23 Mar 2011

University staff in 'orgy of self-congratulation and cowardice'


Just saw this, little out of date but in Con Dem Britain, its screw the majority so a minority can enjoy the spoils

Jonathan Silvertown says:
December 5, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Dear UCL Occupiers,
I am a Professor at the Open University. A week ago last Thursday (Nov 25th) I sat down to dinner in the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane with 1,200 other university staff to celebrate the achievements of higher education during the last year. My university and yours both went home with awards, but I am ashamed of what happened that night. David Willets, Minister for Higher Education gave an address in which he made the wholesale destruction of higher education sound like a minor inconvenience that, with his help, we would all get over. Earlier the same day he had announced the cancellation of Aim Higher, a scheme that widens access to universities. Did Willets’ speech have Vice Chancellors, Professors and senior administrators choking on their canapes, jumping on the tables and howling him down? On the contrary, he was met with polite applause and left the podium smiling. Most of us in that room paid no university fees at all to obtain our degrees and many enjoyed maintenance grants (not loans) too. Everyone was enjoying a dinner that cost £200 a head. No one said a word out loud about the theft of affordable higher education from your generation and those to come. Not even me. So, I have made a donation to your cause equivalent to the price of a seat at that disgraceful orgy of self-congratulation and cowardice. Anyone else who was there and supports you (and I am sure that there were many others) should do the same.

MORE HERE

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