Nick Barr, Professor of public economics at the LSE speaking at a recent seminar on the university funding system, thinks they should. Why? Well Nick reckons the blanket interest rate subsidy (i.e. having an interest

rate at the level of inflation rather than the cost of borrowing) costs the tax payer £1.2 billion and only benefits successful professionals in mid career. The argument is to save this money and spend it on ‘increasing access’ for poorer students.

Of course, the problem with this redistributive measure is its impact on student debt, an already touchy subject politically. So far student recruitment has not been adversely affected by introducing tuition fees, so there is reason to believe that ending the subsidy would similarly just be taken on the chin by the student body. So watch out folks … there maybe more pain to come for the ever suffering university student!

The collective university establishment breathed one long sign of relief today, the relief that comes from the knowledge that the impact of tuition fees has not meant doom

and gloom. Students aren’t saying no to debt in favour of plumbing courses or careers with Tesco, in fact they still want those degrees.

No doubt the Higher Education minister Bill Rammell is also breathing easier, let us never forget that his government brought tuition fees in after carefully avoiding mentioning the issue in any manifesto.

What is interesting is much of the buoyant recruitment lies in EU and foreign students, especially Cyprus and Polish students, who are flocking over here. This does put a different complexion on the headline figures.

And … healthy recruitment also means the green light for fees to rise, something the universities themselves have been pushing for (one Vice Chancellor interviewed today wanted to see £7,000 per year). Only a steep decline in numbers is going to cut the wind out of those sails, and the first real test has been past.

All of us here at WillIseemytutor would like to wish all our readers and users a very merry crimbo!!!

We’ve been working hard on your behalf, and will be doubling our efforts early in the new year to bring to you the inside information that will allow you to make the smartest choices when deciding where you lay your bets when it comes to university. We want you to be the winners, not the institutions .. and in that spirit, have fab christmas’s, and we look forward to hearing from you and getting your feedback.

Merry Christmas to you all!!!

Dr Wismyt

Freshers week has arrived and both campus and town is alive and abuzz .. uni has come out of its a long summer slumber - at last. No more quiet corridors and resturants, now replaced by hordes of young excited faces milling around everywhere, its like a lifeforce and its infectious.

God, campus is so depressing in the summer. Its like the night after the party, everyone interesting has gone home long ago but your to wake to the mess and the odd billy-no-mates who has nowhere else to go .. and yet, the sun shines, but only to console you that there are better places to be, and your not there ..

At least now there is a sense of normalacy, i now feel that when I get in my car in the morning i am at least going to the right place. If you have to work like me, summer on campus just makes you feel so out of wack, its like a resturant without food!

Mind you - can’t get in the bloody lift now, full of students! (lazy bastards ;0)

Has anyone noted a news item last week which recalled Jack Straw’s student days at Leeds University? Leeds University has an exhibition at the moment looking at student radicalism in the sixties (Leeds being Jacks old university – that’s right, no Oxbridge!).
Anyways, it was one of those snippets of information that suddenly strikes you as a humm … moment. Straw was criticising the then Polytechnics by drawing a contrast with the universities, and quoted a statistic on the average staff to student ratios; with the universities enjoying a 1:5 (staff to students ratio) whilst Polytechnics had 1:9/1:11. Now I don’t know where Straw got his figures from, but his point was that developing the Polytechnics would mean giving many students a second rate education, something he did not approve of (remember he had principles in those days).

Well, how times have changed. Like a lot of people who have been through the university sector (I also ended up working for one) those figures Straw was criticizing now seem pretty damned good, indeed, they highlight the extent to which student staff ratios have deteriorated markedly over the years since Straw himself benefited from a university education!

I can’t imagine any politician now (aspiring, established or otherwise) criticising an educational institute for having student staff ratios above a 1:5 – in fact the idea would be unthinkable! I wonder how many universities can offer their students that kind of ratio - one tutor for every five students, I bet most can’t even get close – I know mine can’t!

In fact I never hear any politicians talking about staff student ratios, except when pressed, in schools. It’s like it doesn’t exist or matter at Universities, which is something very curious… no more so because the British higher education system was designed around an elitist model i.e. get the brightest students and expose them to the best academics over a relatively short time (many countries have 4+ year degrees rather than our quick 3) and hey presto, a well educated individual. Trouble is whilst the model works very well for small numbers it starts to break down the more students you try to squeeze in without a commensurate resourcing to match – something that was never forthcoming. In fact that last sentence recounts the entire history of higher education since Jack’s day.

So whilst now we have a higher education system which is a mass higher education system, its quality is very much up for question, in part because it’s so variable. All of which proves why prospective students need to exercise extreme caution when reading all those glossy colour prospectuses, their the last place where you’ll find a student staff ratio.