A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
University student Lizzie Dearden has gone a step further and published an article in national newspaper, The Guardian, about Nick Clegg and his broken promises.
Last year, Dearden, a third year studying English Literature at York University wrote a comment article entitled, “Liberal Democrats have Betrayed Students” about Lib Dem leader Clegg’s broken promises to never raise tuition fees in a visit to her Sixth Form College in 2008.
Dearden explained, “The Guardian commissioned me to do it after I sent an article on a whim a week before”.
So far, Dearden’s article has had nearly 350 responses.
Dearden said, “I was annoyed that some people were patronizing and said it was stupid to have faith in politicians in the first place, but a lot of people were supportive”.
Dearden has attended protests against rising tuition fees herself, including the London protests on the 10th and 24th November and York protests. She also attended the Take Back Parliament protest in support of voting reform earlier in the year.
Dearden explained, “I think people should keep protesting. The government needs to be reminded that we are the electorate.”
Dearden has also appeared on Young Voters Question Time on BBC Three and discussed rising student fees with the Universities Minster, David Willetts.
Dearden explained, “The rising fees will stop people wanting to go to University and students will be paying more for less.”
Dearden concluded, “Protests and articles are a way of letting the government know how we feel and if we are ignored in such great numbers people need to seriously ask why, because the government should be acting in our interests.”
In a recent article for the Yorker, Dearden discusses the importance of this Saturday's protests against the education cuts. Click here to read Dearden's latest comment piece "In faith we march on".
To read her article with the Guardian entitled "Liberal Democrats have betrayed students", click here.
I see the article talks about recalling Liberal Democrat MPs - what on earth would be the point? Anyone who has been working on the fees issue for the last few years knows that the Labour and Tory Parties wanted higher fees - they stitched up the Browne report to get their fee rise. The Liberal Democrats were the only ones to oppose the Browne report.
The Liberal Democrats then find that they didn't win the election - they didn't even win 1 in 4 votes. This is compared to the two parties supporting a fee rise who gained almost 2 in 3 votes. So when in government, they knew that there was political will to pass the fee rise. Therefore the Lib Dems in government had a chance to make the scheme more progressive - they did that. The lowest 20% of earners will pay back less, not more. There are no upfront fees, even for part-time students (who amount for 60% of the student population). And most importantly, the amount you pay back is linked to your earnings and if you haven't paid it back over 30 years (an estimated 65% of students), you have your debt written off.
If the Liberal Democrats had voted against the fee rise, don't for one minute think that this would have stopped the fee rise. It would have happened a few years down the line, just without the progressive measures. So this effectively means that the Lib Dem MPs had a choice. They could either have kept their pledge and voted against, or voted in the long-term interest of students.
The fact that the NUS would rather have seen them stick to a pledge I think simply shows the short-term thinking and careerism in their ranks. Why on earth you'd want to recall the only MPs in Parliament who actually want fees abolished, I simply cannot understand. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
If the country wanted fees abolished properly, then the only option was to elect a Lib Dem government. It didn't - so the Lib Dems are only in a position to make Conservative policies fairer, particularly for the poorest. That's what they've done, and all this indignation at the Lib Dems simply helps to strengthen the Tories, who are the ones who wanted the fee rise all along.
I agree entirely with the point above - after all, isn't it a sign of some success of the Lib Dems that the Conservative back benchers are grumbling and moaning that the Lib Dems have too much power over policy? And despite what protestors chant, the new fees will be much more progressive than the current system, mainly thanks to the Lib Dems.
I have to say that I am inclined to disagree with comments one and two with regards to this matter. My own personal view is that the Lib Dems made an election pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees, and they should have stuck to it, or abstained from the vote. What they have done is put a small amount of power before their own voters, many of which were students in the first place. Furthermore to this, it was written into the coalition agreement that over issues surrounding tuition fees the Lib Dems had the right to abstain from the vote, so this wasn't anything to do with the fact that the Lib Dems had to go along with it to keep the coalition in tact.
The argument about the Lib Dems not having an elected majority is also flawed in my opinion, because they are now part of the government. What is the point in running for power and then bottling big decisions when you have the opportunity to do something about them? No point shouting from the sidelines, what good does that do?
We must also bear in mind that the pledge the Lib Dems made was two-fold: to vote against a fee rise, but also to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative. In this case, the two parts of the pledge came into conflict.
The IFS made a report on the new policies and concluded that the new fees system was not only fairer than the original proposals in the Browne Report (due to the changes made by Vince Cable), but that it was also fairer and more progressive than the current fees system. This left the Lib Dems in parliament with a choice - either vote against a fee rise or vote for the fairer alternative. I am pleased that the fairer alternative came out on top, even if it meant Lib Dem MPs reneging on part of their initial pledge.
The main danger now is that hysterical scaremongering from Labour and the NUS will put off students from poorer backgrounds from coming to university. Not only will the least well-off graduates pay less as Alan said, but in the new bursary system proposed the poorest students will only be charged a third of the fees in the first place - less than they would initially be charged at the moment; this goes some way to dispelling the myth that higher fees will put off people from poorer backgrounds from applying.
It is clear that awareness of the actual proposals and effects of the new system are not widely known. We need a better-informed debate on fees so students can see the full picture before they decide to go and protest.
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