Department of Omnishambles

Karl Marx in Film

DEPARTMENT OF OMNISHAMBLES

FACULTY OF THE INHUMANITIES / DEPTARTMENT OF OMNISHAMBLES /

Many think the Department of Omnishambles is a recent phenomenon in Higher Education, arising from radical cuts to university budgets, rampant managerialism, and the effective redesignation of teaching academics as full-time administrators.

This is in fact not the case.

ABOUT OMNISHAMBLES

Please feel free to post your own contributions to the Department of Omnishambles at the Faculty of the Inhumanities, or you can try to reach the administrator directly at JohannesDeSilentio@mail.com; although he or she may not, in fact, exist. 

Department of Omnishambles is at: http://departmentofomnishambles.tumblr.com/

This is brilliant! A must-read for academics and others interested in knowledge stuff! – Glenn Rikowski

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Wall Street-Inflated Student Debt Bubble Hits $1 Trillion: Debtors Rally for Relief

WALL STREET-INFLATED STUDENT DEBT BUBBLE HITS $1 TRILLION: DEBTORS RALLY FOR RELIEF

By Sarah Jaffe

 

The collective weight of American student debt is a drag not just on those paying the debt, but on our entire economy.

April 24, 2012   

You could call it a bubble, but it’s more like a ball and chain. Bubbles are, after all, light and airy.

The collective weight of American student debt is now over $1 trillion, and that weight is a drag not just on those paying the debt, but on our entire economy. It’s hard to calculate exactly, because the lenders are notoriously unwilling to hand over their data, and with students defaulting at ever-higher rates, interest rates and fees are always changing, adding constantly to the weight of the burden college graduates (and those who didn’t graduate but still have to pay off the loans they took out in more hopeful times) carry.

Around the country, activists are marking the date with actions; in New York, a rally and march will be the centerpiece of what the Occupy Student Debt Campaign has dubbed 1-T day; the day the amount of debt we’re carrying to pay for our education officially got too big to bear silently. The rallies aim to end the isolation that debtors often feel, to bring people together to understand that the problem they have is shared by millions of others—and that it calls for political solutions.

“I think that we in America have become so separated from one another, partially due to this debt,” Pam Brown, an organizer with the Occupy Student Debt Campaign, told AlterNet. “The debt makes us very individual; we can’t afford to help someone else, we can’t afford to spend our time in a way that’s not productive.”

How did we get here, with more student debt than credit card debt, with student loans rising twice as fast as mortgage debt at the height of the housing bubble? Recent graduates face terrifying unemployment numbers—ThinkProgress reported that over half of all college grads under the age of 25 are either jobless or underemployed and median wages for grads with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000—and delinquencies on debt is steadily climbing.

Those are complicated issues, because student lending is a complicated industry, one that highlights the degree to which the government is entwined with Wall Street, and state and federal policy play off one another to push students to ever greater levels of borrowing. As students and debtors rally to shake the stigma off their debt burden and call attention to the involvement of big finance in their education, let’s take a look at the system that led us to a trillion dollars in debt.

The Politics of Debt

You know you have a problem when even Mr. 1 Percent himself, Mitt Romney, is declaring his support for a move to hold student loan interest rates low. “I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students as a result of — as a result of student loans, obviously — in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market,” Romney said this week, probably in an attempt to blame President Obama for the lousy conditions young workers are facing. (Romney has also said he supports Paul Ryan’s budget, which allows student loan interest rates to go back up to 6.8 percent from the 3.4 percent current rate for new loans. Ryan’s budget also slashes Pell grants, the government’s method of giving rather than lending money to low-income students.)

On the campaign trail, Obama has pounded the issue by calling for Congress to temporarily extend the low interest rates. Members of Congress have introduced legislation to permanently keep the rate at which the government lends money at 3.4 percent. Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konzcal has noted that the government borrows at a far lower rate than that, which raises the question of why it is not investing more robustly in young people.

Konczal pointed out that the government makes a profit somewhere around 13 percent for each dollar of loans, and because the loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy and Social Security payments can even be garnished to make them up, default may even be more profitable for lenders than borrowers making payments on time. There’s almost no risk of losses, which are the reason for high interest in the first place. Keeping interest rates low won’t cost the government money, it will simply cut into its profit margin a little bit. While the big banks that crashed the economy continue to enjoy ultra-low interest rates, there’s no reason to let the rates get any higher.

Original Source, AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/economy/155133/wall_street-inflated_student_debt_bubble_hits_%241_trillion%3B_debtors_rally_for_relief

Relayed by CCDS Links, April 27 2012

**END**

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Autonomedia – New Titles

Autonomia

AUTONOMEDIA – NEW TITLES

New Titles

 

Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination

David Graeber

Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. There is good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism will no longer exist: for the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet. Yet faced with this prospect, the knee-jerk reaction is often to cling to what exists because they simply can’t imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even more oppressive and destructive. The political imagination seems to have reached an impasse. Or has it?

In this collection of essays David Graeber explores a wide-ranging set of topics including political strategy, global trade, debt, imagination, violence, aesthetics, alienation, and creativity. Written in the wake of the anti-globalization movement and the rise of the war on terror, these essays survey the political landscape for signs of hope in unexpected places.

At a moment when the old assumption about politics and power have been irrefutably broken the only real choice is to begin again: to create a new language, a new common sense, about what people basically are and what it is reasonable for them to expect from the world, and from each other. In this volume Graeber draws from the realms of politics, art, and the imagination to start this conversation and to suggest that that the task might not be nearly so daunting as we’d be given to imagine.

More information

Buy the book here

++

Communization and its Discontents: Contestation, Critique, and Contemporary Struggles

Edited by Benjamin Noys

Can we find alternatives to the failed radical projects of the twentieth century? What are the possible forms of struggle today? How do we fight back against the misery of our crisis-ridden present? ‘Communization’ is the spectre of the immediate struggle to abolish capitalism and the state, which haunts Europe,Northern Californiaand wherever the real abstractions of value that shape our lives are contested. Evolving on the terrain of capitalism new practices of the ‘human strike’, autonomous communes, occupation and insurrection have attacked the alienations of our times. These signs of resistance are scattered and have yet to coalesce, and their future is deliberately precarious and insecure.

Bringing together voices from inside and outside of these currents Communization and Its Discontents treats communization as a problem to be explored rather than a solution. Taking in the new theorizations of communization proposed by Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, Théorie Communiste, post-autonomists, and others, it offers critical reflections on the possibilities and the limits of these contemporary forms, strategies, and tactics of struggle.

More information

Buy the book here

++

19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism

Colectivo Situaciones, with introductions by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri

New book from Colectivo Situaciones… an 18th Brumaire for the 21st Century: militant research on the December 19th and 20th, 2001 uprisings inArgentina… In the heat of an economic and political crisis, people inArgentinatook to the streets on December 19th, 2001, shouting “¡Qué se vayan todos!” These words – “All of them out!” – hurled by thousands banging pots and pans, struck at every politician, economist, and journalist. These events opened a period of intense social unrest and political creativity that led to the collapse of government after government. Neighborhoods organized themselves into hundreds of popular assemblies across the country, the unemployed workers movement acquired a new visibility, workers took over factories and businesses. These events marked a sea change, a before and an after forArgentinathat resonated around the world.

Colectivo Situaciones wrote this book in the heat of that December’s aftermath. As radicals immersed within the long process of reflection and experimentation with forms of counterpower that Argentines practiced in shadow of neoliberal rule, Colectivo Situaciones knew that the novelty of the events of December 19th and 20th demanded new forms of thinking and research. This book attempts to read those struggles from within. Ten years have passed, yet the book remains as relevant and as fresh as the day it came out. Multitudes of citizens from different countries have learned their own ways to chant ¡Qué se vayan todos!, fromIcelandtoTunisia, fromSpaintoGreece, fromTahrir SquaretoZuccottiPark. Colectivo Situactiones’ practice of engaging with movements’ own thought processes resonates with everyone seeking to think current events and movements, and through that to build a new world in the shell of the old.

More information

Buy the book here

++

Undressing the Academy, or The Student Handjob

University of Strategic Optimism

The weary student handbook genre is in need of a belligerent mauling. This is our crack at the job. We don’t want to talk down to anyone, but neither do we want to chat them up, so this is an attempt at thinking out the university from our own perspective, that of students. Here we air our dirty snapshot of the academy, at least semi-naked, just as we come across it. This potted guide is our pot shot at undressing and dressing down this place, the university, and understanding our place within it: its problems and potential, its power-relations and its possibilities for politicization. This is our attempt to share some of the knowledge to be gleaned in the university, but a knowledge that is rarely measured on any certificate come graduation day.

Written collectively by the University for Strategic Optimism, in the queasy come-down afterglow of the recent wave of student activism in the UK (but looking forward to cracking-off another round), this guide attempts to contextualize our struggle and to bring it closer to home. Just what is the university that we are fighting for anyway? And what perhaps could it be?

More information

Buy the book here

 

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

For a Public University – Call for Papers

Universities

FOR A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY – CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for Papers – For a Public University

The transformation of Higher Education in the UK is at full speed. The cuts in government funding and the simultaneous increase in tuition fees of up to £9000 per year have dramatic implications. While universities emphasise the need to attract private finance, students are pushed towards courses with direct employment possibilities. At the same time, employers ask for closer co-operation with universities not only in relation to research but also in terms of the development of teaching curricula. The main focus is clear; education should be directed towards business interests in order to strengthen the UK economy.

One outcome is that Higher Education is increasingly commodified as universities exist in the shadow of the market. The space for critical thinking about society has been eroded; students’ ability-to-learn gives way to consumers’ ability-to-pay. Academics have themselves become subject to the charge of irrelevance unless direct policy-relevance is embraced. The critical theoretician is cast adrift as indolent and idle in the race to inform statesmen, to become prophets for science, to make profits for business.

This workshop has the purpose to analyse the underlying dynamics of the transformation of Higher Education in and beyond the UK, to reflect on the social function of Higher Education, as well as develop alternative ways of thinking about how best to deliver Higher Education in the future. The goal is to re-assert ways in which Higher Education can be retained as a public good, available to all.

Papers are invited for the following themes: 

-    Analyses of the current transformation of Higher Education; 

-    Discussions about the social function of Higher Education; and

-    Interventions on how to organise the future of Higher Education.

This one-day workshop is jointly organised by the Local UCU Association at Nottingham University and the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ). It will be held at NottinghamUniversity on Friday, 15 June 2012.

All paper proposals should be sent to Andreas Bieler at Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk by no later than Friday, 27 April. 

The maximum number of workshop participants will be 25 people, 10 to 12 paper givers plus additional participants.

People who want to participate without giving a paper should also contact Andreas Bieler at: Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk as soon as possible. There is no registration fee and two coffee breaks and lunch are provided free of charge by the organisers.

 

Original source: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-for-a-public-university-nottingham-15-june-2012  

 

***END***

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub,Bangor, northWales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Occupy Everything!

Occupy

OCCUPY EVERYTHING!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day… a new collection of essays on the composition of current struggles…

Occupy Everything! Reflections on why it’s kicking off everywhere
Edited by Alessio Lunghi & Seth Wheeler

Penned after the 2010 European student unrest and before what is now commonly referred to as the “Arab spring” began to escalate, BBC Newsnight economist Paul Mason’s “20 Reasons Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere” sought to establish an understanding of the motivations behind these globally disparate, yet somehow connected struggles.

What roles do the “graduate with no future,” the “digital native” or the “remainder of capital” play in the current wave of unrest? What are the ideas, ideologies, motivations or demands driving these movements? How is struggle organized and coordinated in the age of memetic politics and viral ad campaigns?

This collection of essays seeks to further explore Paul Mason’s original 20 Reasons in an attempt to better understand our turbulent present.

“A startling insight into the aims, dreams and ideologies of a generation of radicalized youth.” –Paul Mason, author of Meltdown and Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere

“…an encomium to still, as yet, unfocused possibilities. Each fragment is provocative and possessed of the same energies as the movements it seeks to describe.” – Aaron Peters, Open Democracy

“…this book has the inside track on how we can keep ‘kicking off’  for an end to capitalism and for the establishment of a global commons. Read, discuss and take action.”– Ewa Jasiewicz, Trade Union Organizer / Journalist

Contributors: 500 Hammers – Thomas Gillespie & Victoria Habermehl – The Free Association – Deterritorial Support Group – Ben Lear & Raph Schlembach – Camille Barbagallo & Nicholas Beuret – David Robertshaw, Rohan Orton & Will Barker – Antonis Vradis – Tabitha Bast & Hannah McClure – Andre Pusey & Bertie Russell – Federico Campagna – Emma Dowling

PDF available freely online (http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=372).

Released by Minor Compositions, Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson
Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.

Minor Compositions is an imprint of Autonomedia
www.minorcompositions.info |info@minorcompositions.info

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

After the Higher Education Bill is ‘Postponed’: What Next in the Struggle for Higher Education?

Education Crisis

AFTER THE HIGHER EDUCATION BILL IS ‘POSTPONED’: WHAT NEXT IN THE STRUGGLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION?

Education Activist Network Roundtable discussion – After the HE Bill is ‘postponed’: What next in the struggle for Higher Education?

Venue: King’s College London (Strand) WC2R 2LS, Room S-1.27

Date: 21 Feb 2011

Time: 6:30pm

 

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/261268643945344/

Participants include: John McDonnell MP; John Holmwood, author of Manifesto for the Public University; Andrew McGettigan, blogger Critical Education; Jim Wolfreys, author of Universities for Hire; Howard Hotson. Oxford academic; Liam Burns NUS President

As the government has announced that it will not seek to pass the HE Bill (based on last summer’s HE White Paper) through parliament until 2015, the Education Activist Network is holding a roundtable discussion with trade unionists, academics and journalists to discuss the way forward in the fight for Higher Education.

The HE Bill, proposed by Universities Minister David Willetts, faces major opposition from academics and HE/FE students, who marched in their tens of thousands against it.

Cameron, Clegg and Willetts do not want to see a repeat of the mobilizations that took place in November/December 2010. One of the reasons the vote is being ‘indefinitely’ postponed is that the government faces significant resistance – UCU’s continued strike action over pensions, the Campaign for the Public University, the No Confidence Campaign as well as growing opposition to the NHS Bill.

This roundtable discussion will aim o build opposition to the trebling of tuition fees, the debt regime and 100% funding cuts to Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, whilst at the same time form the kind of alliance that have the social and economic power to reverse these devastating neoliberal reforms.

 

In solidarity,

Mark Bergfeld & Jim Wolfreys on behalf of EAN Steering Committee

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

At the Heart of a Heartless System, the New Student Experience? Shaping Relationships in Higher Education

The Assault on Universities

AT THE HEART OF A HEARTLESS SYSTEM, THE NEW STUDENT EXPERIENCE? SHAPING RELATIONSHIPS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

SRHE Student Experience Network

Thursday 23rd February 2012

Registration 11.00am – 11.30am

Seminar 11.30am – 4.30pm

SRHE, 73 Collier St, London N1 9BE

At the Heart of a heartless system, the new student experience? Shaping relationships in Higher Education

A one-day SEN seminar discussing partnerships, relationships and generations

A number of current terms for student are often criticised for their ideological baggage. Monetized labels such as ‘client’ and ‘customer’ implicitly reframe academics as providers and producers, reducing the student experience to the status of product. Such thinking establishes not only fixed identity roles, but also the flow of the process governing transactions between them. One way of disturbing, or at least questioning, this logic is to focus on the quality and nature of the relationships between the actors.

This one-day Student Experience Network seminar examines the relationships between HEIs, academics and students. It questions how they are conceived and suggests ways to enact them. What, for example, is the tension between generational politics and notions of partnership? If there is a new ‘radical’, ‘lost’ or ‘jilted’ generation forming (to name three recent books), how should HEIs and practitioners pursue partnership with them and vice versa?

Structured around four speakers, the day will provoke practical and useful discussion for anyone with an interest in student engagement, staff/student relationships, and the way in which the student experience is framed around them.

Dr Paul Ashwin, Senior Lecturer in HE in here@lancaster, the HE Research and Evaluation Centre in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University.

Colin Bryson, Director of Combined Honours Centre, Newcastle University.

Dr Ben Little, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies,University of Middlesex.

Dr Sabine Little, Editor of Staff-Student Partnerships in Higher Education (Continuum, 2011), University of Sheffield.

Professor Valerie Hey, Head of Education, Professor of Education,University of Sussex. (Discussant)

Graeme Wise, Assistant Director (Policy), National Students’ Union (Discussant)

Event booking details

To reserve a place at this seminar please register at http://www.eventdotorg.co.uk/events.asp or telephone +44 (0) 207 427 2350.   SRHE events are open to all and free to SRHE members as part of their membership package. The delegate fee for non-members is £25 [full time students £20]. Non-members wishing to join the Society may do so at the time of registration and the delegate fee will be waived. Please note that places must be booked in advance and that a £25 for non-attendance will  be charged if a place has been reserved but no notice of cancellation/non-attendance has been given in advance.

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Global Disruptions and Higher Education

 

Education Crisis

GLOBAL DISRUPTIONS AND HIGHER EDUCATION

Occupy: A New Pedagogy of Space and Time?

Professor Mike Neary, Dean of Teaching and Learning, Director of Centre for Educational Research and Development,University ofLincoln

Dr Sarah Amsler, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Educational Research and Development,University ofLincoln

Friday 9th March 2012, 15.00 – 16.30, Room 120, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square

Dear All

Welcome to the first SRHE Southwest Higher Education Network Seminar of 2012!  

Full details of the event are attached to this email.

Booking: To book a place or for further information, please contact:  Richard.Budd@bristol.ac.uk

Look forward to seeing you there.

Dr Lisa Lucas

Co-Director Teaching, Learning and Assessment DirectorMPhil/PhD Programme Graduate School of Education University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1JA, Tel: +44 (0)117 331 4351 (internal number 14351)

Email: Lisa.Lucas@bristol.ac.uk

Webpage: http://www.bris.ac.uk/education/people/person/lisa-lucas/overview.html

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

The University is Ours!

Our Universities

THE UNIVERSITY IS OURS!

Edufactory

The University is Ours!

Friday, December 2, 2011  

A Conference on Struggles Within and Beyond the Neoliberal University
April 27-29, 2012
Toronto, Ontario

The university belongs to us, those who teach, learn, research, council, clean, and create community. Together we can and do make the university work.

But today this university is in crisis. The neoliberal restructuring of post-secondary education seeks to further embed market logic and corporate-style management into the academy, killing consultation, autonomy and collective decision-making. The salaries of university presidents and the ranks of administrators swell, but the people the university is supposed to serve — students — are offered assembly-line education as class sizes grow, faculty is over-worked, and teaching positions become increasingly precarious. International students and scholars seeking post-secondary or graduate education are treated as cash cows rather than as people who might contribute to both research and society. Debt-burdened students are seen as captive markets by administrators, while faculty is encouraged to leverage public funds for private research on behalf of corporate sponsors.

The attack on what remains of public education has been total. Over the last year we have witnessed the closure of humanities programmes, further tuition hikes, the replacement of financial support with loans, union lockouts, and the accelerated development of private, for-profit universities. Yet at the same time we have seen growing waves of struggle against these incursions, as students, staff and faculty in Europe, Latin America, and across the Middle East organize, occupy and resist the transformation.

Our struggles are not limited to the university, but are a part the widespread resistance against the neoliberal market logic subsuming all sectors of our society. The university is a key battleground in this struggle, and a point of conjuncture for the various labour, economic and social justice struggles that face all of us – workers and students alike. Crucially, these struggles occur on stolen indigenous lands and manifest through colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ablism and other forms of oppression that hurt and divide us and that shape what sorts of knowledge are considered valuable.

We cannot cede the ideal of the university as a site for struggle and debate. We cannot permit the dissolution of proliferating research, ideas and innovations free from the demands and control of the market. We cannot watch as universities are degraded into a mere site for corporate or state-sponsored research and marketing. The time to mobilize is now!

This conference will connect and chart the varied struggles against neoliberal restructuring of the university inNorth Americaand beyond. We envision a series of debriefings on experiences of resistance, the creation of a cartography of local and global struggles, and a strategizing session for students, teachers, workers and activists. We aim to develop a North American network of struggles.

We encourage presentations that raise questions and generate dialogue among the rest of the participants. Ideally, submissions will indicate the specific outcomes they hope will emerge from the discussion. We encourage participation from those with first-hand experience of these crises, and those engaged in the fight for free and public post-secondary education, especially student groups and trade unions.

For a better future for all – join us!

POSSIBLE THEMES:

ü        Mapping the terrain of campus struggle inCanadaandNorth America

ü        Connecting with and learning from global struggles

ü        Waged and unwaged labour in the university

ü        Abolition of student debt

ü        The university and the occupy movement

ü        The cultural politics of the neoliberal university

ü        The death of the humanities

ü        Militarization of the university

ü        Intersections of university struggles other fights against oppression

ü        Environmental justice

ü        Beyond public education

ü        Radical pedagogy

ü        Academic freedom

ü        The politics of research funding

ü        The economics of the neoliberal university

ü        University and student governance

ü        The undergraduate experience of neoliberalism

ü        Alternative/free/autonomous universities

ü        Organizing the education factory

ü        The suppression of on-campus dissent and organization

Please email submissions to universityisours@gmail.com by January 16th.

Also,if you would like to attend the conference, please RSVP to the same address so organizers can plan for numbers.

This conference is organized by the Edu-factory Collective in collaboration with theUniversityofToronto General Assembly.

Edufactory: http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Problematizing Student Support: The Affective and Academic Dimension

Mountain Walk

PROBLEMATIZING STUDENT SUPPORT: THE AFFECTIVE AND ACADEMIC DIMENSIONS

SRHE, 73 Collier Street, London N1 9BE

7 February 2012 1pm – 4.30pm

 

Helping and Supporting Students: A case for the development of collegiality, dialogue and ‘practice’

Dr Jan Huyton, Senior Lecturer and PDP/Personal Tutoring Co-ordinator, Cardiff Metropolitan University.

In the higher education context, support work with students often occurs in private space, behind the closed doors of a tutor’s office. Using Goffmanesque dramaturgical imagery I have described such interactions as frequently taking place ‘off-stage’. It is essential that the manner in which tutors approach this challenge is theorised as a form of academic or pedagogical practice. This paper will draw on research which demonstrates that many tutors are working in a supportive capacity with students, without a clear sense of the boundaries of their role, and without discussing their work with colleagues. I will argue that the promotion of dialogue facilitated by more collegial forms of working offers the most constructive way forward. This would address the need to develop a notion of ‘practice’ (MacIntyre, 2007) for supporting students based on academic, pedagogical and ethical principles, and would also offer the opportunity to explore practice via peer supervision.

 

Helping and supporting students: analysing the concept of need 

Dr Janette Myers, Senior Lecturer in Student Learning and Support, St George’s, University of London

This paper will argue for a critical examination of the concept of student need. To this end a model of need and its relationship to another key concept in higher education, the development of autonomy, will be explained and discussed. A comparison of the cases of two similar institutions with very different approaches will be used to show how the idea of the student contains constructions of need that have implications for academic practice. The Medical Schools of King’s College London and St George’s, University of London both have schemes which are designed to extend entry to medical degrees to students who are currently under-represented. Both Medical Schools are part of the University of London, located in South London, nine stops apart on the London Underground and have the aim of attracting similar students. The schemes have similar objectives but in other respects are very different. These striking differences serve as a way of considering the question of the construction of student need and its implications that is applicable to other forms of student support and academic practice.

 

Affective dimensions of supporting doctoral students and implications for academic development for doctoral supervisors 

Jannie Roed, Principal Lecturer at the University of West London

Doctoral education is not only about the production of new knowledge. It is also about the development of individuals and the shaping of new identities. Green (2005:154) has described doctoral supervision as a ‘field of identification’, arguing that the transformational processes taking place in the supervisory space is about negotiating and re-positioning identities between students and supervisors, and Crossouard (2010) has shown how the doctoral learning experience has a powerful impact on how individuals view themselves both during their studies and after completion. However, in the process, supervisors, too, develop their professional identities (Halse 2011).Using a conceptual framework based on Margaret Archer’s work on agency and structure (Archer 2000; Archer 2003) and Judith Butler’s theories around accounting for oneself (Butler 2005), the paper draws on findings from 14 in-depth interviews with doctoral supervisors to explore how affective dimensions of the doctoral supervisory process shape professional identities.

 

Network Convenors: Professor Paul Blackmore (KCL) and Prof. Joëlle Fanghanel (Universityof West London)

 

Event booking details

To reserve a place at this seminar please register at http://www.eventdotorg.co.uk/events.asp or telephone +44 (0) 207 427 2350.   SRHE events are open to all and free to SRHE members as part of their membership package. The delegate fee for non-members is £25 [full time students £20]. Non-members wishing to join the Society may do so at the time of registration and the delegate fee will be waived. Please note that places must be booked in advance and that a £25 for non-attendance will  be charged if a place has been reserved but no notice of cancellation/non-attendance has been given in advance.

 

Yours sincerely

Francois Smit

SRHE Event Manager

PLEASE NOTE THAT SRHE HAS MOVED TO NEW OFFICES. OUR NEW TELEPHONE NUMBER

OUR NEW OFFICE DETAILS ARE:

Society for Research into Higher Education

73 Collier Street

LondonN1 9BE

Telephone 0207 427 2350

Fax number 0207 278 1135

srheoffice@srhe.ac.uk

http://www.srhe.ac.uk

 

 

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Education Against Austerity

Student Rebellion

EDUCATION AGAINST AUSTERITY

Education Against Austerity – Thursday 6th October, 6.30pm @ The Quad, LSE, London WC2A 2AE
 
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=267737039913763

Report, photos and videos on #Anti-Tory-March: http://educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/ean-report-from-tory-conference-demo-in-manchester/
The new academic term is opening in anger: On Sunday 1500 joined the EAN feeder march inManchester and more than 30000 trade unionists marched in total. As tens of thousands are being denied university places and forced into debt, we will discuss how we can build a movement that can.

The deep inequalities faced by millions of young people were exposed by the summer riots. Yet the Tories are coming for more; this year will see the attempt to implement their “White Paper” – the definitive entry of business into education and wholesale privatisation of entire institutions. The creation of the £18000 a year New College of the Humanities while 70% of courses are cut at London Met University shows the Con-Dem project for our education. Yet the government is weak and when we build pressure from below we can win. The student revolt pushed the coalition into turmoil and ESOL was partially saved after widespread resistance. 
 
Education Against Austerity seeks to both to set the political tone of the new term and begin to lay down the organisational framework for a shut down of education in November when millions of public sector workers look set to join lecturers and teachers for mass strikes. We hope to see you there joining EAN to discuss how we build effective resistance in our colleges and universities as part of a growing movement against austerity.
 
Education Against Austerity – Thursday 6th October, 6.30pm @ he Quad, LSE, London WC2A 2AE

Speakers include:
* Owen Jones, author of Chavs looks at the rising demonization of young people.
* Mark Campbell, Save London Met campaigner explains what’s behind the public sector strikes and why they matter in the fight for education.
* Susan Matthews, Defend the Right to Protest activist on the rise of political policing and why we should defend arrested protesters.
* Mandy Brown, Action for ESOL on how we defected ESOL cuts and where next in the fight for Further Education.
* Mark Bergfeld, NUS NEC discusses where next for the student movement

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

What is the Student Experience?

Student Experience

WHAT IS THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE?

SRHE Student Experience Network

Friday 21st October 2011

Registration 11.00am – 11.30am

Seminar 11.30am – 4.30pm

SRHE, London.

 

What is the student experience?

In light of the changes to Higher Education in the UK and in Europe, this seminar focuses on definition(s) of the ‘student experience’, asking how they are used to frame, discuss and package HE. With input from the NUS and the European Students’ Union, this seminar examines the concept in the discourse on HE and projects its relevance to the future.

 

The impact of national context on student experience: A comparison of France, Sweden and the UK

Nicolas Charles, University of Bordeaux

Nicolas Charles is a doctoral student in sociology at the Centre Emile Durkheim (University of Bordeaux, France). Focusing on justice in higher education, he compares student experience, HEIs and social representations of HE in France, Sweden and the UK.

Abstract

In the UK, the ‘student experience’ represents more than a sole research concept; it is a widespread notion among higher education institutions and students. The student experience has however taken a specific meaning in the UK context, far beyond its broad sense of a relation of a student to their studies. Based on a comparison of France, Sweden and the UK, this presentation will draw on a combined analysis of student practices and representations, institutional organisation at particular universities and national policy contexts. If the student experience remains heterogeneous in each country, my material suggests that strong national patterns in higher education which translate into very diverse student experiences. This discussion thus frames a more global picture of the many ways students can relate to their studies, and the specific issues they consequently face.

 

 

Student Charters: formalising consumption?

Joanna Williams, University of Kent

Joanna Williams lectures in higher education and academic practice at theUniversity ofKent.  She is interested in the impact of government policies upon education in general and higher education in particular.  Joanna’s PhD used techniques of critical discourse analysis to explore New Labour’s policies for promoting social inclusion within post-compulsory education.  More recently Joanna has been writing about the transformation of students into consumers of HE and the effect this has upon what it means to be a student, attitudes to learning and relationships with lecturers.

Abstract

The 2011 White Paper ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ states the government’s intention that ‘each institution should have a student charter … to set out the mutual expectations of universities and students’ (p. 33).  There is an assumption behind the call for charters that students are to be considered as vulnerable consumers in need of formalised protection from institutions that may provide a poor service in return for the students’ money.  Through an analysis of the Student Charter Group Final Report (January 2011), other recent higher education policy documents, contracts and charters already in use by institutions, as well as interviews with students, this paper questions whether the student experience is enriched by the use of such agreements.  Is it in the best interests of all students for their University experience to be increasingly contractualised, regulated and uniform?

 

What’s wrong with ‘the student experience’? The politics of student voice and public information

Duna Sabri, King’s College London

Duna Sabri is Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Policy, King’s College, London and an independent researcher.  Her research interests are in the sociology of higher education, pedagogy, institutional and (inter)national policy relating to HE, and the use of social theory in empirical research.

Since completing her DPhil at the University of Oxford’s Department of Educational Studies in 2007 on the assumptive worlds of academics and policymakers, she has undertaken a range of commissioned institutional research projects on topics such as students’ departure and persistence in HE, assessment practices, and the social and political functions of students’ evaluations of teaching, with a particular focus on the NSS.  Her publications have included the theoretical development of the concept of assumptive worlds, and analyses of the policy discourses that relate to academics and students.

Abstract

This paper gives an account of the ‘production, accumulation, circulation and functioning’ (Foucault 1994:31) of a discourse that surrounds ‘the student experience’.  Following Fairclough (2003) I explore how ‘the student experience’ has come to prominence in key policy texts.  I attempt to explain how it acquired such salience in the sector as a whole, and what work it does in sustaining and developing the market-oriented disciplining of higher education.  In the UK, but less so elsewhere in Europe, ‘the student experience’ has become a mantra, apparently used to give students ‘a voice’ and at the same time constraining that voice by isolating it from other voices around it, and from the complex environment that enables us meaningfully to interpret those voices. 

The role of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) in structuring ‘the student experience’ is explored. Moving away from questions of statistical reliability and validity, I take SET results as social objects in their own right.  Using the framework of analysis proposed by de Santos (2009) of statistics as fact-totems, I explore the production and consumption of the results of the UK National Student Survey (NSS): the convergence of the public gaze upon them, their articulation with identity narratives, and capacity to provoke drama, anxieties of anticipation and emotion.  The paper draws on a pilot study that demonstrates how the consumption of NSS results through league tables has had the effect of defining ‘problems’, redistributing resources and transforming higher education work in ways that ultimately impoverish the higher education experiences of students.

 

Panel members

Allan Päll

Chairperson of the European Students’ Union

Allan Päll is a political science student fromEstonia and the Chairperson of the European Students’ Union (ESU) since July 2011, having previously been Vice-Chairperson. He has previously in 2007-09 led social policy and student financing policy and research in the Federation of Estonian Student Unions (EÜL) and has also been closely involved in the EUROSTUDENT project inEstonia. Before being elected Chairperson, he has been coordinating the work of ESU on EU policies and Quality Assurance and has been leading ESU’s project “Quest for Quality for Students” which looks into information provision and aims to build a quality concept from the students’ perspective.

Graeme Wise

Assistant Director (Policy), National Students’ Union

Graeme is responsible for supporting the elected officers in political policy development. He is the author of many of NUS priority campaign publications including ‘Broke and Broken’ and the ‘NUS Blueprint for HE Funding’. He also leads on NUS Widening Participation work and is supporting the National President in the development of work around student charters with Universities UK.

 

Event booking details

To reserve a place at this seminar please register at http://www.eventdotorg.co.uk/events.asp or telephone +44 (0) 207 4472525.   SRHE events are open to all and free to SRHE members as part of their membership package. The delegate fee for non-members is £25 [full time students £20]. Non members wishing to join the Society may do so at the time of registration and the delegate fee will be waived. Please note that places must be booked in advance and that a £25 for non attendance will  be charged if a place has been reserved but no notice of cancellation/non attendance has been given in advance.

Interested in joining the Network-but not able to attend this event? To receive details of future events in this series and to join the mailing list, please email nmanches@srhe.ac.uk

 

Yours sincerely

Francois Smit, Society for Research into Higher Education, 44 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4LL, tel: +44 20 7447 2525, fax: +44 20 7447 2526

 

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com