There is a debate raging right now at BBC as to whether UK universities should be allowed to raise their fees as they please, which could mean fees of up to 20K pounds for some students (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7946912.stm).
Most of the posters seem to concentrate on the monetary value provided by university education. The argument goes like this: If I spend 3-4-5 years in University, I lose the 15K per year I would have made as an apprentice/clerk/etc. When I finally get my degree I should, over the course of a lifetime, ear earn more than I would without having the degree.
In places like the U.S. things look almost the same; Parents set up college funds for the children, hoping that when their child graduates it will end up having a better position under the sun than they did. In fact, most Americans don't think that it's even possible to lead a middle class life without having a degree.
In developing nations like china and India, one can witness massive shifts of students populations depending on the current market trend.
In the context above some degrees are deemed useless; Psychology, sociology, media studies/journalism etc. have such a low return on investment that, if you follow this line of reasoning, it's not worth studying at all; Better flip burgers (see this for more http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article2403006.ece)
So, bottom line is, people see universities as very expensive trade schools. You get training in something, you then sell it on the free market to the highest bidder. As with most things these days, we socialise risk (“getting the degree”) and privatise profits (“slaving endless hours for your boss”).
We are now trying to make the deal ever worse; We ask students to pay for their future enslavement out of their own pockets.
Tuesday 17 March 2009
Saturday 14 March 2009
Alternative Tech Proposals
Truly thought provoking articles on Alternative Production: [edit - link was broken]
Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles
Seeds Sprouting in the Rubble
Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles
Seeds Sprouting in the Rubble
Friday 13 March 2009
Castoriadis
Here is a quote from The Imaginary Institution of Society; It has to be one of the most beautiful passages I've ever read.
I desire and I feel the need to live in a society other than the one surrounding me. Like most people, I can live in this one and adapt to it - at any rate, I do live in it. However critically I may try to look at myself, neither my capacity for adaptation, nor my assimilation of reality seems to me to be inferior to the sociological average. I am not asking for immortality, ubiquity or omniscience. I am not asking society to 'give me happiness'; I know that this is not a ration that can be handed out by City Hall or my neighbourhood Workers' Council and that, if this thing exists, I have to make it for myself, tailored to my own needs, as this has happened to me already and as this will probably happen to me again. In life, however, as it comes to me and to others, I run up against a lot of unacceptable things; I say that they are not inevitable and that they stem from the organisation of society. I desire, and I ask, just of all that my work be meaningful, that I may approve what it is used for and the way in which it is done, that it allow me genuinely to expend myself, to make use of my faculties and at the same time to enrich and develop myself. And I say that this is possible, with a different organisation of society, possible for me and for every- one. I say that it would already be a basic change in this direction if I were allowed to decide, together with everyone else, what I had to do and, with my fellow workers, how to do it.
I should like, together with everyone else, to know what is going on in society, to control the extent and the quality of the information I receive. I ask to be able to participate directly in all the social decisions that may affect my existence, or the general course of the world in which I live. I do not accept the fact that my lot is decided. day after day, by people whose projects are hostile to me or simply unknown to me, and for whom we, that is I and everyone else, are only numbers in a general plan or pawns on a chess board, and that. ultimately, my life and my death are in the hands of people whom I know to be, necessarily, blind.
I know perfectly well that realising another social organisation, and the life it would imply. would by no means be simple, that difficult problems would arise at every step. But I prefer contending with real problems rather than with the consequences of de Gaulle's delirium, Johnson's schemes or Khrushchev's intrigues. Even if I and the others should fail along this path, I prefer failure in a meaningful attempt to a state that falls short of either failure or non-failure, and which is merely ridiculous.
I wish to be able to meet the other person as a being like myself and yet absolutely different, not like a number or a frog perched on another level (higher or lower, it matters little) of the hierarchy of revenues and powers. I wish to see the other. and for the other to see me. as another human being. I want our relationships to be something other than a field for the expression of aggressively, our competition to remain within the limits of play, our conflicts - to the extent that they cannot be resolved or overcome - to concern real problems and real stakes, carrying with them the least amount of unconsciousness possible, and that they be as lightly loaded as possible with the imaginary. I want the other to be free, for my freedom begins where the other's freedom begins, and, all alone, I can at best be merely 'virtuous in misfortune'.
I do not count on people changing into angels, nor on their souls becoming as pure as mountain lakes - which, moreover, I have always found deeply boring. But I know how much present culture aggravates and exasperates their difficulty to be and to be with others, and I see that it multiplies to infinity the obstacles placed in the way of their freedom.
I know, of course, that this desire cannot be realised today; nor even were the revolution to take place tomorrow, could it be fully realised in my lifetime. I know that one day people will live, for whom the problems that cause us the most anguish today will no longer even exist. This is my fate, which I have to assume and which I do assume.
But this cannot reduce me to despair or to catatonic ruminations.
Possessing this desire, which indeed is mine, I can only work to realise it. And already in the choice of my main interest in life, in the work I devote to it, which for me is meaningful (even when l encounter, and accept, partial failure, delays, detours and tasks that have no sense in themselves), in the participation in a group of revolutionaries which is attempting to go beyond the reifed and alienated relations of current society - I am in a position partially to realise this desire. If I had been born in a communist society, would happiness have been easier to attain - I really do not know, and at any rate can do nothing about it.
I am not, under this pretext, going to spend my free time watching television or reading detective novels.
I desire and I feel the need to live in a society other than the one surrounding me. Like most people, I can live in this one and adapt to it - at any rate, I do live in it. However critically I may try to look at myself, neither my capacity for adaptation, nor my assimilation of reality seems to me to be inferior to the sociological average. I am not asking for immortality, ubiquity or omniscience. I am not asking society to 'give me happiness'; I know that this is not a ration that can be handed out by City Hall or my neighbourhood Workers' Council and that, if this thing exists, I have to make it for myself, tailored to my own needs, as this has happened to me already and as this will probably happen to me again. In life, however, as it comes to me and to others, I run up against a lot of unacceptable things; I say that they are not inevitable and that they stem from the organisation of society. I desire, and I ask, just of all that my work be meaningful, that I may approve what it is used for and the way in which it is done, that it allow me genuinely to expend myself, to make use of my faculties and at the same time to enrich and develop myself. And I say that this is possible, with a different organisation of society, possible for me and for every- one. I say that it would already be a basic change in this direction if I were allowed to decide, together with everyone else, what I had to do and, with my fellow workers, how to do it.
I should like, together with everyone else, to know what is going on in society, to control the extent and the quality of the information I receive. I ask to be able to participate directly in all the social decisions that may affect my existence, or the general course of the world in which I live. I do not accept the fact that my lot is decided. day after day, by people whose projects are hostile to me or simply unknown to me, and for whom we, that is I and everyone else, are only numbers in a general plan or pawns on a chess board, and that. ultimately, my life and my death are in the hands of people whom I know to be, necessarily, blind.
I know perfectly well that realising another social organisation, and the life it would imply. would by no means be simple, that difficult problems would arise at every step. But I prefer contending with real problems rather than with the consequences of de Gaulle's delirium, Johnson's schemes or Khrushchev's intrigues. Even if I and the others should fail along this path, I prefer failure in a meaningful attempt to a state that falls short of either failure or non-failure, and which is merely ridiculous.
I wish to be able to meet the other person as a being like myself and yet absolutely different, not like a number or a frog perched on another level (higher or lower, it matters little) of the hierarchy of revenues and powers. I wish to see the other. and for the other to see me. as another human being. I want our relationships to be something other than a field for the expression of aggressively, our competition to remain within the limits of play, our conflicts - to the extent that they cannot be resolved or overcome - to concern real problems and real stakes, carrying with them the least amount of unconsciousness possible, and that they be as lightly loaded as possible with the imaginary. I want the other to be free, for my freedom begins where the other's freedom begins, and, all alone, I can at best be merely 'virtuous in misfortune'.
I do not count on people changing into angels, nor on their souls becoming as pure as mountain lakes - which, moreover, I have always found deeply boring. But I know how much present culture aggravates and exasperates their difficulty to be and to be with others, and I see that it multiplies to infinity the obstacles placed in the way of their freedom.
I know, of course, that this desire cannot be realised today; nor even were the revolution to take place tomorrow, could it be fully realised in my lifetime. I know that one day people will live, for whom the problems that cause us the most anguish today will no longer even exist. This is my fate, which I have to assume and which I do assume.
But this cannot reduce me to despair or to catatonic ruminations.
Possessing this desire, which indeed is mine, I can only work to realise it. And already in the choice of my main interest in life, in the work I devote to it, which for me is meaningful (even when l encounter, and accept, partial failure, delays, detours and tasks that have no sense in themselves), in the participation in a group of revolutionaries which is attempting to go beyond the reifed and alienated relations of current society - I am in a position partially to realise this desire. If I had been born in a communist society, would happiness have been easier to attain - I really do not know, and at any rate can do nothing about it.
I am not, under this pretext, going to spend my free time watching television or reading detective novels.
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