Friday, December 17, 2010

First, remove all state funding from the humanities, and 50% from other subjects, creating a free market for Higher Education services. Then, invite your friends and business associates to the party:

"One of the world's largest publishers, Pearson, looks set to be given degree-awarding powers, as the government seeks to open up the university sector to more private providers" (BBC).

See more detail here.

3 comments:

John B-R said...

Great catch Alan. I posted the BBC article next to an article that discusses a local initiative to put the budget of the U of California in the hands of the legislature, an obvious idiotic step which will end in the Pearson-ucation of us all.

Which leads me to want to respond to the Merritt poem you quote in another post:

"..Silly to still be writing the same thing
years on, yet room, surely,
to hazard a different ending?"

No. Maybe someday, but not one we can see from here.

Which doesn't mean I don't relish the line

"Live side by side with worse surprises."

They keep coming, don't they? And what's most surprising is that they continue to surprise ...

I guess I still can't fathom the depths ...

John B-R said...

Ed, it's hard to die happy after having taken the boddhisattva vow ...

John B-R said...

Ed-

"nothing much ever happens in a crowd EVER.". Everything happens a in a crowd. The boundaries between me and the universe are entirely porous. Or better, fictitious and nonexistent.

"what else matters?"

All other sentient and nonsentient beings matter. It's not just about me. My happiness is incomplete while others are suffering. To be corny as hell, while kids are hungry, while plastic's filling up the ocean ... etc.

Maybe you've found a way to get out from under all that but I haven't. And to be honest, I'm not looking for one.