In today's FT, by Peter Johnson, "Fellow and Tutor, Exeter College, Oxford" so you'd expect some special pleading for Higher Education funding (fair enoughski) and that is exactly what you get (so it's not worth fisking) but he also describes himself as "management educator' so WTF does he stoop to this...
"Fees skew educational choice"?
Nope. A basic rule of economics is that the best form of rationing is price rationing. It is the absence of market rate fees (or fees that at least cover the costs of provision*) and the myriad subsidies that skew educational choice. He then commits intellectual hari kiri with this ...
"Education is not fast food"
Twat.
* If universities want to use profits from what he dismissively refers to as 'job training' to subsidise more esoteric things, then good luck to 'em - I know that I wouldn't. But why forego the profits on the 'job training' and then expect the taxpayer to subsidise the airy-fairy stuff?
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Dumbass reader's letter/special pleading of the day
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11 comments:
Look, he can barely write English, so why would you expect him to be able to think?
Tuition fees are yet another example of Labour dodging the problem so that the Conservatives have to deal with it post-2010, like public sector spending and pensions and everything else that's screwed.
Save the poets!
What do we want:
Securitized funding of hypothecated tax revenues.
Ooops, too late - they are obviously already dead.
....
The prospectus of Exeter College boasts alumni such as Philip Pullman, Tolkien, Alan Bennett and Martin Amis. It describes the Fellows' garden as "one of the nicest places imaginable to sit with a book, or just sit, or play croquet." Better tell John Prescott then.
Apparently, the fictitious Inspector Mrose had his fictitious heart attack in the fictitious Jordan College which is based on Exeter College front quad.
Given the lyrical descriptive writing demonstrated in the prospectus, evoking nearly 700 years of intellectual endeavour on that spot, I'm surprised he didn't hang himself from the fictitious belfry.
Off topic, but doubtlessly of interest.
LFAT, I saved up and paid for my own 'job training' and it didn't do me any harm.
WOAR, that list suggests that some writers do make money. Assuming their degree helps them in achieving this, why shouldn't aspiring writers pay at least what their course costs? The prospectus seems to defeat his argument.
Obo, house price crashes are ALWAYS on topic!
P.S You meant "forgo" not "forego".
D, my Word Thesaurus accepts either spelling, or is one US and one UK?
To "forego" is to go before, to "forgo" is to go without. I wouldn't believe anything said by a nation that says "careen" when it means "career".
Education is one of the best examples of a use for borrowing, i.e. debt.
If the interest on the debt is less than your perceived rise in utility (not necessarily productivity) then borrow away!
Not borrowing and thus extorting others to subsidise your own definition of utility is greedy.
I believe borrowing for education should be rolled out across all education (paid for by parents). For some reason a lot of even those on the right think others should be forced to subsidise others sexual activities and the children that are produced.
AC1, if students want to borrow money to pay the top up fees, then good luck to them.
As to primary & secondary (up to 16at least) vouchers is the way forward for the time being.
Let them earn the vouchers by going up chimneys.
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