Is £9000 a fair price for your education?

Not if you read this speculative costing of a year's teaching at UCL, one of the country's most élite universities. Goodall thinks that the current cost of providing teaching is £4500 p.a. I wonder what the figures would look like here…

Meanwhile, congratulations to the ongoing UCL Occupation (Facebook, Twitter), South Bank's victorious occupation, Manchester Met's effort (not sure if they're still going), Oxford's struggle (it was occupied before - it was the Royalist capital during the civil war: make amends, you lot), and all the other occupations, some of which are still going.

There's another action day tomorrow, and more on December 3rd. Hegemon students are getting organised, but the Students' Union (which is in the pocket of management) is proving to be a real roadblock. Here's their official and deeply pathetic statement:

STUDENTS’ UNION OFFICIAL RESPONSE TO PLANNED PROTESTS ON DEC 3^RD 2010

In light of the recent student protests in London and around the country over the past few days the Students’ Union of University of Hegemon would like to make it clear that we do not condone or support any form of violent protest.

We do support the needs of our students who want to peacefully outline their opposition to the proposals presented by coalition government.  On November 10^th 2010 we attended the National Demo in London taking 200 students and staff, where we peacefully demonstrated with over 50,000 students.  This we feel was a more proactive approach to highlighting the serious implications of H.E. funding cuts and the raising of the tuition fee cap. 

We feel that whilst our students are keen to take part in peaceful protest, these protests and marches have the potential of being hijacked by individuals and groups whose sole objective is to cause havoc and damage that is fuelled by violence.  These acts of violence and disorder detract away from the serious message and the real issues.  Such savage cuts to Higher Education funding will seriously disadvantage the majority of students.  

We do recognise the rights of students to attend the protest and will support those students who wish to do so.  The Union will not however be having an official presence on December 3^rd, but will be considering an alternative campaigning strategy.

I have no idea what 'support' means in this context. As to 'potential' violence - well, any children's tea-party is fraught with 'potential' violence. So are my lectures. And my dinner. Martin Luther King would be so proud of their stand. Time for new elections?

But don't despair: an independent student organisation is taking up the baton. Join them.

I should just resign

My alter ego, David Mitchell, not only agrees with me on everything, but says it better.

Students bring out a violent streak in me. When I see NUS spokespeople on TV talking simplistically about tuition fees, even though I basically agree with the sentiments they express so unattractively, I want to punch them. But I also like watching them chuck stuff at the police, smash windows and jump up and down on vans. I'm not so keen on the fire extinguisher hurling – I lose my appetite for the scuffle if I think someone might get killed – but a bit of a ruck with some bobbies dressed as X-wing pilots seems entirely appropriate.

It's the peaceful protesting that winds me up: the super-keen "political" students who've nosed their way into being interviewed to show how clever they are. They seem unrealistic and unaccountable and you can smell the self-interest and grubby ambition lurking beneath the veneer of unworkable ideals. Like pre-election Lib Dems.

My inner Victorian thinks they should be seen and not heard. But I don't mind seeing them piss through the letterbox of Nick Clegg's constituency office. 

A few short clips of jerkily televised vandalism make the government look like it's failing to govern. The fact that more damage gets done to public property every day by people turning round quickly while holding something hot is irrelevant. A photo of broken glass is a thousand times more politically threatening than a kid with an unwise haircut whining about his allowance. 

At least the protests are being taken over by independent organisations rather than the NUS, which is just a kindergarten for obedient New Labour MPs (almost every President since the 1950s has become one).  


Hats off to one of Mitchell's commenters for this line too:

You can say what you like about this government, but it took Margaret Thatcher 3 years to achieve riots and a royal wedding. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have achieved it in 6 months.

Never mind the journalists

I'm hooked on the Guardian's and BBC's coverage of the nationwide student protests. All over the country, university, college and school students are protesting in their thousands - a magnificent spectacle and a little heated in a few places.

What's striking about the BBC coverage is how reactionary and judgemental it is - comments like 'a complete rabble' 'a bit crazy', and surprise that Cambridge students (imagine) are protesting and are angry. There's a concerted effort to focus on the incredibly isolated bits of violence and to praise the 'peaceful' students: the discourse clearly separates 'nice' from 'nasty' with virtually no discussion of the rights and wrongs of the situation. There's no historical context - of education or of student protest - and more than a hint that all these Oxbridge-educated commentators (particularly on the BBC) are revolted by their successors. Certainly the interviewers are parrotting Clegg's and Cameron's lines as though there's no debate to be had.

I like this dispersed protest. The massive London demo was excellent, and certainly caught the media's attention, but concerted efforts in virtually every town in the country from Bolton to Bristol to York means that a much larger proportion of the population have a chance of meeting and listening to them. It's like a mini-general strike. Shame there's nothing happening in The Dark Place, unlike all these towns (rolling updates here).

Manchester, Bristol and Leeds students seem to be doing a magnificent job - as is Simon, the very articulate student talking at length to the BBC, despite their little attempts to bully him ("you condemn the occupation at the previous demo, don't you?", "we only report what we see" - he points out very calmly that news organisations frame all stories, and they choose what that frame is).

Education cuts: keep on fighting

Don't get fooled into thinking that you've done your bit by protesting on Wednesday and now it's time to accept what's happening.

The education cuts are part of an all-out assault on the the kind of country the British have built. The poor and the vulnerable are being abandoned to the cold wind of free-market capitalism without benefitting from the positive aspects (did you know that FTSE 100 directors' pay went up 45% this year?).

Fight the cuts and fight the ideological attack on education as a public good. Protest when other groups - workers, the unemployed and the sick - are attacked.

Join the next wave of student protest on Wednesday 24th November. Sign the petition. Even - if you must - join the Facebook group. Don't just fade away.

This is what a real student protester is like.

Head on over to Blossom's place for her account of the student protest yesterday. She's a mature student at the Hegemon who went on the demonstration because she felt she had no choice. While all the attention is paid to the hotheads, people like Blossom are on the streets - perhaps for the first time - because our illegitimate government is hellbent on ideologically-driven policies without regard for fairness or the long term.

Poor people's violence is different…

David Cameron was overjoyed by the student violence: it meant he could spend the interview time condemning it, rather than deal with the issues. Violence, he says, is 'unacceptable'.

I agree. There's nothing more despicable than anonymous, disguised students running wild and going on orgies of pointless, selfish violence.

Let's remind ourselves of what Call Me Dave was up to when he was a student, shall we?

Each year, he paid around £10,000 for membership of the Bullingdon Club. He'd dress up in special silly clothes (another few thousand pounds) and go on sprees of drinking and smashing. Because the club had a reputation for destroying restaurants then buying the owners' silence with wads of cash, the club had to go under false names to book rooms.

David Cameron was among drunken posh yobs who vandalised a restaurant, it was claimed last night.

The Tory leader has always denied taking part in the attack by the Bullingdon Club, the elitist Oxford University student society.

Mayor of London and Cameron's fellow Old Etonian Boris Johnson, below, admits he was part of the mayhem.But a former club member says the idea Cameron was not there on the night in 1987 is "ludicrous", claiming he "sprinted off" when others ended up in the cells. The idea someone just went to bed early! I mean, come on... " the Financial Times blogs reports him as saying.

He adds: "Details have been kept a closely-guarded secret by the group of old friends. A policy of omerta has descended on the Cameron episode."

Clearly upper-class violence is a jolly jape, whereas political violence is despicable. Or am I missing something here?