As from this coming September, the number of lectures undergraduates studying politics at Bristol University will be required to attend per week in their first year is to be cut from three to one.
They need not fear the reduction in their tuition might imperil their chance of degree success. For, according to the brief report of the cut in today’s Daily Telegraph, examinations at the end of their first year are to be phased out, while they have simultaneously been promised an increase in the proportion of firsts that will be awarded at the end of their studies.
All this is to happen at a University which has just increased its annual tuition fees to £3000 and lowered required entry points of prospective students from relatively educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, who, one would have thought, would be in need of more, rather than less, intensive tuition at the start of their studies.
In the unlikely event that any of these students fail to be pleased or amused at being so short-changed by their tutors, some of them may prefer instead to enrol at the world’s first school of laughter that, according to a report in today’s Daily Mail, opened this week in Berlin. Here students will be taught how to enjoy a laugh, which, according to recent studies, Germans apparently find harder to do than other Europeans.
Alternatively, those Germans who find it hard to be amused, perhaps, should be encouraged to enrol on Bristol University's politics programme which certainly sounds to have become a joke – and a bad one at that.
Comments (1)
The government has been slashing politics programmes for years. Most of the old professors are gone. New ones teach more 'suitable programmes'.
The range of thought is restricted, questions to the ideology are not tolerated.
We have got here through the governments obssession with targets and efficiency. But when dealing with a philosophical subject, who is to say what is efficient, or what is neccesary?
Posted by Chas | June 25, 2005 7:58 PM
Posted on June 25, 2005 19:58