On Grayling’s New College of the Humanities
Anthony Grayling’s plans to launch an elite ‘New College of the Humanities’ has caused controversy, partly because the sticker price is £ 18 000 per year, rather than the UK limit of £ 9 000 for state universities. But elite educations are defensible, and should be expected to cost more than the average.
Remedial teaching at universities
Can universities do anything to bring students up to a tertiary standard without compromising on intellectual standards, and – more crucially – is doing so their job at all? Because as much as national government might appreciate the fact that universities have a social conscience, the fact remains that by the time students get to university, much of the harm has already been done.
Elitism and the university
What are the goals of university educations, and therefore the point of universities existing at all? There is certainly more than one, but alongside goals such as social transformation, one of those goals is surely academic excellence – the sort that allows or encourages the best research, often informing the best policy, or the most creative innovation.
Religious education in South African schools
We can have little control over what children are taught in their homes, but ideology taught as objectivity has no place in public education. After all, schooling is meant to make one smarter, rather than to transmit the crippling notion that there is only one route to human flourishing.
Burning the closet
The burning of The Closet makes at least one thing clear: Being a student at a top university in South Africa seems to offer no guarantee of enlightened attitudes, or an ability to see outside of the closet of your own prejudices.
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