The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but...

Now travelling back from two days on the South Coast, I've just read Martin Robbin's Lay Scientist blog at the Guardian, where there's the story of a Brazilian evangelical cult leader called Welder Saldanha banning his followers from using USB connections on their computers. This, says the story, is because the universal symbol for the technology "is a trident, which is used to torture souls".

Although the writer does wonder whether the story could be a spoof, and it's hard to tell when you consider the kind of pronouncement Stephen Green made last month, the bit about how the members of the Paz do Senhor Amado cult can connect devices in lieu of USB is undeniably very funny. Apparently, Bluetooth is fine because "Blue was the colour of the eyes of our saviour Jesus Christ"....

Bonfire (night) on the Insanities...

For the elite upper quartile of the country's universities, those likely to set their tuition fees close to the Government's £9,000 cap, this week's announcement is close to what they've been long been arguing for, since if students are prepared to pay, then those institutions will be better off. However, the remainder face an uncertain future as cuts in block grants means that they will lose the equivalent of over £7,000 a year for each undergraduate, so even setting fees at £6,000 equates to a large loss of income.

Ministers have claimed that universities could compensate by reducing costs and deliver two-year degrees, but assuming that the credit value required for certification stays the same, then the number of course weeks will need to be increased from their present level by around 50% each year. This leads to the inevitable questions (well they are to me as I've spent many years writing, running and delivering HE programmes) :

• When are lecturers working within this educational model supposed to prepare for their teaching (and escalating student expenditure will surely be accompanied by an attendant growths in expectations of quality)?
• When are they supposed to engage with any form of scholarly activity?
• When are they supposed to set and mark assessments?

Unless I'm missing something, in this scenario, either staffing numbers and the attendant costs must go up, or quality inevitably goes down. Have they just not thought this through, or have the lunatics finally taken over the asylum?