Liesbeth Corens

Als that Capybara is amazing and should become the site's mascot.

🥰 asking weird questions for other humans to respond imaginatively to? Yes please!

🤯 That's... impressive...

right??? 'everyone is fixed in their pre-determined places dictated by their parents' access to fancy or non-fancy education' should be a disqualifying take from a guy *running an institution of education & knowledge*.

So damn elitist and transactional.

Join us next week! We're really going for all the Fridays the 13th...

But hearing from Sam Geens about his fascinating social history and demography research will make it a lucky day!

FRI 13 March, 17:30 (UK), @ihr.bsky.social & on zoom -- register for the link: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

🙃 Somehow, those professional EDI-ers who build a career on making money off it and see EDI as just HR don't actually care? And so many who actually do care don't survive more than 5 years in that environment.

(also, so sorry to hear, sadly not surprised but nonetheless sad.)

(I mean, I do, because that's how many managers function, grabbing goodies and fancy perks without good cause, and they project that mentality on the rest of us. But nobody who asks for a couple of hundreds of pound to survive does that without good cause.)

It's so deeply invasive.

And a couple of hundreds of pounds won't register for the university and would make a huge difference for the student. I do not get why they're constantly acting like everyone will just grab money without good cause.

yup. That's their vocabulary, and that vocabulary severely limits what they think is worth saving and how they lobby. I so desperately need more imaginative people in those rooms.

Seriously, a government that's so scared of people who think and act together that it repeatedly intimidates a group of notorious *pacifists* does not fill me with hope.

Deeply appreciative of the unequivocal support of young members by the head though.

🤯

😩

(I realise I'm a broken record, but the very first think the current Principal did when he came in was destroying the hardship funds, and students had to occupy a building to claw some of that back. He's now used the levy to say he won't be able to do hardship funds. It's all so ideological)

omg, yes, I keep forgetting that part. Focused on banking though, so 🤷‍♀️

🙌 yes to your daughter smashing it!! May she smash it through all the bigotry this guy is displaying.

Somehow I have a feeling that never translated in actually supporting you properly and ensuring you remain part of that organisation's quota management...

(and as you say how much austerity has only amped up those pressures)

YES. I really loathe his putting ideological pretense that non-graduating is down to some individual innate abilities. He's running *Birmingham*, home of Cultural Studies, you'd think he'd have an inkling about all kinds of societal structures & pressures which shape people's maneuver room.

I read a really good report on the particular pressures on mature students last year and a big one was the fact that they are already likely to have the general financial and life obligations of an adult.

(And a lot of the support systems that might help with those things have just evaporated)

I failed (D) my English Higher three years in a row, including twice while at night school straight after leaving school, and got no others while at school, yet got a First Class Honours degree at 41.

So this guy quoted needs a reality check.

seriously, that phrase. It made me nearly punch through my screen. But at least he's transparent about how he thinks about universities and students.

(He doesn't think about staff in any of this, but he'd already made that abundantly clear.)

"Getting access to the student loan book"

I honestly do not get the Labour media strategy. You go to TikTok to get to Gen Z. But they refuse to actually appeal to Gen Z. Maybe have some policies that don't shit all over young people? Or, even lower bar: that *take into account* young people?

It'd be less embarrasing than whatever this is.

indeed. But clearly can't conceive of education beyond churning out young people to act as little radars for rich employers.

yup. I don't know where he keeps getting this blatantly wrong opinions from. How is he unaware of all the work around widening participation, mature students, etc.? What data does he have that people who aren't graduating aren't graduating b/c of pre-uni degrees and not economic pressures?

There I was the other day, tutoring a student for his MA dissertation, a student I first taught as an undergraduate in 1994, straight off an Access Course, who became a teacher, and is now the head of an International school in India.

“We are getting students without a single A-level or equivalent getting access to the student loan book,” Tickell said, adding: “We’re investing so much money in people who … are not really capable of graduating.”

(Academia isn't for everyone, let's value skills and abilities beyond the academic, and not force people who would succeed better in other spheres of knowledge onto more degrees. But the man clearly has no concern for the student in this calculation.) (+ obviously, A-Level isn't a mark of ability)

ah, for years we've been ringing the alarm bell that all the 'cost saving' measures which these VCs are pushing through are actually wildly elitist drives to destroy all the work of widening participation of the past few decades, and now he's just straight up declaring it himself.

Hate to be right.

Don't be fooled by the appearances! At first glance, these look like early printed books, but it is an ingenious chest of drawers. Has anyone seen this elsewhere?

Join us on Monday! Either come to Bloomsbury (which is *glorious* in Spring!) or zoom in. All welcome, just register to get the link.

Thanks! Kinda assumed it was along those lines, even if it might not be an articulated thought for many who are now reaching for their copy.