with £32,400 of debt.

The potential high watermark for those elite research institutions could be up to £15,000, experts say, including a £2,000 bursary levy to fund places for those who can’t afford a place in tertiary education.

Paul Wellings, Lancaster University’s vice-chancellor and soon-to-be-chairman of the 1994 Group has spoken of a “valley of death” of students priced out of universities; or worse, students who take the risk of incurring high debts in order to get an increasingly devalued degree.

Would it be worth it, then? Many students of the classes of ’09 are finding it impossible to find a job which the university graduates of 1989 were almost assured of. The opening up of universities to attain New Labour’s aim of getting 50% of school leavers into tertiary education has meant that many degrees from all but the best universities are worth less than they used to be. No longer are university degrees an all-access pass to the job ladder; nor are they necessarily value for money anymore.

Related posts:

1. Why shouldn’t medics and engineers pay higher fees?
2. VCs get fat-cat pay, but are they worth it?
3. Are universities open to all?

Peter Harvey, who has been charged with attempted murder

A science teacher has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly attacking a 14 year-old boy with a 2kg weight. Mr Peter Harvey, who taught at All Saints Roman Catholic School in Mansfield, had recently returned from sick leave after having a stress related stroke.

It is alleged that Mr Harvey attacked Jack Waterhouse after he intervened in an argument between Mr Harvey and a female pupil. When Mr Harvey aimed a kick at the female pupil’s bag, the class started singing “I’m looking at the physco in the mirror”, to the tune of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror. According to one account, Jack Waterhouse told Mr Harvey to “Fuck off and have another stroke”.

It was at this point that Mr Harvey allegedly dragged Jack Waterhouse from the room and hit him with the weight. Paramedics found the boy lying in a pool of blood. He suffered a fractured skull and blood on the brain – in short, he is quite lucky to be alive.

But there is more to this story than a teacher simply snapping and striking a pupil. What surprised me most about this sorry tale is the fact that incidents like this don’t happen more often. From ages of 14-16 I went through seven science teachers over the course of my GCSEs. Some of them were competent and perfectly stable, but at least three were not.

Jack Waterhouse: The pupil who was attacked | Nottingham Police

I have sat through lessons where the teacher has been bullied and ridiculed from beginning to end and not once, despite extreme provocation, did any teacher ever give the impression they might hit anyone – never mind with a weapon.

The second surprising aspect of this story is the reaction of many people to it. Rather than being horrified at a child being nearly killed by his teacher, many seem to sympathise more with Mr Harvey. There are a number of Facebook groups – one with over a thousand members – giving ‘support for Peter Harvey’.

It’s true that the attack was verbally provoked, and that Mr Harvey had been let down by those who should have supported him by being sent back to work too early, but this does not in any way justify Mr Harvey’s alleged actions. To write, however, that Mr Harvey “was a bloody good teacher” as one group’s creator does is missing the point. Good teachers do not nearly kill pupils.

The system failed Mr Harvey. He should not have been sent back to the classroom in the state that he was in. But this does not condone his alleged actions. A 14 year old is currently in hospital and lucky to be alive. That is the crux of the issue, and the person responsible should be held to account.

Related posts:

1. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Secondary Schools* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)
2. Conservative’s plan to get more science grads teaching
3. Detroit bomber was president of UCL’s Islamic Society

The documentary itself (viewable here) was an expose of mismanagement and bad behaviour in failing (and ’successful’) schools. For six months Alex Dolan filmed herself teaching and talking to other staff members as she taught as supply in 16 different schools.

I’ve just watched the documentary in full, and parts were indeed shocking. Students swore at teachers – not under their breath, but directly to the teacher’s face (”Piss off” What did you say? [Looks directly at teacher] “Piss. Off.”). Fights broke out in the middle of class. Management sometimes didn’t give a fig. And in many classes, spectacularly little was learned.

But my main reaction was to chuckle gaily and say: “Ahh, them were the days.” It cannot be a surprise to anyone who has ever been to a state secondary school that supply teachers are nearly always poorly-prepared, easily tricked and weak discipline wise. They are pushovers – mainly because they are in a nearly impossible position.

You cannot expect someone to do a competent job when they are dumped into a new school, in front of thirty new faces (with nearly all of them ready and willing to make the teacher’s life as difficult as possible) with next to no notice. Supply teachers, in other words, suck.

Ostensibly, the worst part of the documentary was the fiddling that went on behind scenes during Ofsted inspections. It was pretty basic tactics wise: take all the bad kids, and send them on a field trip for the day. Et voila, a better Ofsted report. Mysteriously, Ms Dolan also received a lesson plan for the first time on inspection day.

It’s not the teachers’ fault for doing this. Heck, they’re just doing what is best for the school. But it’s not honest and it’s not good for those being taught. Give people targets and they will cheat to achieve them. Especially if you allow them to by giving schools prior notice of inspections.

Chris Woodhead – chief schools inspector from 1994-2000 – came on and pompously declared that he knew that all these tricks went on. Which begs the question: why the hell didn’t he do anything about it when he had the power?

For those who have been through or are familiar with the state school system, what occurs in the documentary is generally pretty humdrum. Students refusing to take off coats. Lessons taking 15 minutes for people to settle down and teaching to begin. IT lessons spent sneakily playing playing games. Most schools are like this some of the time, some are like it all of the time. The sad thing is that schools will remain like this until there is radical reform of the school system in this country.

The most annoying thing about the documentary, however, was Ms Dolan herself. Her smugness throughout was almost unbearable. Her comments released after the tribunal said it all: “This is a sad day for investigative journalism.” Well, lucky you’re a teacher and not an investigative journalist, then, isn’t it? I’m glad she has her priorities right. Ms Dolan abused the trust of her pupils and is entirely deserving of her suspension. The system needs whistleblowers, but not desperate fame seeking ones.

(*A school I am well acquainted allegedly did this too. Allegedly. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.)

Related posts:

1. Teacher charged with attempted murder
2. The trials of Tom Daley explain what’s wrong with state education
3. Conservative’s plan to get more science grads teaching