My tale of me - Chris Jenkinson

This weekend I attended the first-ever NUS conference for postgraduates. It was really about time that postgraduates, both taught and research, got the attention they deserve from NUS. I know many students’ unions will be looking to the new postgraduate committee for leadership on engaging postgraduate students in their unions in all their work - academic representation, societies, events and more.

I am delighted to be the first ever representative of taught postgraduate students on NUS’ national executive council, and I’ll be using this blog (among other ways) of keeping postgraduate students updated on the work of the postgraduate committee and NUS more widely.

Course representatives

I have continued work on the course representative conference. The booking form has been open for 4 days at the time of writing and over 60 course representatives have registered, which is an impressive number. I have begun work on my sessions in the course representative conference (the opening session, and education funding), and will organise a meeting to discuss the education funding session in more detail late this week or early next week.

The next round of course rep meetings on a school-by-school basis are coming around very quickly. The dates on our end have been determined and we are currently verifying with schools whether the proposed dates are feasible. These will be quite intensive but are very useful in gathering opinion about educational policy and practice, and talking and getting feedback about the work of the Union.

Review of Undergraduate Education

I have attended a couple of meetings, including the central strategy group, since the last Executive meeting. Current work at a institutional level revolves around curriculum design and reform (a new group I will be sitting on), the Higher Education Achievement Report, and review of the award system for excellence in various fields, academic and non-academic. Work at faculty and school level continues to be improving feedback, implementing academic advisors, and engaging more staff in the review.

Other activity

I was grateful to meet the new Chancellor and give him a tour, with the General Secretary, of the Union. He was very interested in the work we do in many areas including academic representation, societies, and our democratic structures.

I attended the General Assembly and took the opportunity to talk to several members of senior staff about the work I have been doing on the review and bringing to their attention the views of students and the Union on some of the changes.

I attended NUS regional conference and talked to colleagues about shared issues in addition to attending sessions.

I have also worked on some governance reform to the constitution for the election regulations. I talked to almost all sabbatical officers and several part-time officers (unfortunately constrained by the exam period) about the changes and found the feedback immensely helpful.

I have also helped many students with simple and more complicated problems via email, phone, and in the Advice Centre.

Since the 17th December, I have been working on the two key areas of course representatives and the review of undergraduate education, but I have attended a couple of conferences and contributed towards the website and other non-portfolio activities.

Course representatives

I finished the first round of meetings with all course representatives on a school-by-school basis before Christmas. It was a great opportunity to meet and find out what being a course representative, and studying, is like in many different areas of the university. Unfortunately the meeting duration was only one hour and I frequently found myself pushed for time to get enough information on a whole range of subject areas.

Attendance at the meetings varied significantly from school to school. Due to the short amount of turnaround before starting the meetings, I determined meeting times unilaterally, which meant unfortunately there was a short amount of notice and conflicts with academic commitments in some cases. More forward planning is necessary in future to ensure a higher turnout.

Kevin O’Brien, Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, led the sessions with course representatives in the faculty, asking questions about key aspects of being students in the various schools, which I believe was hugely beneficial for all sides. I am encouraging the Associate Deans in the other faculties to take part in similar activities in the next round of course representative meetings.

In addition, a large amount of work is being done into improving the quality of the data about course representatives so a more strategic view in the future can be taken. We are slowly becoming more aware of where the gaps in the data are so they can be filled and we are becoming more aware of the various structures of student representation that exist in the various schools. Being better at record-keeping means that less time can be spent on reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes in future years and more on better support and more events for course representatives to benefit from.

I have also been planning the first Course Representative Conference, which is occurring on the afternoon of Wednesday, 11th February. I am hoping this will be a success and hope members of the Executive will attend and enjoy the conference as well.

Review of Undergraduate Education

I have attended several meetings regarding the review, in Humanities, Engineering and Physical Sciences, and Medical and Human Sciences, and with the Vice-President (Teaching and Learning), Colin Stirling. I have also been to meetings about the Learning Commons. Progress continues to be made and several changes will be in place for the upcoming semester, particularly around Academic Advisors. Discussions about improving feedback are ongoing and I have asked the course representatives to continue to be vocal on this topic so it does not slip off the agenda.

Other matters

I attended the Executive away day and the Higher Education Conference, hosted by NUS. Both were interesting events (in different ways), covering new areas that will influence the work I do over the next semester. The issue of postgraduate representation and involvement in the Union will be a focus of mine.

I was pleased to notice that several members of university staff are readers of my blog and have started to look into feedback on exams as a result of my blog post on the issue.

I am also pleased at the trial of the 24-hour library, which is going well. It seems more popular than first expected and I will be meeting the head of the library to discuss a way forward after the end of the exam period.

I support a strong, independent, democratic and campaigning National Union of Students, which can effectively deliver results on issues students care about.

I am the Academic Affairs Officer in the Students’ Union, a full-time position, giving me a great deal of experience in effectively representing students and campaigning on issues students care about – like the environment, civil liberties, and tackling student debt.

I believe strongly in equality for all regardless of background, and do not believe that means-testing is a fair or equitable way in ensuring access to higher education. The 2009 higher education funding review is a critical opportunity for both current and future students. I support a free education, want to tackle student debt, and am adamantly opposed to any lifting of the cap.

I believe our government is not listening to the views of students and the country on climate change and that the NUS should lead a strong campaign.

I believe that ID cards are illiberal and unworkable, and are an expensive ‘solution’ to a nonexistent problem and that the government’s plan to impose them firstly on foreign students and then all students as a requirement to obtain a loan is appalling and systematic of their continual degrading of human rights.

I oppose zoning of students by town councils, and the selling of university halls to the private sector.

I support NUS reform, as it offers a strong solution to the problems that NUS faces. It keeps democratic structures while increasing our ability to campaign on key issues affecting students like the environment, access to higher education, and human rights.

If elected, I will vote according to what I believe is best for students and the NUS.

I’ve written a guest article for the University of Manchester Politics Society titled “Winning a free education” - here’s a snippet:

We need a policy which enables campaigners and activists to reach out to less politicised students and allows them to take ownership of the campaign, engaging them and ensuring that even small actions taken are steps towards victory.

This post is a little on the late side, but must be said anyway.

At last academic year’s National Union of Students conference in April, a motion was passed calling for a review of the governance of NUS. The proposed changes are now available. To actually implement the changes, two conferences need to be held, and the document needs to receive a two-thirds majority vote in favour at each one. The NUS leadership realise that many of the suggested changes are quite controversial, so have decided to hold an “extraordinary conference” to try and rush through the changes.

It is rather hypocritical for the NUS leadership to claim that the suggested changes in the governance of NUS increase democracy while at the same time sabotaging democracy by hosting a whole-day event on a Tuesday just a couple of weeks before the begin of the holiday season (a period notorious for coursework deadlines). Because it’s an “extraordinary” conference, there is also no requirement that delegates to the conference are democratically elected - they can be appointed by whoever has that responsibility. Furthermore, there are many students’ unions across the country which simply cannot afford to pay for their delegates to travel to Blackpool. These student unions will be completely unrepresented (and I suspect will be disproportionately from further education colleges).

How the NUS leadership expect there to be a representative view of student political opinion at the extraordinary conference when so many barriers are put in the way of ordinary students attending is quite beyond me. Oppose the extraordinary conference, make sure your union holds a cross-campus ballot if it can, and make sure your delegates challenge the leadership to explain their anti-democratic methodology.

More about the actual governance review soon.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) have an interesting article titled “Whatever happened to student radicalism?“, written by Ben Lewis and Dave Isaacson. While it suffers from the usual “everyone who disagrees with us is right-wing” disease common among socialists and communists, it is worth reading for its analysis of the fractures between the various socialist groups. However, I think their opposition to means-tested grants and the reasons for it are misplaced. Their suggested replacement with universal grants are the wrong solution to the wrong problem, and it is this I wish to mention.

I am opposed to means-tested grants in principle on the basis that education is a right, not a privilege, and that tuition fees and top-up fees are a barrier to that right. However, I find their logic for opposing means-testing to be confusing. If I understand it correctly, it is that means-testing is discriminatory against minority students such as LGBT or black students. I find this a strange argument as means-testing for students is based on the income and assets of one’s parents rather than whether the prospective student is gay or black (and if we are to have means-testing, so it should be). Whether someone is gay or black should have nothing to do with how much money they receive. Being black or gay does not make you inherently more or less deserving of a grant than being white or straight. The article claims that means-tested grants also do nothing to address the gap between rich and poor. This is contradictory to discrimination based on being part of a minority.

In fact, addressing the gap between rich and poor is a much higher priority - and more work actually needs to be done addressing educational standards for children from deprived white families than for other ethnic minority groupings, according to a 2006 report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (page 21). At 16, as a percentage more white children are not in school or training than any other minority (page 57). Being worried about discrimination against minority groups with means-tested grants is missing the elephant in the room - which is the failure of deprived white children to remain in education. Ending the 10p rate of income tax as the Liberal Democrats propose is one way to help these families - not raising it to 20p as Gordon Brown has proposed in the budget (causing many lower-income families to pay a large increase in tax, unless they will benefit from the working tax credit increase). Making education work might not be a panacea, but it is close.

The socialists’ opposition to means-tested grants is flawed. They argue that it discriminates against minorities (which is irrelevant, and in any case, ethnic minorities do not need the support as much). They also argue that it does nothing to address the gap between rich and poor. It does help, but means-tested grants are not supposed to solve the massive problem of failed educational practices in this country, but to help poorer students who want to study get into university. They would be better supporting campaigns to add another tax rate for the highest earners and increasing taxes on large corporations, remove the poorest people from paying income tax altogether, and opposing tax increases for small businesses (and of course to support a fair system of local income tax, rather than the regressive council tax). Means-testing is not an ideal solution, but to replace means-testing with a universal grant without addressing the more serious problem of the failing education system would hit students coming from deprived families the hardest, despite what the CPGB and the other socialist/communist groups claim.

I read “How can student politics learn lessons from Lib Dem election victories?” by Alexander Kemp with interest due to our recent NUS elections and upcoming student union elections at Manchester. The success of the Jewish society and Labour Students compared to the past whitewash by Student Respect/the Islamic Society, and an apparent 20% turnout increase since last year (I don’t have the exact figures), show that it is possible to stand and indeed to win.

He is entirely true to speak about the lack of interest from Lib Dems at university. We (Lib Dems at Manchester) did not stand any candidates, nor did we send out a message letting people know the NUS elections weren’t occurring. I know that I see NUS as almost a unwitting parody of the Monty Python and the Life of Brian revolutionary groups, which coupled with a whipping of delegates ensuring they do not have independence in many votes, makes me lean more towards disaffiliation than reforming from within (and perhaps my general natural distrust of large groupings, whether unions, corporations or government). But my friends in Labour Students at Manchester have told me several times that if the Lib Dems got involved then we could help “rescue” it and make it relevant.

The trouble I see is that if turnout at student union elections is low, how can we expect them to be representative, let alone NUS which is even more distantly linked to the “average” student? Perhaps Lib Dem groups on campuses across the UK would be better served encouraging people to vote and promoting reform such as online voting or referenda, rather than spending effort on targeting the existing politicised student in order to get Lib Dem candidates elected to NUS - especially if, as the claim goes, most students vote Lib Dem in general elections.

In the past I have been pretty strongly against the NUS as a useless, irrelevant talking shop not worth participating in. It is not listened to by the government, it is in financial crisis, and the average student sees it as a group of political careerists, if they know enough about it to have an opinion at all. But with the recent elections here I see my mind changing towards getting involved and helping to make it better. Whether or not I would vote to disaffiliate Manchester from the NUS, I’m not sure.

The question is a good one. Should Lib Dems get involved in NUS and help to reform from within, or is it not worth the effort - they would be more productive making their own student unions relevant to students and encouraging participation in local politics?