The argument arises because, on the whole, graduates get more pay than those that didn’t make it through university. Therefore, it seems obvious that people going to university should pay the full cost of their education, doesn’t it?

The other side of the argument is that those graduates are the people who create the most wealth for the country. Therefore, it seems obvious that their education should be completely funded by the government, doesn’t it?

At the moment in the UK the funding is split between the individual and the government, reflecting the two arguments above. The problem is that the universities are arguing that they need more money than this system is giving them. Since times are hard, the thinking presently is that this funding will largely come from the students, albeit after they have graduated and have started earning enough to start contributing for their previous university education.

However, that breaks the long held idea that since both the graduates and the country as a whole benefit, then both should contribute. Quite what one can do when there just ain’t the cash around to continue with this approach is a question that’s far from easy to answer.

One notable problem in requiring the graduates to pay up later is that one would expect a fair proportion of them to leave the country before the bills start rolling in. After all, why would one stay to face a bill of £30,000 or more when one could get a similar (and higher paying) job in America and not have to pay that bill?

No related posts.

Times have moved on somewhat since then though. That street and the one parallel to it where my granny lived have been demolished and replaced with a new housing development. Unfortunately, one of the aspects of the new development is that it’s built more in a courtyard style so neither of those two streets exist and instead there remains only the original street leading down to the school entrance which now is effectively a cul-de-sac.

Net effect? You’d have thought that it would have been obvious to the designers of the new development that creating a cul-de-sac where there previously was a way out was going to create problems and so it has. Every morning and afternoon that street is jammed with traffic going down to the end and attempting to turn.

What’s now happened is that the police have been called in to ensure that the school entrance isn’t blocked with cars and that nobody is parking over the new driveways. What should have happened is that the original exit street should have been preserved.

No related posts.

It starts from 6 million years ago and runs right through to the 19th century. Not in massive detail to be sure and even when it really gets underway (around 12,000 years ago) it skims over vast tracts of human history. Darned impressive nonetheless and absolutely packed with information on just about every corner of the world.

Supposedly during the course I’ll have gotten through about half of the 784 pages. That works out at something like 30 pages a week which sounds fairly manageable though it’s pretty hard going at the moment with so much new terminology. Some of that terminology is starting to sink in though and I now know what palaeolithic and neolithic mean which seems like a good start.

I’ve just completed the reading for the first week of the course which was quite a slog. That’s not because of the archaeology but rather because there’s a small mountain of reading about the course itself in the first week. At least in the second week it gets into the topic of the course itself, with a first look at the beginnings of agriculture around the world.

No related posts.

That’s the problem with final exams… there’s so much intense revision before the exam that you’re all geared up to answer any question on the subject and the day after the exam you’ve no immediate need for any of that information.

Last year the debate was on as to whether to buy a telescope or binoculars for the practicals but as it turned out I could have gotten away without either of them as the practical requiring them was optional and even if it weren’t, the part requiring a telescope or binoculars was an optional part of it. Funnily enough, we got through the whole astronomy course without actually needing to look up at the stars even once.

Oh well, this time next year I will be debating about whether or not to sign up for the planetary sciences course.

Related posts:

1. Signing up for child psychology
2. Getting your GMAT score up

Whereas in the past people would be either qualified in the sciences or in the arts, an increasing number are finding that they don’t need to choose and moreover fascination in one field doesn’t preclude being equally fascinated in another.

Thus I find myself mid-way through a science degree and doing a history course. It doesn’t fit anywhere within that science degree but it’s just as fascinating a subject to me and may one day form the foundation of a history degree.

No related posts.

For one thing, it has next to nothing to say about getting out a spade and digging stuff up which is what many people would consider archaeology to be about. Except, of course, it’s not really about that at all. Yes, it needs to dig stuff up but that’s only to find out information about whatever the various civilisations have left behind as evidence of what they did when they were on the go.

In fact, the course is basically about those past civilisations and is basically a history course except that it’s a history course with a massive time span. Whereas normal history courses cover at most a few hundred years, this one covers 12,000 years albeit skimming over most of the detail.

No related posts.

One of the most striking is the difference in the assumptions about how responsible the kids going to the school are. In their previous school, basically the assumption seemed to be that they had to be led everywhere so every morning they had to be taken to the door of their classroom, helped to take their coats off, and generally assisted to organise their arrival into the classroom. In this one, everyone from P1 through to P7 starts off in the playground then they line up at the spot for their class before following their teacher into the school thus all that parent assistance isn’t there.

That playground assembly practice in turn creates a totally different atmosphere in that the head master and all the teachers are out in the playground in the morning and indeed in the afternoon when the kids are getting collected. The big difference there is that the head master is around and much more approachable whereas in their previous school the principal had, as she put it, other things to do. Presumably their current head master also has those other things to do but his presence in the playground highlights what seems a different attitude and approach ie that he’s responsible for the kids primarily and if they’re all outside then that’s where he should be too.

No related posts.

First to go was Human Biology (SK277) which I really miss doing as it was a really, really interesting course. It was far from being an easy course for me as it was my first ever biology course but the fascination more than made up for that and I ended up getting through the course books much faster than expected.

This week I posted off the final assignment for the Investigative Biology (SXR270) summer school. They’re an odd breed of course as they basically only take up a couple of weeks of your life but have such an intensity that it can take a month or two to wind down from them.

Coming soon is the final assignment for the Astronomy (S282) course which seems to be taking forever to do. I’m really dreading the exam for that but then so are a lot of people so perhaps it’ll work out fine in the end.

Alongside that I’m well into the assignment for the Planets course (S196) which I should get away sometime in the next week or two.

By the time I’ve that lot done “all” I’ll be doing is the revision for the astronomy exam which is in mid-October so, all being well, I’ll understand it much better than I do now. And the Molecules, Medicines and Drugs course (SK185) which is just as fascinating as the human biology one was so chances are that I’ll finish it well before the end January deadline.

As this should leave me with a bit of a lull in activity I’m toying with fitting in another course, probably the one on fossils which is in its last run this year and sounds both easy and interesting.

No related posts.

The problem basically is that you’ve no way to judge which Online Schools are going to be the best for you. You might think that, as a first cut, the big names would be the ones to go for but that’s not necessarily the case as they’re more geared up towards serving onsite students and may not work nearly so well in dealing with online students.

Thus you need to take account of comments and ratings by students who’ve already taken courses with the various schools. Since online education is a relatively new affair you need to bias your consideration of those comments much more so to recent years too.

Related posts:

1. Preparing yourself for the law exam
2. Kicking your heels at the moment?
3. Aren’t textbooks expensive?

The problem is that originally the idea was that people would obviously want to get back into work (and be able to) and wouldn’t want to remain dependent on benefits. That view clearly isn’t held by a number of people these days and these people can take advantage of the lack of limits on the help available. For example, take a typical family of two adults, two children who have become unemployed. Very roughly their entitlement would equate to £60 for the adults and £40 each for the children (neglecting, for the moment, any potential housing benefit etc.). That’s a total of £120 a week or around £6000 a year. Actually, it would be more as there’s child benefit of £35 a week so the total in basic income benefits is about £155 a week, £700 a month, £8000 a year (equivalent to a gross salary of around £12,000). Not a massive income for sure but, potentially, one that the family might live on as, of course, there would be assistance with housing costs, free school meals, and a few others.

However, consider instead a family with 10 children. Each child adds £55 a week so that’s £600/week, £2600/month or £32000 per year. Bearing in mind that the benefits are tax-free this equates to a salary of around £50,000. Even though I’m quite highly qualified, I would find it difficult to get that level of salary.

Now, I accept that people with large families don’t necessarily have them to pick up massive benefit payments but even if they don’t, surely there should be some kind of limit in terms of a maximum benefit payment regardless of other circumstances? If not, it would appear that the best plan would be to pop out kids on a regular basis: it can’t be right that the benefit system seems to be actively encouraging that.

No related posts.