Financial & Travel Musings

Funding university seems destined to always be a matter of considerable political debate but it’s even worse when the economy isn’t doing too well.

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?

Popularity: 2% [?]

When the school that our little guys go to was built it had a street running alongside the school wall so when the number of cars bringing kids increased, it was easy for the kids to get dropped off at the school gate and then go down that street.

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.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The sheer scope of the text book for my archaeology course is unbelievable.

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.

Popularity: 2% [?]