Nick Clegg: Universities to lower entrance requirements for poorer students only

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ents-only.html

Nick Clegg orders universities to lower entrance requirements - but only for poorer students

Nick Clegg, who was educated at Cambridge University, insists there is a bias in higher education.

Nick Clegg is to make an explosive attack on British universities as ‘instruments of social segregation’ as he orders them to stop taking so many middle-class students. The Deputy Prime Minister will this week insist that top institutions must ‘throw open their doors’ and lower their entrance requirements for the less well-off. It could mean top institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge, that usually ask for three As at A-level, accepting disadvantaged students with only ** and Cs.

Universities that want to charge tuition fees of £6,000 or more will be forced to sign up to ‘access agreements’, ensuring they admit more students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The move will prompt fears that bright pupils from good schools or middle-class homes could lose out on sought-after places. Cambridge University today revealed it is planning to charge students the maximum £9,000 in tuition fees from next year. Poorer students would be offered reductions of up to £3,000 per year, plus bursaries of up to £1,625.

Mr Clegg will on Thursday write to the Office of Fair Access – the body set up by Labour to police university admissions – setting out the new system. Institutions are expected to be allowed to draw up their own methods of broadening their intake. But critics fear teenagers from comprehensives will increasingly be given easier A-level offers than candidates from fee-paying schools. One headmaster suggested to the Times that universities that usually ask for three As at A-level from candidates could accept disadvantaged pupils with ** and Cs.

Another ridiculous policy that is going to be imposed by a group of left wing politicians who simply do not understand why the education system (or anything else for that matter) is such a disaster, the reason being for poorer students not doing as well is solely because all three main parties abolished the grammar schools in this country which greatly enchanced social mobility for those who were poorest meaning that if you were poor but clever, you could go to a grammar school free of charge.

The system we have now (incidently the system that the Soviet Union had and which East German parents abolished as soon as the Berlin wall fell and replaced it with the grammar system) is the comprehensive system which in reality means in order to get into a good school and recieve a good education you have to either go private or buy into the expensive catchment area of a good comprehensive - meaning the poorest get the worst deal.

The policy Mr Clegg is proposing is similar to communism when you think about it; in other words it does not matter how good you are for the job/placement but what social status you have/had/your parents have. The notion that 'everyone is equal' (except the ruling class who agree with me in private on grammar schools hence why they mostly send their own children to the two examples I gave you) is just like the notion that a binman should be paid what a brain surgeon is paid.

So yet again, a problem created by the political class being made worse by the political class. Why should private schooled, clever children pay for the mistakes of successive government after government who have failed at managing the state education system? they shouldn't.

Thoughts, should C/B students be given placements over A grade students?

[cocaine]

this a ******* joke, you strive to get the best grades you possibly can while someone in the lower income brackets could potentially take your place for coasting through a levels achieving two grades lower!?

[Hecktix]

******* IDIOTS. Just another example that this coalition have no ******* idea. Insult Labour all you want Dan, but even Labour wouldn't be stupid enough to go for a policy like this.

I've said it before and i'll say it again - whether someone goes to university should be based on their intelligence, not the size of their parents wallet.

[-:Undertaker:-]

******* IDIOTS. Just another example that this coalition have no ******* idea. Insult Labour all you want Dan, but even Labour wouldn't be stupid enough to go for a policy like this.

I've said it before and i'll say it again - whether someone goes to university should be based on their intelligence, not the size of their parents wallet.

But Labour produced the report recommending university fees' in the first place, along with Gordon Brown making attacks on this very issue. We also had David Miliband a few months ago suggesting that private companies should only pay their top employees x20 times as much as they pay their lowest. These people are all the same, the reason for this lays with the state school system - of which all three parties refuse to bring the grammar schools back because Nick Clegg does have a point, just he will not rectify the problem at the heart of it nor will Cameron or Miliband.

This is what you people want; 'equality' - enjoy it especially as you are now all having a taste of it yourselves.

[dbgtz]

But Labour produced the report recommending university fees' in the first place, along with Gordon Brown making attacks on this very issue. We also had David Miliband a few months ago suggesting that private companies should only pay their top employees x20 times as much as they pay their lowest. These people are all the same, the reason for this lays with the state school system - of which all three parties refuse to bring the grammar schools back because Nick Clegg does have a point, just he will not rectify the problem at the heart of it nor will Cameron or Miliband.

This is what you people want; 'equality' - enjoy it.

This isn't equality, it's them being ******s. To be quite honest, I don't actually think universities would follow this. I just don't understand what people don't get about "pay afterwards when you have a job" seriously.

[-:Undertaker:-]

This isn't equality, it's them being ******s. To be quite honest, I don't actually think universities would follow this. I just don't understand what people don't get about "pay afterwards when you have a job" seriously.

It isn't equality no because it doesn't apply to them as their children will not be affected by this, but in their strange world they do (would you believe) view policies such as this as 'equality' - the same reasons they gave for abolishing the grammar schools which created this very problem we have now.

[Hecktix]

But Labour produced the report recommending university fees' in the first place, along with Gordon Brown making attacks on this very issue. We also had David Miliband a few months ago suggesting that private companies should only pay their top employees x20 times as much as they pay their lowest. These people are all the same, the reason for this lays with the state school system - of which all three parties refuse to bring the grammar schools back because Nick Clegg does have a point, just he will not rectify the problem at the heart of it nor will Cameron or Miliband.

This is what you people want; 'equality' - enjoy it especially as you are now all having a taste of it yourselves.

Tuition fees are one thing, which in my opinion everyone can get used to and put up with - the Government have reasons for raising fees, I believe taking it out on future generations is the wrong thing to do however you can see the reasoning behind tuition fee rises. I agree that with any party in power tuition fees would have risen.

Giving poorer students lower entry requirements to get into university won't rectify this problem in anyway, everyone will still be able to afford to go to university with the loans system however this is just pure discrimination to encourage poorer people to go to University - it's a quick fix to a statistical problem of poorer students not getting into the top universities, when in reality making Universities take a quota of each class would be much more fair, for instance Cambridge & Oxford are two I know for sure have to accept a certain amount of students from state schools - this is certainly much fairer.

I didn't work my arse off to get the grades to get into my university to be joined by people who cruised here two grades lower because they are a little bit poorer. Then of course we have that lovely argument of what is poor. This just sums the coalition up altogether.

This, is something completely different

[Fez]

As someone from this 'poorer students' gap, I should be cheering for this as it puts me right upon Oxbridge's doorstep. I have the same expected grades that a middle class or upper class boy at my ability would have, yet I would be put first. I should be happy, I should be selfish - but it's not how we make progress. I'm no socialist, I do lean capitalist when it comes to my values, but I do not feel I would earn or deserve this as an individual. You can preach multiculturalism has failed all you want Cameron, but policies like this just hammer home why it's failed and why the class divide is as big, and will grow bigger, as it has ever been.

The VAT raise butchered the working class.
The rise in tuition fees and this policy butchered the middle class.

I actually can't think of one instance where the government has hurt the upper classes harder. Higher taxes, yes, but the class divides you could argue fuel aggressive competitor-ship between employers and employees. It means we have employees striving to learn and be educated and to be all amazing to work hard, and we have employers who are expecting people to work very hard to get as much money as possible. Higher taxes for the rich means that class divide comes down, but not in the right area.

Oh and we also have that giant elephant of the European Union sitting in the corner sucking its thumb while the Euro quietly dies and the European economy collapses in on itself.

What a lovely, spineless government we have in power.

EDIT: Thoughts, should C/B students be given placements over A grade students?

No. Academic ability over anything else regardless of background, race or beliefs.

[Catzsy]

But Labour produced the report recommending university fees' in the first place, along with Gordon Brown making attacks on this very issue. We also had David Miliband a few months ago suggesting that private companies should only pay their top employees x20 times as much as they pay their lowest. These people are all the same, the reason for this lays with the state school system - of which all three parties refuse to bring the grammar schools back because Nick Clegg does have a point, just he will not rectify the problem at the heart of it nor will Cameron or Miliband.

This is what you people want; 'equality' - enjoy it especially as you are now all having a taste of it yourselves.

I don't think any of us expect to lower standards under the banner of equality. Help with fees is all we ask for for the less advantaged students who match the full criteria for entrance to the universities. If anything that is unequal.

[Fez]

"No. Academic ability over anything else regardless of background, race or beliefs."

Would like to add perhaps B grade students should be given some leverage if they are disabled, not physically but in some sense have something that they've massively conquered. Background may have some exceptions if they come from literal poverty. BBB or BBC at the very least in their A levels.