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Jim Dickinson Profile picture
Jim Dickinson
@jim_dickinson
@Wonkhe SUs. Trustee @WinchesterSU. HE policy. Pop. Pro EU(rovision). Windmills not walls. Giggling incredulity. “Wasteful and inefficient for our economy”
Sep 28 • 33 tweets • 5 min read
When, in December 2023, then Home Secretary James Cleverly announced and confirmed a range of restrictions on immigration impacting international students, we only got a “high level” impact assessment. A more detailed impact assessment had been produced for the changes affecting the student route – but was “still awaiting final Departmental clearances.”
Jul 15 • 95 tweets • 11 min read
In September 1995 I was dropped off by my dad into my student house at the University of the West of England at 2.15pm on a Sunday afternoon. Three hours later I was in the SU bar pretending to like Guiness with some posh people telling tales of taking a year out to build schools and doing something called “interrailing”.
Jun 26 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
One of the reasons that the students-from-Nigeria can't pay their fees story is so dangerous for UK HE is that it exposes what's actually been happening to large numbers of students It surfaces faceless emails from university finance departments, biting poverty, and deeply uncomfortable stories about families back home selling property to get fees paid - all to bankroll UK HE
Apr 2 • 99 tweets • 12 min read
Imagine you’re an undergraduate first year student that chose the university you’ve enrolled at on the basis of a set of pathways characterised by a large range of optional modules. You have just carefully chosen your options for next academic year. You were allocated four of your first choices - along with one of your second choices and three of your third choices - because of “capacity restrictions”.
Feb 16 • 33 tweets • 4 min read
Students won't get involved, students won't volunteer, we have to do things for students, etc etc a long train journey thread Earlier in the week I met up with one of those student experience types that universities seem to be installing into departments these days
Feb 16 • 24 tweets • 2 min read
Let's imagine you're an international PGT student who applied in 2022-23. The Home Office told you that you'd need £9,207 to live on outside of London - so you budgeted for that.
Jul 7, 2023 • 62 tweets • 7 min read
I don't think it's unfair to suggest that students paying fees have the right to the teaching and services promised, to have their work assessed fairly and robustly, and to graduate on time. Whatever else there is to say about industrial action, the various hotpotch of regulatory bodies around the UK designed to either secure those rights or hear students' arguments that they've not been met, and the baffling silence from most of them on the MAB in particular...
May 18, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Here's where I think we're at with G-AI and essays etc Right now a mixture of hopium (aha! I saw a hallucination) and muttered acceptance that unless student has been really stupid and just copied/pasted GPT output, academic misconduct can't be proved
May 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
OfS on uni finances today - One aspect not picked up by much of the media is the stuff we get in the report on projections Includes the revelation that providers are predicting total postgraduate student numbers (FTEs) to increase by just under 30 per cent (130,000 FTEs), the majority of which are expected to be international.
May 18, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Nasty bit of oped over thew ongoing Oxford Union, Oxford SU, Stock row in the Telegraph today First your classic harking back to a golden age Image
May 16, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Now... Image The "story" here is that more than 40 academics have written a letter in support of a planned appearance at the Oxford Union by Prof Kathleen Stock, a leading feminist, in a letter to The Telegraph.
May 16, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
If you asked me what emotion I feel about funding the massification of UK HE by sucking family wealth out of the global south, "pride" is not the first word that comes to mind. Big proportion of economic "benefit" is rent - having often taken out onerous commercial loans to get here, £££ go into topping up pension pots of those whose longer retirements are unsustainable without yields generated by the bedspaces students work long hours to afford.
May 15, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Interesting test for the university's student protection plan here... ueasu.org/officers/offic… This is quite a commitment - hard to see how it's reconcilable with a significsnt number of redundancies Image
May 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Those with Plan 2 student loans, staring at your statement is a massive waste of time. Assume you'll pay 9% above threshold for 30 years. Only purpose of balance/interest confection is to work out which lucky (largely rich men) will get to stop paying grad tax in their late 40s. The whole point of the 30 year off is that it represents a subsidy for those who don't do as well. It's a feature that you'll never pay it off, not a bug.
May 2, 2023 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
OK by popular demand, England's undergraduate fee system. Eyes down, look in. It's a bit like a tax (9% of earnings over a threshold) and a bit like a loan (there's a principal debt account and interest accrues)
May 1, 2023 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Astonishing levels of complacency and naivety on offer here. Yes there are some students that are daft/desperate enough to take text outputs from GPT-3 and copy and paste them into submitted work. Bang to rights, well done Sherlock, etc
Jul 14, 2022 • 26 tweets • 3 min read
OK folks let's do a bit of crowdsourcing on how universities might help reduce students' costs this coming year. All ideas - big and small - welcome. Let's get this thread to 100 policy ideas. I'll kick off with - everyone that runs a service on campus that charges students is mandated to have a range of options, one of which is a budget option (budget coffee, budget gym slots)
May 18, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Somewhere up the "top" of the tables, there's students rammed in on massive modules, where the personal tutor system is more of an ambition than a reality. And at the other end, the redundancy programmes pick up pace 🧵 It's miserable for students and academics. You can make a case (not one I simplistically agree with) that demand should drive HE supply - but not at this pace. Because it takes time to expand or contract in a way that doesn't damage the student experience.
May 16, 2022 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
There's going to be a lot of this 🧵 The most up to date version of the Student Protection Plan. Naturally the commitment in a course closure situation is "teach out". wlv.ac.uk/media/departme…
May 15, 2022 • 40 tweets • 11 min read
I've been up in space, man this weekend in Turin for the Eurovision, but now I'm home I'm catching up on the weekend's HE press and though I'd make a thread of it. Eyes down, look in 🧵 On Friday evening DfE press released its "package of measures" on disengagement with @nusuk amid antisemitism allegations gov.uk/government/new…
Feb 20, 2022 • 34 tweets • 8 min read
Right. Not done of these for a while, but time for an HE in the weekend papers 🧵 Yesterday the Telegraph went with "Tell new students how much teaching is done online, universities warned", a story hauntingly familiar to one in the Tomes a few weeks back. telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/1…