Some are more equal than others...

I'm currently in Westminster, London (at the Institute of Directors), where just down the road our PM has today announced that he wants to end the 300-year-old law of royal succession which gives the eldest male child (if there is one) the right to become Monarch of the Realm.

Well, much as I agree with ridding society of unjust discrimination and antiquarian irrelevances, the leader of a government which introduced the £9,000 a year tuition fees that will probably exclude the poor from the Establishment for at least a generation, should surely be targeting something else if his often-stated claims to desire "social mobility" are to be taken seriously?

That the currently underprivileged may now have no way to lift themselves out of their deprivation for decades, it's not in any way reassuring to be told that our country's leader is working hard towards making sure that the as-yet-unborn offspring of our most pampered couple can enter the world knowing that its gender won't prevent it becoming the next unelected Head of State.

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?