27.04.1995

Crisis in higher education

LUTON communists are campaigning against the low standards of education provided by the university here. When the government abolished the difference, in name, between polytechnics and universities, it did not abolish the difference in funding.

Luton University lacks finance, and as a result, persistently comes at or near the bottom of all the university tables. Over the last 25 years communists in Luton campaigned for a “university of the people”, which would serve the town at all levels of further and higher education. However the management’s only concern is to run the institution as a pseudo-business, instead of for the purpose of education.

Although Luton is the focus of our attention, the same is true of almost all the polytechnics, where it is not uncommon to have 150 students at a lecture. The only criterion is the cutting of costs.

We have the same situation in universities as in schools. Good education for the elite and bad for the mass. We need the end of the two-tier university system to provide quality education for all. Teachers need to be organised in one union to fight for this alongside students, whose grants face obliteration, depriving many of even the possibility of further education.

Tom May