Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
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In the world that used to be the idea was for countries to get a decent standard of living for all through ‘developnment’ and amenities like clean drinking water and all the basics at hand, and education was a public good. It had been proved by statistics that educating women raised the level of wellbeing for all and the GDP as well probably.
It is noticeable that NZ is not advancing in development, rather contracting – possibly through it’s habit of government contracting out! National I think it was, through one of their vile female MPs, cut out night school which encouraged the pursuit of knowledge and skills and wellbeing and social discourse throughout the community. Then university and higher education were waved as banners for those wanting to improve themselves and be well thought-of in the community, and help in NZ’s developing economy. The lure of higher paying jobs through tertiary degrees was waved like a carrot, provided students paid a proportion of their education costs themselves or borrowed the money. Then the free market and neolib came in and the good jobs started to go to overseas people, and businesses that would have employed this bright new talent closed down because they couln’t compete against the influx of businesses and competition from the overseas millions which trumped the thousands in NZ.
Then the government wanted to spend less on education so opened it up to paying students from overseas. Then it dropped the Humanities because it wasn’t a money-making proposition and there was no interest in people as such, more as units of earnings. Its minions in university administration were expected to earn profits on a square metre basis and the universities contracted out the student hostel system to profit-making entities with the charges for accommodation including a profit on constantly up-valued land and buildings caused by the housing inflation – that is a virus ultimately as deadly as coronavirus.
Now students can’t afford to go to uni. The ones that can afford it often are adept, along with their parents, at organising their income to the most satisfactory ends. The others run up student and likely credit-card debts and run themselves ragged, and are they able to get a steady, well-paid job and pay their university debt back? There has been improvement in student treatment with this government but have they been even-handed? And the poorer NZs at uni, relying on paid work for enough income to support themselves while they study laboriously, but getting a job possibly means competing with some foreign student who is in the same boat with a heavier weight of debt to repay. Life is made hard by those who pull the strings.
Now:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/first-up/audio/2018735632/students-feeling-the-squeeze-as-university-halls-put-prices-up
..Fees often go up annually, but Victoria University of Wellington is receiving the most backlash as some hall fees have increased by almost $4000. ..
“A few of my friends have had to pull out because they can’t afford it and then I’ve had a couple of other friends who were going to but they have decided they’re going to get a job so they can afford it, their StudyLink is only $235 a week and then per week to live in a hostel is $465.
“So there’s still $230 a week left to cover.”
It’s bums on seats @ Warbler or Shark or whatever,
And part of the problem is that the academic staff have become part of the precariat – with mortgages to pay, kids to raise, et al…..and not wishing to see themselves in a worse position they are now.
Personally, I can’t be fucked with any of it. One of the ressona is that the last ‘moderation’ of academic integrity I went through was more like a Mother’s Union or Paradise of the Knitting Needle.
Apparently now quite satisfactory for those that have plagiarised, or not even having written their own assignments, or even manipulated questions to make themselves look clever to gain a pass.
But the best thing for me is seeing how the genuine of those students are flourishing whilst watching how the others are simply part of the superficial mediocrity that is ‘lil ‘ole NuZull.
I remember a certain academic who gave out some strong medicine which got a student coughing so hard that he/she complained and the doctor was amputated. I think you understand the malady.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10456465
Oh yes – that.
I remember getting chastised after not giving students a high enough mark knowing they hadn’t actually written their own assignments, and having discovered others had stolen others’ work without reference – passing it off as their own, and still others who’d so manipulated the question (such that they hadn’t actually answered it) that were deemed to be ‘clever’.
But then – colleagues had mortgages to pay, reputations to preserve and bums to keep on seats so that redundancy wouldn’t loom. Thankfully the TEU knows what’s up and the good thing is I watch how the genuine folk are doing as compared with the imposters
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/410341/covid-19-coronavirus-travel-ban-students-urge-government-to-end-ban
It is unemphatic and is racist. They say apparently. But wherever it started, that country would be targeted.
It is a novel virus and seems to mutate a lot. If they are willing to go into isolation for a fortnight with each new Chinese or whoever from a country with strong virus links, and put up a substantial grant to cover medical costs then perhaps we could desist. I was interested in the argument that it is better to let a small flow in who have their educational bookings made, (are they being refunded by the colleges and universities involved? As that would be a fair thing in the circumstances). But the government has had a confab and decided to taihoa for now, and it is better to err on the cautious side. And can we have a moratorium for a month on calling out, discussing and obsessing on racism. Give and take for a month, let it ride FGS. Just a break please.
I didn’t actually engage front-on with the mainstream media’s obituary of Mike Moore. But from their promos I felt it a foul story which over-paved we the defeated, into our faces, while we still lived.
Chris Trotter isn’t willing to talk about the winners’ story. Why does this year’s election, like all the others, come before speaking our truth, that will boil over for the people. Chris recommended Labour not go into govt after the previous election, with great evidence we can see now! Forget this next 3-year-election: talk truth for the people. Talk about the Mike Moore obituary, Chris, to begin with. Sanders.
Problem is, that if Gnats get in the asylum doors have been left wide open. Their lot doesn’t go through the ordinary psych treatment, they can hide it with private treatment. And so it goes. Get in the bubble machine, get into power, and manipulate, manipulate, manipulate. In the meantime in the major part of our world there are people struggling and National government has no desire to face the reasons. Labour has a quick look to choose a supplicant FTTT and then closes the door for a break. Stick to the devil you know, we have others!
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