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Student finance 2012: independent taskforce to separate facts from politics

by Wes Streeting June 17, 2011

Today, alongside Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com, I am proud to be launching a major campaign – independent of government – to tackle the myths and misconceptions surrounding the true costs of higher education from 2012.

There can be no doubt that the trebling of tuition fees to £9,000 is having a major impact on the decisions taken by potential students and their families. Writing for the Guardian two months ago, I warned that “confusion around the new [tuition fees and student finance] arrangements presents a real risk that students may be deterred in the absence of the facts on fees”. Earlier this week, my fears were confirmed by a Universities UK poll showing that more than half of parents felt that they had been given insufficient information about the new student finance arrangements.

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The student as labourer-consumer

by David Kernohan May 30, 2011

One of the odder beliefs that our culture seems to have developed about markets is the idea of market efficiency. Specifically, the idea that – given the publicly available information presented at the time of action – the actions of any given player in a market are unable to offer greater efficiency than the average of the actions of all players within that market. Or, to stick this in non-economist language, if everyone has access to the same info then no-one has an advantage.

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Keeping High Standards in Higher Education

by Newell February 11, 2011

In a knowledge management context, higher education and standardisation have a number of similarities. Both a university and a national standards body (NSB) should be seen as vital resources to the national economy; houses of creation for the country’s social knowledge. Economically, their activities bring £59bn (UUK, 2010) and £2.5bn (Swann, 2010) to the UK [...]

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