From the BBC:
Prime Minister David Cameron has rejected suggestions the government is considering allowing wealthy students to pay for extra university places.
"There is no question of people being able to buy their way into university," Mr Cameron told the BBC...
Yup, this from a man whose parents were wealthy enough to send him to Eton, which currently costs £30,000 a year, and anybody who imagines that this didn't help him get into Oxford is living on Planet Zog (although it is not inconceivable that he is so deluded he imagines he got in on merit, in which case Heaven help us).
PS, if I were in charge of Oxford etc, I'd charge students who'd been to Eton £30,000 a year as a matter of course, they can clearly afford it. And, thinking on, those kids who come from middling private schools which charge £12,000 a year would pay £12,000 a year and kids from state grammar schools or comprehensives just pay a bare minimum to cover marginal costs. Hey presto, there's my tuition fees manifesto, problem solved, issue defused!
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Stumbling and Mumbling reckons that auctioning off a few places to wealthy students is a bad idea, but admits that this is because he thinks it would devalue his own degree from Oxford:
Herein, though, lies a problem. These arguments are, in effect, a defence of inequality. I’m asking for the privileges of an elite to be maintained. It just happens that the elite is one selected by brains rather than wealth.
I disagreed with him - on the basis of my own very real experience - in the comments over at his, pop over there if you're interested (I can't say I'm that bothered either way).
Interesting
55 minutes ago
18 comments:
I can't see a problem: you relieve them of a large sum of money to get in, charge them extra while they are there, then sling them out when they fail their exams. There's nothing wrong with selling places, so long as you don't sell qualifications. If a student gets their parents to buy them a place and then goes on to pass the same exams as everyone else and get a degree, what's the problem?
B, exactly. There is no problem. A university is ultimately a business like any other, if a hotel owner can charge higher prices for the top floor rooms with the nicest views, that means he doesn't have to charge so much for the rooms without the views, so even lower income people can afford to go on holiday.
Bit unkind to Cameron. After all, he did get a first so he deserved to get to Oxford on merit.
GB, he was talking about buying a place, not buying a degree. Would he have got in had his parents sent him to a comprehensive?
For sure, Oxford colleges aren't daft, they take a fair few comprehensive school kids who are genuinely clever to improve their overall scores, but it's not that many, and it was probably fewer twenty five years ago.
To me it seems we have to expand the pool of pupils who can evade the clutches of state "education"...
Doesn't LVT/CI/education vouchers help to solve this.
1.'kids from state grammar schools or comprehensives' who end up going to OxBridge generally live in 'nice areas' where the schools are better... so house prices/land values are higher = increased LVT
2. Children from the 'wrong side of the tracks' don't come from families who pay much LVT and get CI and vouchers to get into the good schools (via the market for education)
3. Everybody then pays the full cost of higher education if they want it
Note - my son is at Cambridge and his college are also his landlord. This is compulsory - undergrads have to live in college accommodation - and they charge him a fortune in rent (tax) for the 'priviligde' of living in a grotty bedroom.
Good old British envy creeping in again. This country did itself considerable damage the day it learned to be terribly British and queue quietly for whatever might be made available to it.
If rich peeps want to sent their kids to Uni without passing exams, excellent. I agree 100% with Bayard's view but could be tempted to go one further; negotiate the price according to means. If Peckham Beckham (or whoever) wants to go to Uni in a few years and his Dad can afford a £50,000 frock for his missus, how much can he afford for Peckham's Uni place?
Or if Dad wanted to organise an endowment of some description from his rich mates worldwide, give Peckham a discount.
No probs.
In the UK the school you went to is paramount: Eton, Harrow, etc, to get into the "privileged class". 90% of key government posts are people from these schools. They are not uni's, just schools nothing else. They make the old Trade Union closed shops look like amateurs. Even if you have £30,000 for each year of for your son, that does not mean they will take you in. What type of family, connections, etc, play a big part.
This privileged systems is still as strong as ever, read Who Runs Britain by Jeremy Paxman....and look at the cabinet where most went to a few "schools". The sort of thing you see in a banana Republic. Who Runs Britain clearly highlights the grip the privileged ruling class still have on the UK. They never shout about it, as large landowners attempt to hide the size of their acres and wealth from the public, so do those in power.
In the UK "influence" has a great say in the power structure. One thing Paxman did note, was that the privileged private school system,: Eton, Harrow, etc, was responsible for the post war decline of the UK. Idiots in positions of power. The privileged ruling class is still as strong as ever.
The divide between working class and the middles class has narrowed. The ruling strata, and their institutions are still intact. Many people in the UK say we no longer have a working class. This is balls. Have a look inside any of the plethora of South London sink estates.
All the top Civil Service, military jobs and even the Monarchy are overwhelmingly private schools and Oxbridge. Paxman highlights this.
Paxman does give the occurrence in 1963, when the Tory party were selecting a new leader, who would be PM. The chairman of the men around the table said well who is it then Home or whoever? Meaning, either Harrow or Eton, the schools they went to. The others in the list were rejected because they never went to one of these silly schools.
We have 100 universities, a highly educated country, yet on the jobs with power the influence the input of a few unis is far overweight to the point of being a privileged club. You can go to a comp school and Oxbridge, but it doesn't mean you will climb the top job ladder though. Be Eton, Harrow, etc and Oxbridge and you fly. Be just Eton or Harrow and no uni and you will fly. You may be as thick as pig shit but you will fly. It doesn't matter what you studied either. Many in the foreign office study useless subjects like the Classics and Ancient Greek.
Private schools in the UK amount to less than 5% of all pupils, yet 50% of Oxbridge intake is them. Even Gordon Brown has told them to stop all this, but so far little has happened. And again Cameron gives it lip service. Brown and Cameron should have restricted the intake into the Foreign Office, Civil service, MIlitary, etc, from these schools and unis. That would reduce their effect. The simple answer is in their hands.
Positive discrimination, and it works to sort out a mess. It worked for the blacks in the USA. There is NOTHING that proves these private school/Oxbridge types are any more intelligent or capable than any one else. NOTHING!!!! Yet they basically rule the country.
Paxman gives the background of the military top brass. Most are of the private
school/Oxbridge privileged class. With the military, Gordonstone and Wellington schools come into play. In a newspaper article, Paxman again, interviewed the top officers of some guards regiment, and asked why most of them all came from the same background and schools. The response was that they felt more comfortable with each other. If these people are so weak of character and
social skills, that they can only associate with themselves they should not be in the jobs.
The UK is run via the Oxford-Cambridge-London power triangle. It has to be broken, as it doesn't work. But some would call that envy.
Sh, yes of course. In a Georgist system, it all sorts itself out. Even if Cambridge weren't allowed to charge fees, the state would get most of it back because of the much higher rents in that area and in areas with good schools (whether the state then subsidises Oxford and schools or not is another question).
But we were addressing the narrower issue of whether Oxford should be allowed to do 'price discrimination' and I think we are agreed it should.
FT, yup, agreed.
Stumbling and Mumbling reckons that auctioning off a few places to wealthy students is a bad idea, but admits that this is because he thinks it would devalue his own degree from Oxford:
One would have thought that the present high-profile holders of PPEs have already done a pretty good job of that.
@gordon-bennett: Bit unkind to Cameron. After all, he did get a first so he deserved to get to Oxford on merit.
Yeah... In PPE - Oxford's version of "Media Studies".
When we interview people we always ask "What In?" when they have a degree on their C.V.
If it's not a BSc it's not a positive!
The man whose entry into Oxford was a clear case of appalling string-pulling was Millibum. Unfortunately D. rather than E. You oughta read abaht it.
Don't Forget Poly* (1 A Level, Dads a lecturer) Toynbee
*Deliberate.
Anon, P, D, AC1, yup, the top people in all the three main parties are the same people with the same backgrounds.
@Mark Wadsworth said...
"But we were addressing the narrower issue of whether Oxford should be allowed to do 'price discrimination' and I think we are agreed it should."
When the issue of Oxbridge comes up the wider issue cannot be ignored. They always get around it somehow.
I recall talking to the guy who did the intake at one Oxbridge college. His justification was that they take the brightest - private schools are known as "A level factories". As an aside, John Harvey Jones did not rate them well as in his view they did not teach pupils to be innovative and think - just pass exams.
Well this Oxbridge admin was stumped when I said "if a course is one A, one B, one C as minimum, then anyone who achieves that level can cruise the course, as you assessed the courses requirement and levels".
He agreed.
I went on, "so you get all the applicant that achieve the minimum and reject the others?".
He said "yes".
So a one A, One B and one C is equiv' to three A's, he said "yes".
I said, "but you take the three A's over the others".
He said, "well, yes".
I suggested, assessment from that point onwards should not even have the grades written down for interviewers, or anyone to know as they are all now equal, as the minimum is gained by all, then there will be no bias.
He said, they take the minimum grades and then re-sort into Three A's, Two A's and one B, etc, with the Three A's given great preference pending interview.
I asked him, "what schools did the interviewers come from?", he said, "all from private schools".
The intake system is rigged. They claim it is not.
The intake is "rigged" on Academic Success as it should be!
The problem is that the extortion funded school system is a massive failure.
Most people agree that hampering success to stop it highlighting the failure of the state is never a sensible solution.
@AntiCitizenOne
"The intake is "rigged" on Academic Success as it should be!"
Get the point I made. If a course needs three A's then advertise it so. All who achieve the minimum grades are equal ion the intake process.
It's more like a auction with money replaced by academic credentials to fill the places.
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