On February 1st, a building owned by Glasgow University was occupied in protest against attempts to model the university on a business, in solidarity with the wider student movement against the rise in tuition fees and privatisation of higher education. Yesterday, the Free Hetherington celebrated
The university with the UK's highest proportion of poorer students is being assaulted by its own administration. All subject areas will be affected but Arts and Humanities are being decimated. Contrary to the Vice-Chancellor's claims, this was done without a full consultation
Luke Cooper responds to Jonathan Moses' article on the Black Bloc. He argues that the group's "aesthetic wars" can only be reactionary in nature, not liberating.
At a Cambridge conference on the Higher Education reforms, leading researchers from universities across the UK were each asked to give a seven minute talk on why the Arts and Humanities matter. Now their talks are available on video.
Fred Halliday (1946-2010), openDemocracy author and Director-Designate of the LSE Middle East Centre, 2006-2008, did not want the LSE to accept a £1.5m grant. He wrote this memo to the University's governing body in October 2009 to try to convince them to give up the money.
We may be seeing a new wave of university occupations in the run up to the big TUC march against cuts on March 26th.
Following a national day of action
The Coalition’s plans for higher education rest upon an anachronistic view of learning, which separates the 'practical' sciences from the humanities, viewed as a financial drain with no earthly use. Chris Parton looks to emerging interdisciplinary and conscilient fields for a way forward.
