Blame the parents

Gordon Brown announced to the assembled under-25s at Manchester Art Gallery last week that in an ideal situation the cost of higher education “should be shared between the government, the student and the parent.” This is surely the last in a long line of indicators that someone advising the Prime Minister just isn’t all that bright. For Gordon Brown’s triumvirate of government, offspring and put-upon-parent forking out for higher

Cartoon: Alena Eis

 education is a supremely shallow and flawed answer, which only illuminates how the current tuition fee system compromises any vestige of what used to pass for Labour values.

Only a true naïf would expect the Government to do anything other than skirt around the issue of tuition fees, yet Gordon Brown couldn’t even pull off evasive. His ‘ideal situation’ laid bare the most fundamental inequality in the current HE funding system – the over-reliance on financial support from parents.

Student loans are skewed by what your parents earn and, even if that doesn’t amount to very much, your loan still barely covers the cost of your accommodation. The system is riddled with assumptions about how much your parents can or will contribute, leaving many students in the lurch. What about families with four or five children? What about parents who refuse to pay for their kids’ education? And besides, since when did a Labour government care so much about who your parents are? A truly principled socialist government should endorse a funding system that makes higher education equitable at the point of entry; that means enough money for everyone, regardless of background.

The current system is not so much designed to give the poorest people more, but to give everybody else less. Labour ministers jump down the throats of anyone who criticises their target of getting 50 per cent of young people into higher education (it seems they’re all well briefed on playing the class snobbery card) yet it’s patently obvious that the target under the current system is unsustainable- and that’s before you consider the Government having to lend even more to match the sums universities say they need.

All that Gordon Brown demonstrated to young people in Manchester last fortnight was that a review of higher education funding cannot come quickly enough. Whether the review, which launched last week, will be suitably rigorous given the exclusion of the National Union of Students and the Liberal Democrats from the panel is quite another matter.

(Ca)Marooned

It must be nice to live in David Cameron’s world. Shored up on a metaphorical island of (relatively) progressive social policy, with only beautiful, bohemian SamCam for company, and a stash of cold hard economic proposals in the chiller (in case anyone accuses one of being a bleeding heart). How nice.

Sadly, the Tory story away from Cameron’s island runs a little differently. Last month Manchester graduate Natalie Samuel ran for election as the Women’s Officer of Greater Manchester Conservative Future. Once elected, Samuel successfully moved to abolish the role entirely. She was later applauded by Conservative blog, ‘ToryBear’, for being a “true feminist”.

Whatever your position on positive discrimination, Natalie Samuel’s Conservative manoeuvring offers a succinct example of how marooned the Conservative leader is from the grass roots of his party. Cameron has already been met with fierce criticism for reversing the Tory party’s long-standing opposition to all-women shortlists. In allowing the Women’s Officer position to dissolved, it seems the youth of the party, in Manchester at least, have thrown their hat in the ring with party big-hitters Lord Tebbit and Ann Widdecombe. Cameron might like to think of himself as a thoroughly modern Dave (he winsomely told the Telegraph last year, “my references are all movies and telly”) but this incident should cast long shadows of doubt in the minds of voters as to whether he really can effect change in the Tory party.

Sweating over the smalls stuff

There’s something causing a bit of a stink over in Cambridge and it isn’t the River Cam. The Tab, Cambridge University’s first online tabloid, which launched over the summer, includes a feature called ‘Tab Totty’ featuring, well, Cambridge totty stripped down to their smalls. It’s fair to say that the online red-top attracted a fair amount of attention, with both the CUSU Women’s Officer and the Guardian queuing up to condemn it as sexist.

The three male founders of the website hit back, saying that anyone who accused the site of being sexist had clearly not read the publication. They expressed resentment at the fact that they were being pigeonholed as right wing exponents of patriarchy. Anyone with half a scathing eye on media spin and the general public will surely feel some sympathy with Taymoor Atighetchi, Jack Rivlin and George Marangos Gilks. Certainly, the past year has seen an explosion of second-hand complainers. Whether over articles they hadn’t read or prank phone calls they didn’t actually listen to.

The boys, however, have dismissed objections to the inclusion of the page-three style photo-shoots came from “a small group taking a very strong feminist line.” This, surely, has to be where our sympathy runs out.

The most regrettable thing about the Tab Totty debacle is how divisive it’s been amongst those who would call themselves feminist. There are many, including the founders of the Tab, who insist that sexually provocative pictures of women are not sexist, and that in this day and age it is a sign of feminist achievement that women can celebrate their beauty as well as their brains.

Heidi, a 21-year-old student who posed for a Tab Totty shoot after the furore hit global headlines, justified the endeavour saying: “I’d like to see myself as someone with brainpower and boobs, a pairing which I feel Cambridge culture strives to deny” Her comments were accompanied by photos of her in tight shorts and a bra-top.
There is an attitude that expending feminist energies fretting over the existence of page-three is silly when there are much more marked inequalities; women are underepresented in parliament and the boardroom, many are paid less than their male counterparts. Indeed, Heidi registers her dissatisfaction with all of these in the Tab Totty feature.

Yet therein lies the rub, Heidi and the founders of the Tab are refusing to connect the dots on the polka-spot bikini, as it were. We live in a society where women aren’t adequately paid or represented. We also live in a society where women are objectified and not taken seriously. To claim a link between the two does not mean you are taking a ‘hard feminist line’  as the Tab founders suggest (in that denigatory way that almost certainly implies you are a dungaree-sporting, militant who subsists only on a diet of vegan self-righteousness) rather only that you recognise that our society is unequal and will remain unequal until we find a way to terminate unhelpful discourses as to what women should and shouldn’t be. Undergraduate page-threes only serve to fetishise an image of an ultimate modern woman: brains and nicely rounded b-cups. This is selective feminism. Women who look like Cheryl Cole and articulate themselves like Stephen Fry can have our respect. But what about the rest? What about female undergraduates who look like they live under a boulder (or even just look like the boulder itself)? Well, they wouldn’t sell newspapers now would they?

Where’s our shopping list, Mr Cameron?

Emerging from the true-blue haze left behind by the Conservative Party Conference, there is little doubt that George Osborne’s shopping list of planned spending cuts has been etched deepest into the public imagination. Although the brief analytical forays into what Samantha Cameron should wear did prove an amusing respite.

But as city-dwellers are left pondering what will be next in line to snarl up the traffic around St Peter’s Square (first it was water pipes, then Metrolink expansion, then Tories. The locusts and frogs are surely long overdue) Manchester’s students may well be left wondering where their shopping list of policies was amongst all the brouhaha.

As David Willetts, Shadow Minister for Universities and Skills, made abundantly clear on BBC Radio 5 last week, the Tories are only skirting round the issue of higher education funding. And with little grace or agility. When UMSU Academic Affairs Officer Kate Little made a pointed request for Willetts to put his money where his mouth is and commit to finding a fairer funding system she was met only with piffling inanity about his perceptions of students in “the western world.” At the 2007 party conference Willetts pressed home that the only way to attract new voters was to step out of one’s comfort zone, something he himself seemed unwilling to do last Monday.

Yet the Conservatives are keen to appear to be doing something. Last Tuesday’s Policy Exchange debate ‘More fees please? Are universities giving students and parents what they want?’ had all the right ingredients – Willetts (naturally) NUS President Wes Streeting and Chair of the Russell Group Professor Michael Arthur – but there was no itinerate collection of thoughts and plans on higher education funding to be seen. No Tory shopping list this time. Instead they seem to be wandering the supermarket aisles, eyes glazed, popping empty platitudes in their basket at random despite the cries from students hungry for something more substantial.

As he reiterated at Policy Exchange, Willetts has promised the creation of 10, 000 more university places, to be financed by incentivising early loan repayment, yet this does not even begin to address Little’s demand for a comprehensively fairer funding system. The creation of more places may fit a commitment to widening participation, but giving further financial privilege to higher paid graduates, or graduates whose parents can afford to pay back their loans wholesale within the year, should be of scant comfort to every other graduate unable to make a dent in their average £23, 000 debt. Critically, an incentive scheme is logically baseless. Students do not hang on to their debt for the sake of it. The majority are already paying it back as fast as they can, far from keen to accrue more interest than is strictly necessary.

David Cameron and George Osborne have received widespread acclaim for the specificity of their economic policies in contrast to the deafening silence on public debt in the Chancellor’s address to Bournemouth last week. However when it comes to higher education funding, it is clear that both Labour and Conservative parties are keeping whatever they have in store for students behind closed doors, making it very difficult for the browsing student to feel much inclination towards either.

The impotence of asking students to be earnest

The rant wall in the south campus Students’ Union foyer had barely been up a day when some original soul took it

Photo: Alena Eis

upon them to add their (detailed) drawing of a large penis. The length of white-board was erected by the Students’ Union Executive Committee as an outlet for student views and complaint and many students responded accordingly. It has been mooted that perhaps the penis that came to grace the board alongside rants about delayed loans and bar prices might have political significance. Perhaps this was the perfect expression of disgust levelled at what is often perceived to be an impotent organisation. Or perhaps not. Perhaps a penis is just a penis.

It is interesting, however, that when asked for their feedback that this is one person’s response. And the penis sketcher is not alone. While less explicit, some people chose to add comments that, while lovely, were also rather impotent. Some expressed their love for various members of the Executive, others drew flowers; neither is particularly helpful in giving your elected representatives some democratic focus.

What was clear from the inaugural UMSU Rant Week was that, despite the frequent complaint that students’ unions are out of touch with what students want and need, very often students are equally unsure of what to tell their elected representatives. Anyone who stopped to read the rant wall in the foyer would have realised that there is uncertainty as to what the jurisdiction of the Union actually is. Many complaints (understandably) were about student loans, some were about University ID cards; neither really falls into the remit of your executive (although they can certainly make a fuss on your behalf). To those who scribbled on the rant wall about their favourite football team or who sketched flowers, did you also take the time to give your executive some constructive criticism? If not, why not? That’s what they’re here for.

Are you all really that content with the way things run? Frankly, it’s hard to believe that that’s the case. Students seem to be very selective with their complaints. Student Direct: Mancunion receives letters about missing photo captions and misquoted statistics on a near daily basis, yet how many letters do your elected representatives receive from their constituents? Complaining when prompted (rather than when it’s too late) can be a potent force for change, yet there seems to be a reticence amongst the student body; a sort of knee jerk response to being asked for input that has you drawing cock diagrams. Perhaps we could put this down to an immature minority, but perhaps there is more to it than that. Either way, if we were as quick to complain as we are to draw rude pictures we would probably have a better Union and University.

The CBI and the NUS- quibbling over the detail?

And so the CBI wades into the higher education funding debate. The Confederation of British Industry wants to cut student support and raise fees in order to preserve the standard of university education.

The move has been condemned as “offensive” by the National Union of Students, yet common ground can be identified between the two parties in what may at first seem like a no-man’s land of debate. While the NUS rigidly support the widening of participation and have favoured a system of progressive taxation in their funding blueprint, Funding Our Future, what they and the CBI seemingly agree on is that universities are for churning out workers and not academics. The NUS funding blueprint would calculate a graduate’s contribution as a proportion of their future earnings, because this is deemed to be an indicator of the value that graduate has absorbed from their degree. The emphasis is increasingly on the job prospects (and the accompanying paycheque) that higher learning lends an individual, while voices that would assert that education should be about the process itself grow ever quieter. Last week Aaron Porter, National Union of Students Vice-President (higher education) demanded transparency from the main political parties on the issue of fees saying, “come out and say what you believe – give us the debate we deserve.” Somehow it seems doubtful that anyone, political party or otherwise, will be advocating dreaming spires over business empires.

Miss-Ogyny?

And so to the objectification of women. This one rears its pretty little head every year, be it in a spat over sexist costume themes at the OP Bop or a dispute over the legitimacy of student beauty pageants. The national NUS women’s campaign and the University of Manchester Students’ Union are to boycott events such as Miss Student UK and Miss University GB.

Last year a similar thing happened at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, also in London). The Miss Ogyny campaign staged demos outside pageant events and rumours drifted through the national press that the exclusively female student contestants were required to have their breasts measured for some competitions. Feminists and students’ union women’s officers have argued that these beauty pageants are regressive and as such are unacceptable in a university environment. Supporters of the boycott may also consider that there is something fetishistic about prizing a woman in possession of both brains and beauty. Yet, contestants in student pageants argue that they are just harmless, post-feminist fun and designed to engender self-esteem. What both parties seem to agree on is that female empowerment is the order of the day. Perhaps we should be asking why a university education in itself is not empowering enough.

The real problem of ‘Studentification’

Anyone who sat through the Withington Civic Society’s Withington 2015 meeting, which considered the possible revision of HMO legislation that could stem the development of student enclaves within suburban areas, could be in no doubt of the resentment some local residents feel towards students.

While many residents were quick to stress that they do not blame the students for the problems caused by the relatively unfettered development of Houses of Multiple Occupancy, instead placing the lion’s share of responsibility with landlords, a vociferous core made it patently clear that they did not want students on their patch. One resident announced to the room that students are merely “borrowing” his city.

Organisations such as the National HMO Lobby, whose topsy-turvy arguments for capping the numbers of students in any given area include high crime rates (yes, students tend to get their laptops nicked) and skewed retail markets (i.e. too many bars and takeaways), talk about students in such terms that it can feel like victimization. This, doubtless, is why the NUS have taken such a condemnatory approach on the issue. Yet this does little to resolve it. Students standing resolutely, arms folded in a huff, while local residents deplore us as cuckoos-in-the-nest, will achieve nothing. Students, their chosen places of study and their elected representatives, as well as local councils, need to face the issues head on. There is much that we could be doing on a united front that would avoid the long and arduous road that forcing through new legislation would require us to take.

All par for the course?

The University of Manchester is nothing if not a humming mass of contradiction. Not only was this the summer that saw Vice-chancellor Alan Gilbert telling the BBC how he is unsatisfied with undergraduate education but the summer that saw the implosion of the online course unit selection system. Again.

After dropping four points below the national average in the National Student Satisfaction survey, University of Manchester higher ups are surely wringing their hands over what can be done to improve the so-called student experience. And Gilbert is right. The educational experience dished out by the University is, in many instances, substandard. However, what they should learn from the fumble over course unit selection is that a large part of student sniping could be assuaged were the University to improve its admin procedures. While curriculum review, improved contact hours and better resources are certainly important, nothing stokes the ire of the masses better than petty bureaucracy, failing online systems, over-stretched impersonal admin offices and a plethora of mixed messages. And Manchester could have written the book on all of these.

Instances like the course unit system failure may foster a sense of long-suffering camaraderie within the student body, as can be seen from the creation of Facebook groups such as ‘Carly Bibby promised me I’d be able to enrol…. SHE LIED’. Yet, at no point should students resign themselves to bad administration. The promised review into how Humanities course units are selected should be suitably rigorous so as to leave students finding new, more positive ways to bond.

Welcome

Welcome to ‘The XX file’ a collection of political musings, interviews and other writings. Forgive me if I tends to focus on education issues, an unavoidable side-effect of having spent nearly six months as the editor of a Greater Manchester student newspaper and member of the University of Manchester Students’ Union Executive Committe.