Before 1997 universities were funded through government taxation, largely because the universities claimed (rightly or wrongly) that they provided a useful public benefit and were spending taxpayers’ money wisely. Successive governments trusted them, and let them get on with the business of providing higher education. The general consensus has been that universities were underfunded, particularly [...]
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Posted in Education, Student politics on May 7th, 2008
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 [...]
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Posted in Student politics on Mar 17th, 2008
I just thought I’d mention that I’ve been elected as the new Academic Affairs Officer for the University of Manchester Students’ Union for the 2008/9 academic year. The post is to represent students, individually and collectively, within the University, to advise students on education/academic issues, and to inform students about education issues.
It’s a full-time position, [...]
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Posted in Student politics on Mar 11th, 2008
Not able to gracefully admit defeat, learn the lessons and move on, several members of the Socialist Workers’ Party at the University of Manchester have started attacking students for democratically booting them out. Dave Sewell, one of the few SWP members who will be on Union council next year has written a rather bitter message [...]
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Posted in Student politics on Nov 11th, 2007
The University of Manchester Student Union’s Council is an interesting contraption; it’s frequently criticised as being rather pointless. The obvious question is why is it pointless? I am going to attempt to answer that question, and propose some solutions. That question can be broken down.
Is Council pointless:
- because of its structure?
- because of its [...]
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Posted in Student politics on Nov 3rd, 2007
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 [...]
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Posted in Student politics on Jun 17th, 2007
One of my main desires for my year on the executive of the University of Manchester Students’ Union is to motivate life sciences students to participate in everything ranging from societies through the student newspaper to academic course representation. While life sciences is the smallest faculty (around 1 700 undergraduates, compared to the 15 000 [...]
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Posted in Student politics on Mar 16th, 2007
I will write something longer and more substantial later, but for now I am happy to say I have been elected the next Life Sciences Faculty Officer in the University of Manchester Students’ Union! Out of the seven Liberal Democrat candidates standing, five of us were elected (our chair, Gary, lost in a very close [...]
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This week’s edition of Student Direct features the Islamic Society on its Societies page. The article is written by one Walead Quhill who stood for Life Sciences secretary in the Student Union council elections in 2006, and thankfully he wasn’t elected given he doesn’t seem to accept evolution as a valid scientific theory (or indeed [...]
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