A.C. Grayling unveils the University College of Beebfour

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/05/new-college-dawkins-grayling-ferguson

So will everyone with a First get their own TV show?

Move over, Simon Cowell.

BTW Ferguson and Pinker among the "leading thinkers in the world"? ... just about how many copies their next pot-boilers will sell. Aaron, bless yer innocent heart.

The Skin

[non sociopath skin]

1. Worser and worser

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/06/ac-grayling-private-university-syllabus

I used to think that Grayling was a pretty cool dude but it seems he's a stinky-poo man.

I'm not going to ask for his new atheist bible for Christmas after all.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

2. Ugh.

BTW, I would say that Pinker *was* once a leading thinker - until he found that it was more profitable to write headline-grabbing stuff on Human Nature and why we deny it.

I suppose those who attend this university will learn that lesson more quickly!

Niall Ferguson seems always to have been essentially a clever, but not wise, right-wing student-journalist who eventually became a more glorified sort of student-journalist.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Ferguson is shit

While the right wing and liberal parts of the media praise him for his "white man's burden" Whig histories, he is not considered highly by academic historians.

[T_i_B]

4. I've always found the idea....

...that the likes of Grayling and Dawkins are in any way left wing to be laughable really. Sectarian atheists yes, but champions of social equality? Pfft!

[LeftishBrit]

7. Dawkins is a hate-figure for the right, especially in America, due to not just his atheism but his

opposition to the Iraq war from the beginning.

However, neither characteristic is as rare in the UK as in the USA, and I would not have considered Dawkins as either LW or RW; simply not political in the wider sense.

As for Grayling, I must say I hadn't heard of him until recently, but this story certainly seems to suggest that he's someone very much on the look-out for the main chance, and possibly not even very competent at it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Looks like they won't be eligible for any government loans

Whitehall sources indicated on Monday that students at the New College of the Humanities – a new private university being set up by high-profile academics including AC Grayling – would not be entitled to government-backed student loans because its £18,000-a-year fees break the £9,000 cap.

The university's backers have said they expected students to be eligible for loans of up to £6,000 from next year in line with other private universities. They are also seeking commercial loans.

The forthcoming white paper on higher education is expected to set boundaries of a "level playing field" between traditional institutions and new private providers. Only students at universities charging under the £9,000 cap are expected to be eligible for state-backed finance.

Ministers are expected to pave the way for students educated privately to borrow up to £9,000. However, private universities charging fees above £6,000 are also expected to become subject to government requirements on widening access to students from poorer backgrounds.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/07/student-loan-demand-may-force-cuts

And they say 70% of the students will pay the full fees. So this is effectively going to be like a public school - for those whose parents can afford £18,000 a year (with or without commercial-rate loans), with a few scholarship students. I went to one, and I have to say the atmosphere and community at university was miles better than my fee-paying school.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Well, here's one ray of hope...

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=416436&c=1

OVERWHELMING vote of no-confidence in the government's policies from Oxford University Congregation. 283 to 5!

And I know where one of those 283 votes came from; and I heard a long series of inspiring speeches, bringing up all sorts of quaint ideas like the public good, and access for all not just the privileged, and social equality, and anti-privatization, and anti-market-forces-in-education, and some very trenchant comments on the influence of bankers on the country, and on what's being done to the NHS even though it wasn't the subject of the debate. And how academics should have done more to stand up for education as a public service during the last 30 years - yes we should, we should! And doubtless no one will listen, but hearing such an overwhelming, concerted denunciation of the government's policies from an 'elitist', traditionally conservative-with-a-small-c university that some had expected to back the policies - that was satisfying.

Sometimes there is something that restores just a tiny bit of faith in human nature (no Pinker, I'm not talking about your books), even if it may be too little, much too late.

[LeftishBrit]

8. And more, from Warwick.

http://theboar.org/news/2011/jun/5/warwick-academics-seek-declaration-war-willetts/