From a recent newspaper article:
"Top universities are being pressured to lower their entry requirements because secondary schools are failing to produce enough academically brilliant pupils.... The government has given less money to, but set more targets for, the universities in what amounts to an attack on their academic freedom, xxx claimed yesterday.
"It does nobody any good to think that you can deal with the problems of secondary education by lowering standards in our universities," he said. "Of course universities have to be as open to talent as possible but there continue to be real challenges in secondary education.""
Sound familiar? The heavy hand of Ms Pandor, you think?
You'd be wrong: that was the Chancellor of Oxford University in the UK, at a fund-raising occasion at Oxfordbridgeshire recently. Again, the marvels of modern technology: got via a TinyURL link from a Twitter post, from my Esteemed Master in Viral Professional Development, AJ Cann.
The article goes on:
"Oxford was launching a £1.25bn fundraising drive to boost its student support, facilities and academic recruitment in a bid to rival the US Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Yale."
Woooo...that would be ZAR14 000 000 000.00 or so. Don't we have alumni? Like - ooh, let me see now - Donny Gordon, for one? How professional a fund-raising team do WE have? Not ZAR14x10exp9 worth, that's for sure...what DO we target? I recall it to be somewhere in the ZAR10exp7 range or so - what has happened with that? Do we even HAVE a halfway decent endowment? Us, the accountant-led African-class world University?
Time the OUTM brand got out there and did some work, chaps...!
* = 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Everything takes longer and costs more - and the quality goes down.
29/05/2008, 15:20
It remains to be seen if Oxford can raise all that cash.
There's something in this viral professional development lark though! ;-)
29/05/2008, 15:58
Ha! I got that on my Higher Noon email alert:
29 May 2008
Latest
Top universities are being made to dumb down, says Patten
Oxford chancellor says government has given less money to the
universities but set them more targets
http://education.guardian.co.uk/universityaccess/story/0,,2282596,00.html
(And Donny Gordon is donating - I'm sure an announcement on that is imminent!)
29/05/2008, 16:41
Viral professional development: doing it by stealth. Electronically.
And viva! Donny, viva! If he comes through.
Now how about the REST of those well-heeled alumnae?
30/05/2008, 09:15
I dunno, Retroid. Governments and universities have been playing this game for years. First universities were all about Canon Law and Theology, then 'cos the city states and principalities wanted it, they let the barbers and surgeons in (oh dear, uncouth lot). Then a few centuries later they let philosophers in (and reality shifted). Then, in a huge drop in standards, in the 19th century the dropped some entry requirements (something religious), and let a bunch of part-time "gentlemen" in, who dabbled in some new-fangled activity called science (and the publishing industry was born, rubbing its fat greedy little hands in glee as egos and commerce completed for a new product called "knowledge" which could be bought for a the price of a research grant). Then the let sociologists in (hello Karl), the first of the great-unwashed, and then women, followed immediately by a few world wars. Then, well, the flood gates opened and psychologists (welcome Sigmund, Herr Doktor Jung), journalists, and even electricians and typewriter technicians arrived holding funny little green screens and assorted bits of grey plastic (and behold Microsoft reared its ugly head). By that time bankers and insurance salesmen had formed a "commerce" department, and HR took over the universities.
How much lower can standards go? But now you say, viral professional development hey? Now THAT sounds the way to go. Even if we have to use the pregnant typewriters developed by those peddlers in grey / beige / black plastic.
30/05/2008, 09:25
Well, I think the whole of the South end - engineers excluded - should move out to UWC; make that the touchy-feely campus of a larger University - while we get their scientists etc...NOT, never said that, no-one can prove I did, it wasn't me anyway.
But it's something we have to worry about: it will be interesting to see - if we are ever told - what the standards are like in the entrance exams.
I can tell you, in our 2nd yr classes right now, it's pretty dire....