University: Does it Really Need to Take Four Years?

Having attended the last scheduled class of my degree, I went to see the parties vying for seats in next month's election as their representatives battled it out over education policy at a hustings organised by USSA and NUS Scotland last night.  Although this "Question Time" didn't feature much of the gladiatorial mud-slinging of the BBC's version, the quality of content was high and raised some interesting issues.  What I was most heartened to hear was the growing consensus that the Scottish model of university education - essentially 4 years of scratching one's arse - has ample room for reform, with the potential to make HE study more cost-effective, more attractive to students and, well, a lot less slow.  With the budget not getting any bigger and everyone but the Conservatives ruling out fees, something's got to give if we want to deliver the same - let alone better - for less.  Necessity is the mother of invention and thankfully there's room to innovate within the Scottish HE sector.

The fact of the matter is that for most degrees, four years is an excruciatingly drawn-out time-scale given the level of content.  The fact that our compatriots south of the border manage to get it done in 3 years in fairly strong evidence of this.  It's true that A-levels tend to be more specialised and provide a greater depth of knowledge compared to the breadth of learning in the Scottish Higher system meaning English, Welsh and Northern Irish students bring a greater understanding of a smaller number of subjects when they start out at university.  Yet there are plenty of Scottish students that go to England for their degree and manage to get by just fine.  Furthermore, for a great many students, nothing of what they learn at university is a direct follow-on from their high school syllabus; you don't need Advanced Higher economics or business studies to make it at business school, generally a solid grasp of maths and English is the only essential prerequisite (besides a fistful of UCAS points).  Science and engineering requires a bit more in that you need some science Highers under your belt, yet there's a growing number of students with Advanced Highers that either go straight into second year of a degree, or spend much of first year repeating subjects they've already mastered.

So we could cut it down to three years in most subjects without having to change much at all.  There's ample space for increasing the workload in the first half of a degree course to make it equivalent to the overload that students are subjected to in the latter half.  I can honestly say that the most intense year of learning I've had was 5th year of school when I was taking five Highers.  If we can handle it at 16, why not at university?  Squeezing more teaching into less time won't reduce the cost of teaching (though it's unlikely to increase it either).  What it will do however, is reduce the student support requirements.  With most students taking on debt to cover living costs, the less time spent at university the better.  And with less years to fund, the government could increase annual student support without spending any more per student over the lifetime of a degree.

But why stop at three years?  There are universities in England experimenting with two year degrees.  For many this may sound like a step too far, but hear me out.  At Strathclyde, we have two 12-week semesters each year.  Of those 12 weeks, most classes run for 10 of them.  For 32 weeks of the year, besides the time studying for and sitting exams, students are at a loose end.  This in itself is a problem.  It's explicitly assumed within the Scottish model of student support that we'll all find full-time work for the 4 months of summer, which was unrealistic even before the economy took a nose dive.  In reality, many students are left to scrape by during vacations, unable to find steady work and without access to student loans or other benefits.  Everyone else seems to be able to cope with 5 weeks holiday a year and they have proper jobs.  The trouble is that the academic calendar that most universities still adhere to is archaic - a relic of the bad old days when university was for a privileged elite who presumably had grouse to go and shoot or a grand tour of Europe lined up.  Why not, instead of putting us all out to pasture for extended periods throughout the year, we have three 12-week trimesters with a little bit more squeezed into each one?

There are two fairly obvious objections to all this.  Firstly, there are some degrees that just need more time.  As a former chemistry student, I understand this - hours spent in labs and lots more staff contact time than those of us who just have to read books.  If that's the case, then we just make those degrees longer.  Does that mean a science or engineering degree will be seen as more prestigious, worth more than the business or humanities equivalent?  Probably, but then it is already if we're to be honest here.  At the end of the day, whether they're of equal worth or not, a BA is different from a BSc and has different teaching requirements.  I'm fine with that.

The second objection goes something like this: university is about more than what you learn in the class room, all that extra time allows students to grow as individuals through extra-curricular activities and "broadening their horizons".  The reality is, that's what some students get, and they're usually the ones with fairly broad horizons already.  For many students, their main extra-curricular activity is working for 30 hours a week so that they can pay the rent, whilst their better-off peers get to jolly around whilst filling their CV with things that will help them get the best graduate jobs.  We can justify state-funded HE on the grounds that it provides a social benefit to society, but it also confers a considerable social benefit to those students who really don't need any extra help to get ahead in life.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for the end of students' unions and sports teams - they are at the core of campus life.  But they are non-academic luxuries that we afford to those already lucky enough to be at university and that are unavailable to those who are not. Going back to my school days again, I managed to find room for a full day of lessons, a part-time job, student politics, girlfriends, sports, music and a healthy level of partying.  As students, we don't need endless hours of free time to develop as individuals any more than anyone else in society does.

Scotland needs a higher number of highly-educated people if it is to remain competitive at the global level.  If we want to keep education free whilst making it fairer, we need to fundamentally reform the way we deliver it.  Flexible delivery and technological innovation also have a key role to play (couldn't they just post the lectures on YouTube, after all?), but shortening the time it takes to get a degree could massively improve on the cost of supporting our students through their studies and reduce the barriers to those from less well-off backgrounds who are currently receiving a disservice under the current model.  If you do want to go off and shoot grouse or tour Europe - take a gap year.

The views expressed in this blog are solely my own and are in no way intended to reflect the views or policies of the University of Strathcyde Students' Association.

Royalty and Equality: A Contradiction in Terms

Monarchy and equality are two terms that are seldom found together.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that they are, by definition, mutually exclusive.  Not according to Nick Clegg it would seem, who has suggested that Prince William’s as-yet-unborn first daughter should enjoy equal (divine) rights as her equally hypothetical brother, so long as she’s born before he is.  Why the need for such a constitutional reform?  As Mr. Clegg explains:

"My own personal view is that in this day and age the idea that only a man should ascend to the throne I think would strike most people as a little old-fashioned."

I agree with Nick (again).  This is the man who was quite unfairly lambasted in the media recently for suggesting that internships and work-experience placements should be awarded on merit and not by virtue of familial connections.  The reason for the media’s distain?  He himself had benefited from daddy’s connections in securing his first job.  In other words, he got the job because of who his father was.  After all, how could anyone who’s been the beneficiary of an unjust system ever be able to seek to reform that system so as to prevent future injustice?  Perhaps then, given that his background means he can’t take a stand against nepotism, his only hope now is to ensure that such nepotism is at least gender-neutral.

My problem is this: how can anyone keep a straight face whilst arguing that the laws of royal secession with regard to gender are unfair “in this day and age”, without considering the whole rotten system of monarchy as being equally unjust and fundamentally discriminatory?  Let’s be clear about this.  William and Kate’s first-born may or may not be a girl.  But regardless of what the happy couple find between their new child’s legs, we can be assured of certain other factors in advance.  The child will be called Windsor.  That means, whether it’s a boy or a girl, the monarch-in-waiting will be white, English and Protestant.  The child will be preordained as the future head of a developed, liberal democratic state by virtue of nothing other than their DNA.  That strikes me as a little old-fashioned.

Forget gender – our system of monarchy is racist.  If you accept that racial differences are arbitrary, the product of nothing more than the superficial and meaningless nuances of genetics, then you should accept that your genes should never be a deciding factor when it comes to gaining employment.  Who your parents are should never be acceptable as the necessary - and indeed the only - qualification to hold any position, let alone the position of Head of State.  We can make exceptions for jobs in a family business, I’ll accept, but not when that family business enjoys the public subsidies and legal privileges that are afforded to Windsor and Sons plc.

Then there’s the small matter of religion.  I don’t care which God (if any) you suppose that you have a special and spiritual relationship with.  And whilst I am a little concerned by those who believe that they are afforded preferential treatment by their imagined creator on the grounds of who their parents were, I’m not going to stand in their way, so long as they stay out of mine.  The problem with the royal family is that they don’t.  Not only do they live their life of obscene wealth and privilege at the expense of you and I, but their constitutional status and religious leanings stand in the way of any British Catholic (with the audacity to win the popular support of the people in a free and fair election) from holding the post of Prime Minister.  Unless of course they want to marry one of those awful papists, in which case they can forget about their claim the sizeable haul of family silver and the crown of the United Kingdom.

My only hope is that Clegg’s latest suggestion is a clever attempt to draw attention to the far-greater obscenity of monarchy that the mere preference for boys over girls.  He is, after all, an atheist with a Catholic wife. 

The next step in all this will involve having to ‘consult’ with the rest of the Commonwealth about a move towards equal divine rights for princesses.  Might I suggest that we should be asking countries such as Cameroon, Ghana and Kenya to address such things as the widespread use of female genital mutilation within their borders, before seeking their blessings on whether or not a woman should get first dibs over her wee brother about who gets their face on some stamps?

Gender inequality is still, unfortunately, a serious and pressing problem in our world.  Let’s deal with it where it matters most first.  The monarchy, no matter what comes of this suggested reform, will always be exclusionary, discriminatory and morally indefensible.  Until the Queen or one of her brood is elected by the people of this country, they might as well put one of the corgis on the throne.

Come on, lets AV it!

I make no apologies for the fact that electoral reform excites me.  I may be in the minority, but after four years studying politics and economics (the latter having more to say about voting than people might suspect), I'm following the Alternative Vote (AV) referendum campaigns with a combination of intrigue and sheer, unbridled terror.

I agree with Nick (sometimes)

Poor old Clegg is amassing quite a collection of political ghosts which, less than a year into office, are haunting him constantly.  First there was the NUS pledge, the stuff about not raising VAT and most of the rest of the 2010 LibDem manifesto.  Now it's his previous comments about the alternative voting system being a "miserable little compromise".  Like him, I favour a move to system of proportional representation (PR), which AV isn't.  Like him, I think this is a miserable little compromise.  But my point is this: if you favour PR, then you implicitly accept the politics of compromise - coalitions are a lot more likely when 40% of the vote no longer delivers a massive parliamentary majority.  Secondly, whilst not being PR, AV does address some of the main arguments against First Past The Post (FPTP), namely that most votes are essentially 'wasted' and that many MPs lack a strong mandate.  Living in the East End of Glasgow, I have more chance of getting struck by lightning on my way to the polling station than my vote for anyone other than Labour (or occassionally the SNP) meaning anything at all.  That means I'm more likely to stay at home, and that is bad for the legitimacy of the whole rotten system, Willy Bain's mandate aside.

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3...

Voting under AV is not complicated.  It's blindingly simple.  If you are capable of ever making a decision based on your preference for one thing over another, and are able to indicate this preference to another human being through the medium of numbers then trust me, you've got this cracked.  There will be instructions on the ballot paper and the nice people at the polling station will explain it to you.  If you cannot read, follow basic verbal instructions or use a pencil to jot down some numbers, you might end up spoiling your ballot and not getting your vote counted.  In which case, good: you are clearly a moron and you shouldn't be voting anyway.  Does that sound a bit harsh?  Well, if you accept that we restrict the right to vote to people over the age of 18 for reasons such as "they need to understand exactly what it is that they're doing", then AV gives us an extra safeguard in that respect.  In the unlikely event that you can't carry out a task that most 5 year olds could, perhaps its best that you steer clear of the ballot box for now.

Decisions, decisions...

On a more serious note, preferences are really important.  They form the foundation of politics and economics.  In the case of economics, it tends to be fairly simple.  Prefer Pepsi to Coke?  Buy Pepsi, don't buy Coke.  Prefer beer to whisky but like the odd dram now and again?  Buy mostly beer, but take a wee nip when you're in the mood.  Every day, people make lots of decisions, informed by their preferences, and vote with their wallets.  When it comes to politics however, things get a bit more complicated.  You might want lower taxes but more spending on the NHS.  You might want either massive investment in education so your kids get the best or, failing that, you'd prefer no state education at all so that you can pay less tax and spend what you save of private schooling.  Trying to reconcile the preferences of millions of people into a coherent programme for government is not easy.  It's impossible in fact, there will always be winners and losers.  Hence Churchill's famous quip about democracy seeming the worst system of government until you look at the alternatives.  You'll never be able to please both the Labour man from Lanark and the Conservative from Canterbury, but hopefully they'll agree on a system to decide who gets what, which is where democracy comes in.  

Politics isn't black and white

Now, you may be asking, what does AV have to do with all this?  Well, you might not get to express your preferences on each decision in parliament, or even about individual areas of policy, but you get your preferences considered between candidates and parties.  Take this hypothetical scenario.  There are three parties in your constituency, lets call them "black", "grey" and "white".  40% of people support the black party, 35% support the white party, with the grey party picking up the remaining 25%.  Under FPTP, black wins.  That's fair, right?  They're the most popular party after all.  The policies of the other two were clearly not good enough, or they would have won.  But politics is rarely a black and white choice.  What if the grey party is of a slightly lighter shade, with their policies being more similar, on balance, to those of the white party?  What if everyone who voted for grey and white, despite preferring one to the other, would rather have either of those parties over the black party?  This is where those all important preferences come in.  It's clear that the grey party is not the most popular, so we eliminate them.  Rather than casting their voters aside however, we go back and ask them again, this time limiting their choice to black or white.  It turns out they'd all rather have white to black, so their votes get transferred.  White wins, 60 to 40.  

What kind of party would you like?

Is this fairer?  Yes, it is - slightly.  Lets return to an earlier example and elaborate it.  Imagine that you're holding a party for nine friends, and you can either buy a bottle of whisky, a box of wine or a case of beer.  So you ask them what they want.  four of them love whisky.  Of the remaining five, three love wine and two love beer, but all five would drink anything other than whisky as they can't stand the stuff.  You begin by asking for a show of hands and whisky comes out the winner.  "Wait a minute", comes the cry from the others, "we all hate whisky".  After a quick discussion between themselves, they return with a suggestion: "forget the beer, we'd all rather have wine over whisky".  Do you grant them their wish?  Well it depends, would you rather have 4 really happy people and 5 really miserable people at your party? Or 3 really happy people, two quite happy people and the four whisky drinkers who may or may not like wine?  By counting second preferences, you've ensured that there's at least one less miserable sod at your party. "That's ridiculous!", I hear you cry, "why not buy half a bottle of whisky, a couple of bottles of wine and a six-pack of beers and make everyone happy?".  You're absolutely right, which is why I'd take PR any day.  Unfortunately it's not on the table, but that won't stop me from making an analogy out of it.  

A Process of Elimination

Let's imagine for a moment  that PR is not an option at this referendum because it's the least popular choice compared to AV and FPTP (I don't believe this for a second.  Nor, I suspect, does David Cameron, but stick with me on this).  As such, PR has been 'eliminated' from the referendum already.  Does that mean that I, and other supporters of PR, should be excluded from voting on AV or FPTP because no-one else wants our preferred system?  Of course it doesn't.  We can't get our first choice, but we can express a preference for one of the other two.  To give a real world example, look at the French Presidential elections, where multiple rounds of voting are used.  After each round, the candidate coming last is eliminated and people return to the ballot box.  The process continues until someone gets over 50%, by nothing more sinister than a simple process of elimination.  That's pretty much how AV works, only you save on the hassle of having multiple elections by gathering the second round votes of the eliminated candidates at the same time as the first.  I'll admit that in this case, AV is more appealing than the French system on the grounds of what it would cost. in each constituency with several candidates. 

The NO Campaign

There are some quite persuasive arguments against AV out there.  Yet strangely, the NO campaign seem at pains to use them, instead resorting to the kind of childish gutter-politics that is normally the reserve of NUS conferences.  Whilst I wouldn't normally want to give them extra publicity, their case is so pathetic that anyone with half a brain will hopefully see through it.  First there was this:

Ignoring the fact the the £250million figure seems to have been plucked out of thin air and widely refuted, the principle of it is alarming.  Armed Forces or democracy.  Didn't you know you can't have both?  The only rational explanation I can think of is that the NO campaign got some great discount-rates from Fashista and Junta Communications Inc., what with them having lost that lucrative Mubarak account last month.  Then there was the heart-string plucking baby ad.  Steven Baxter of the New Statesman already has this one wrapped up here.  Parliament costs us about £500million a year.  The 2005 election cost £80million.  I'd like to think that we can still afford these types of luxuries, even if we can't have libraries any more.  And if we're spending this on making the decisions about how the rest of the £700billion of public money is distributed, I'd like to think that we can splash a bit extra on ensuring that we have the right voting system in place.

You B'stard

Then came last night's broadcast.  If you missed it, you can watch it (and hit 'dislike') here:

First we get Rik Mayall giving us his usual comedy, with some other laughable stuff thrown in.  He gives us a dumbed-down argument against coalition government, which, depending on your views, is a compelling case against PR.  Did I mention that AV is not PR?  Good.  Next up, it's back to the old horse-racing analogy, long-time favourite of those who support FPTP (its where it got its name, after all).  We see a neck-and-neck race between Labour and the Conservatives, with the LibDems a long way behind and the BNP bringing up the rear. Yet somehow, the LibDems win.  Let me be clear about this: it's bat-shit crazy.  Perhaps, if the leaders had 35% of the vote each, the LibDems had 30% and the BNP had 10% and perhaps, if the LibDems were the second preference of all the BNP voters (reconsider that possibility for a moment), then yes, the LibDems might have won it under AV.  But the way it's portrayed in the video is shamelessly misleading.  Finally, we get shown how teachers are useless and children are stupid.  This goes a long way towards explaining why the former are teachers and why the latter are not allowed to vote.  A case for better schools perhaps, but not against AV.  

But what about all the extremists?

Let me return to the BNP for a moment, as they seem to feature heavily in arguments against AV and indeed PR.  In the case of PR, it's the fact that they might win seats.  In which case, so be it.  Isn't that how elections are supposed to work, votes = seats?  If the BNP are so awful, change the law to prevent them from standing or better still, just don't vote for them, but don't try and rig the voting system to their disadvantage.  The same argument applies to everyone who votes Green, UKIP, SSP or Monster Raving Loony Party.  Just because you have the audacity to hold a less popular view, doesn't mean your vote counts for less.  On the subject of AV however, the argument is perhaps a little stronger at first glance.  The NO campaign's objection is that it's the second preferences of the 5% or so who support the BNP that 'decide' the outcome of the election.  Well, yes and no.  If their second preference goes to one of the mainstream, front-runner parties who are almost neck-and-neck, then yes, possibly.  But if you are so opposed to people voting for the BNP and would rather they had voted for a 'normal' party, then in a way, you've got your wish, because now they have.  Bear in mind that people often vote BNP in protest.  They might be unhappy with levels of immigration but not necessarily card-carrying fascists; they know the BNP won't win, but vote for them anyway to rattle the establishment.  If, on the other hand, they are died-in-the wool Neo-Nazis, then it's highly unlikely they'll give anyone mainstream a second preference, bearing in mind that AV doesn't require you to write anything more than a "1" if you don't want to.  So whilst there is an outside chance that your local skinhead might get the casting vote, he can't chose the BNP.  His second preference only decides the outcome if there are another two parties who are virtually tied by virtue of everyone else having voted for one of them, and his second preference is enough to tip one of them over the 50% mark.  Anyone who has watched an AV election count in progress will know that when things are really close, it's only when the 3rd place candidate is eliminated that someone makes it over 50%.  When things aren't so close, the person who had the most votes after the first round tends to also have the most votes at the end by virtue of being the most popular candidate.

Why You Should Vote YES

I'll admit, there's a little part of me that says to hell with AV because it's not PR.  The thinking is that if you accept AV now, the miserable little compromise, then you won't get a say on PR for another generation.  Referenda are few and far between in the UK, after all.  But a NO vote can also be seen as tacit consent for the existing system.  Rejecting AV doesn't equate to accepting FPTP, but you can be sure as damnit that it'll get portrayed that way by those who find that the current system suits their political interests.  The sad fact is that both Labour and the Conservatives like FPTP because it perpetuates the political pendulum that has seen them swap power backwards and forwards between themselves for the best part of a century.  Of course, things might be different when PR works in their favour, such as in the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh assembly, but their support for PR at Westminster would be like the proverbial turkeys voting YES in the referendum on winter festivals.  A change to AV is a step in the right direction, in that it shows that alternatives exist, that people want change, and that the electorate is clever enough to be trusted with a newfangled voting system that might just make things fairer.

Voting YES can have a real and positive impact on UK politics.  Firstly, safe seats will become a lot less safe.  This is particularly relevant to Scotland, where you could just about slap a red rosette on a turnip and watch it get elected in some constituencies.  Too many MPs are carried by a minority, with no real incentive to work hard for their constituents' support.  Secondly, it forces parties to seek wider support, instead of targeting all their resources and policies at the small number of floating voters in a handful of marginal constituencies.  With second, third and fourth preferences potentially all counting, parties and their candidates will have to engage with every voter to secure a win.  Having a more engaged electorate is better for democracy in and of itself.  But perhaps most importantly, it will give more people a voice in elections.  It's no coincidence that the safest seats tend to see the lowest turn-outs; voters just don't see how casting a vote for someone who can't win as being worth their while, and to a large extent they're right.  Either that, or they have to resort to tactical voting, by second-guessing what everyone else is going to do and choosing their second or third preference who has a shout.  AV removes the guess work and makes everyone more enfranchised.  It's good for the voter in that their vote has more chance of mattering, so they're more inclined to vote.  More people voting is better for democracy - I hold that truth to be self-evident.