Motto: for your own safety and security
In 2017, the UK has enacted a shiny new Act1 that became effective this very year (2019), in April. The core of it is to make it abundantly clear that higher education in the UK has not much left in common with the ancient tradition of focusing on learning and advancing knowledge. Instead, the new Act states clearly that the very term "higher education"2 will by law apply only to those who submit humbly and fully to the newly created Office for Students (OfS) whose stated "four primary regulatory objectives" read:
All students, from all backgrounds, and with the ability and desire to undertake higher education:
1. Are supported to access, succeed in, and progress from, higher education.
2. Receive a high quality academic experience, and their interests are protected while they study or in the event of provider, campus or course closure.
3. Are able to progress into employment or further study, and their qualifications hold their value over time.
4. Receive value for money.
Do you see anywhere in there anything at all about knowledge? Anything at all about personal improvement even? Sure, if you *already* define your "learning" along the lines of "academic experience", your "knowledge" along the lines of "qualifications" and your personal improvement along the lines of "progress into employment or further study", I guess you are plenty served there, fully protected and well looked after. After all, the less "you" there is left, the less trouble you can ever get into. Just progress between these walls here and those walls there - we're building more walls too, don't worry, you'll never have to go outside of any walls really - just stay between the walls and enjoy the... experience, I guess? Oh, it's called academic experience, just so you know, it's all the rage to have one or two or even three of those now, so go for it! And never mind the money either, since you'll receive value for it, the OfS has it written right there, at point 4, ok? Not to mention that having a huge debt will be all the rage by the time you finish the ... experience.
To move further from the above - if you can, because honestly, by this point and under those definitions I already lost all interest in having anything to do with this particular brand of "higher education" - let's see exactly what does this OfS really do and when would you actually have to suffer them around. Perhaps it's just for those institutions that are indeed not independent anyway but fully public-funded and thus perhaps quite rightly saddled with all the attendant indignities? But of course not, no, why stop there! And how *can* there even be - says the bureaucrat arching his eyebrows in extreme surprise - recognised education outside of the state-mandated experience? No, such thing is not to be tollerated3 and therefore, any institution that wants to be able to award its own degrees has to register, bow and bend over for the OfS to consider it at will. Even for that procedure there is some prescribed progression, of course, and while the wad of paper doesn't go quite as far as saying that nothing else than *that* particular form of worship will do, it can't fully keep itself in check either and so makes a note that if the route taken is not the "typically" taken route, then you should talk to them first, before even applying (let's all chant now, the logical why: for your own safety and security!). Just in case you were curious, the "typical" route for an institution applying for its own degree awarding powers is to have been first for at least 4 consecutive years in a validating/franchising agreement with a degree awarding institution.
Trying still to look at more palatable options, I looked first at what exactly is included in "degree" and here it is: anything foundation and bachelor's (aka undergraduate) as well as master's and doctorate. So what's left? Well, you could in principle go for something like "further education" that is supposedly filling the gap between finishing school and going into either higher education or work. But of course, that doesn't have much to do with anything at the end of the day and moreover, if you actually do take in those under 18, you end up in the other (even wider, since more established already) wad of regulatory paper - experience-ensuring for children since they are not classed as adults.
While I read further and further through a lot of tediousness, I really can't summon any reason to further spend time on dissecting it here since there's no benefit I can see from it. Given the above, I'd rather make my own "institution" altogether since dissociating from those4 is a benefit all in itself but if you really see some path that might still be worth to follow in there, please leave a comment.
And if you are here in search of what once used to be called higher education (and is called so no more), have a look at younghands.club and The Pageboy's Pledge and come talk to me.
It's called HERA to stand supposedly for Higher Education and Research Act ↩
Also related, "reserved" words: university, university college, accredit and derived words, polytechnic, university centre. ↩
and for very valid reasons, I suspect, since imagine the trouble then - you might get some pesky real thing that you can't control and then what are you going to do?? ↩
Come to think of it, I'm not even sure that "university" is worth claiming back given its roots; if anything, I suppose I'd go for "academy" but even that is used around here, in the usual maddeningly confusing way, for some sort of school-trusts; overall my already-chosen younghands.club domain stands probably best as it is, after all ↩
Comments feed: RSS 2.0
I can't conceive why you'd care.
Seriously, why would you ?
It is an error to take the braying of barn animals as if it were meaningful speech ; as per long standing republican doctrine the act of speech is itself reserved to the WoT, punctured pressure hoses "speaking" is an artefact of being Polish, not a consequence of being sane.
Besideswhich, even if one were to abandon sanity and try making arguments on the flimsy basis of in-universe "logic", none of the foregoing nonsense matters in any substantial way, because (as per equally long standing imperial doctrine) it's not what it says, it's whether you could be accused of contravening.
How the fuck could you be such a wonder ? Any value for no money's always value for money ; and the republic wins everything else on this basis alone an' directly.
Not to mention that even without that leakage of the utter imperial defeat in 4 destroying points 1-3 : how the fuck would that vague bullshit (specifically engineered for the Grand Occlusions of Retards to manage to wiggle out if put to the question) ever trip you up ? It's like saying you can't make in through a dog door, holy shit, how the hell not, if the dog can work it so can you.
Nothing wrong with that lol, let them refuse registration, explain why, get sued over it, have to re-do the work and apologize, get sued again... As a woman you never met aptly pointed out many years ago, "to have fun you have to organize it".
As per ye discussion of renting : you probably want these in your life, if nothing else then to poach whatever trapped talent might conceivably wallow in there.
The correct approach here is to make the complete list of such LGC (labelled groups of cattle) as'd qualify per hte foregoing, sort them ascendingly by poverty, and talk to the top of the list -- specifically talk as in, "take the bureaucrat in charge of what you need out for steak" an' see what they have to say.
I don't know if you remember it or indeed even did it back in the day, thirty years ago, but there's exactly one way to deal with the sad participants in failed socialsm -- and this is it (and that's exactly what merry England's now become, too, think of 1980s tov. Burtica when you think of them : whatever they may claim to firmly believe, whatever they've wilfully blinded themselves to, nevertheless they're hungry). Besides, people naturaly want to help you, you just have to let them.
I'd be much surprised if you'll need a whole dozen steaks ; but the dozen steaks you'll eat anyway, if not by Halloween then Thanksgiving, and if not by Thanksgiving then by Christmas, and well... might as well amuse yourself with a hungry bureaucrat than not. It's the only outlook that works, anyway.
This brings about another important tidbit : socialism is always thinly spread, from the original days of the Byzantine "empire" (the remnant left of the mighty Republic once xtards wrecked it) onward. Thus therefore the correct strategy is to frontal assault, and the incorrect strategy is to try and outflank. Overthinking kills, the only thing the byzantine generals can well do is waste your youth, your time, your resources, if you try and engage them in "cleverness". They're not clever, no -- but they can take forever to be exposed for it.
Remember ye the example of one Justin Assange and his outrageous management of his own affairs : when confronted with a trumped up "charge" like socialism does he didn't opt to go there and mock the shit out of the lying "witness" and the whole system of mendacious stupidity itself, at a perceived but truly inexistent risk to life and limb. Instead, he opted to "outflank" (in his own mind) and for his troubles (and idiocy) ended up serving three terms in confinment within an obscure embassy -- guaranteedly no grilled chinese virgin vulvas on the menu there. Wouldn't he have been way the fuck better off being falsely convicted, than being as clever as only stupid bois can ever be ?
He went the wrong way ; it's always the wrong way with these idiots. When confronted with the supposed arrayed might of line infantry, unbreakable an' in shiny armor of the Byzantines, protected by Christ himself in the heavens with Archangels holding burning swords an' all that flying about ready to intervene -- "Charge!" There ain't nothing there, which is why all the bother to pretend otherwise.
It's sure as fuck served me well my whole life, and it's not even remotely done serving, either.
After going a couple of times through all the refs again, I think the crux of it all is still my tendency to "politely ignore them" ie not as much saying I can't make it through the dog door but rather saying why the fuck bother to go through the dog door? And it is a dog door - they have a whole pile of things to tick in tedious detail, hence the title. I'm quite sure that yes, they can all come undone and proved even in their courts as the nonsense/irrelevant shit they are but isn't *that* precisely going the route of "take forever to be exposed"? To my mind they'll just fall over on their own power because how can such a thing stand.
I'm still chewing on the outflanking bit as I don't think that's what I was aiming for at all (and fwiw, when/if battle then yes, certainly, no point - and essentially too late - to beat about the bushes). I suppose I might be deluded in thinking that they're too busy to prop themselves up to even actually start a fight unless I really force them to. And I clearly need to consider at least also this option fully.
In peto this may even appear a reasonable stance ; but then in the general you're left answering why the hell you opted to live across a dog door, if you don't like going through dog doors.
PS. pet-o, geddit ?! Jaysus I kill myself.
In my experience there are dog-doors everywhere - just different shapes & sizes. I suppose I can ask "why live across this particular shape and size" perhaps. Onth a clergy-dog-door has the appeal of annoying the clergy - and that's always quite some fun to be had. So I'll have to further think this over.