Sunday 14 March 2010

Stats for students

Job losses at The Hegemon:                                                     c. 160
Clawback in pounds for misreporting student completions:   7.5 millions
Courses and modules available:                                               many fewer
Class sizes:                                                                                ever higher
Vice-Chancellor's pay:                                                              £228,000
V-C's pay 5 years ago:                                                               £140,000 approx
Increase: roughly                                                                       60%

Verdict: reward for failure.

5 comments:

Ewarwoowar said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmV_YJm5jAc

The Plashing Vole said...

Very good, Ewar…

Dan said...

On a serious note, and if the news I just heard involving two campuses is true, then this makes me quite angry. I remember a while ago in the Merciless Public days I wrote a blog about how stupid campaigning and all that stuff students did was silly. But our SU is appalling, I've never seen one iota of action come forward from it.
Pisses me off occasionally that people in these privileged positions seemingly get away with everything at The Hegemon.
If I were leading the SU or whatever I'd be protesting. Maybe there should be a break-away faction. I'm in.

The Plashing Vole said...

There is no students' union here: just a bunch of self-satisfied attention seekers who have no idea that an SU should resist (or even think about) anything the university does.

It's particularly telling that in an institution of 24000, most of the salaried SU elected posts are uncontested in today's election, and that the turnout will be about 500 votes. My old union got between 700-1000 votes out of 4000 students. Comparable institutions have hugely active student organisations, political parties, faction, Union leaders and so on. We have a bunch that failed so spectacularly that they can't sell beer to students, let alone campaign. They're intellectually severely deficient - hence the total capitulation to 'Learning Works', the staff job cuts (thanks for the solidarity) and the campus closures - and totally under the control of the university.

Dan said...

I've honestly no idea what to say to that apart from - and this is not a comment on your post but the situation - what a load of utter shit.
There are a lot of things I like about our University. I really like a lot of my lecturers, my fellow students are an interesting, intelligent bunch but sometimes I can't help but feel that I'm becoming a drone in terms of writing essays that others want me to write rather than what I feel, doing pointless assignments that no-one has any interest in, having to take courses I couldn't care less about (hopefully the three module system will improve this)etc.
It just feels a little bit sad that the further I get into my degree, though interested by it, the worse it gets. And that's no fault of any of my lecturer's but what has been forced upon them.
Humorously enough, I handed in an essay today for a module I am actually enjoying which I've received no receipt for. I electronically submitted some work for what can only be described as a massive fuck-up of a module the other day and got that one straight away.
I know this isn't related to anything beforehand but I just needed a little rant about the place there because its beginning to get right up my nose.
Alternatively, can we get a proper SU up and running or would that be too much of a threat to the suits?