Posts Tagged ‘LSE’

A recent poll involving 30 major UK universities suggests that almost a third of university students are planning to vote Conservative in next month’s election.

In a survey of 14,000 final year undergraduates, the Conservatives had their greatest support from Durham, St Andrews and Reading while Labour came top at LSE, York and Liverpool. The data, compiled by High Fliers Research, showed 30 percent of students taking part intended to vote Tory, 21 percent Labour and 19 percent Liberal Democrat.

Michael Birchall, who produced the research, said the Labour and Conservative voters stuck closely to stereotype. Universities where a high proportion of the student body are from private schools had the highest Tory support; these students were also expected to earn the highest salaries and wanted to work in investment banking, law or marketing. One in five of these Conservative voters also said they expected earn at least £100,000 a year by the time they are 30.

Students who intend to vote Labour were most likely to have attended comprehensive schools and were keen to pursue careers in teaching and the media. At the National Union of Students annual conference, Wes Streeting, NUS president, criticised the Conservative party for not pledging to oppose an increase in tuition fee top-ups.

He said; “For a party hoping to form the next government, this is a real let down,” and went on to say a Conservative government would “represent a significant threat for the millions of students who are looking for real change.” The Liberal Democrats are currently the only party with a clear plan for abandoning tuition fees.

Two thirds of the students interviewed said they would vote on policy, 17 per cent would choose the most convincing leader and one in seven said they would support the party their parents voted for. 18 per cent said they had yet to decide who to support.

A former LSE student has set up an events organisation which aims to bring students and young professionals face-to-face with leading politicians, journalists and business leaders.

Spawned out of LSE’s Question Time society, the Generation 2 Generation (G2G) organisation has hosted speakers such as Liam Fox MP, Shadow Defence Secretary; George Brock, The Times Saturday Editor; and Tim Cullen, former Senior Advisor to the World Bank.

The organisation’s founder, Alex George, is a graduate of LSE and former president of the university’s Question Time society; “At LSE, every couple of weeks we’d have a question-time style debate or speaker event, and we had people like Jon Snow, , George Osborne… When I left LSE, I just found that such opportunities completely dried up.”

George attributes the success of G2G to its impartiality; “Labour have the young Fabians, Conservatives have loads of groups like the Bow Group, and I think the Lib Dems have something similar, but they’re interested in a certain demographic. We don’t do events on one particular subject and we welcome all shades of opinion.”

G2G’s upcoming event will take a look at the election result, and the panel of speakers includes George Parker, Financial Times Political Editor, and Neal Lawson, Chair of political think-tank Compass and former advisor to Gordon Brown.  “We’re really excited about our events on the election,” George added. “It’s a great opportunity to meet and discuss topics with big names and influential people.”

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) have released funding figures for public funding for universities next year, which see reductions in funding for more than three quarters of UK universities.

University of London colleges which have been hit hard include the London School of Economics (LSE), the Courtauld Institute of Art, and London Business School (LBS). But University College London (UCL) has seen an overall increase in its funding.

LSE will see a reduction of 8.3% in its funding next year, while LBS will have to cope with a 13.9% cut, in real terms. Courtauld will be affected by a 12.9% decrease in funding.

Meanwhile UCL’s total allocation increased by 1.73%, compared to an increase of 1.2% on the previous year. Although the teaching budget was cut by 1.58%, UCL benefited as a leading research university, from a 4.28% rise in research funding compared to h a sector average increase of 2.05%.

The increase has led the University and College Union (UCU) to claim that UCL – the biggest employer in Camden – is making unnecessary redundancies. The union claims that UCL used an expected decrease in its HEFCE grant as a premise for cuts, but is in a “sound” financial state, with cuts being “motivated by a Management political agenda.” Despite the increase, UCL has announced that it is seeking to make £20 million in savings, which UCU claims would put up to 400 jobs are at risk.

Two per cent of these cuts would occur in each of Arts & Humanities, Social & Historical Sciences, School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies and Law. Despite the government’s push for an increase in students taking STEM subjects, cuts would be even greater in these areas. 4.8% of cuts would take place in each Engineering Sciences and the Bartlett. Mathematical and Physical Sciences would take 5.1% of job cuts, Life Sciences would be hit by a massive 10.4% of the cuts, while Biomedical Sciences would take 6.9% of the blow.

This is despite the UCU’s claim that the Dept. of Life Sciences has avoided an expected £900,000 loss, and has instead seen an increase of £510,000 in its funds.

In contrast, LSE have reassured students that, despite receiving one of the biggest cuts to funding from HEFCE in the country, the cuts were less than they predicted and are therefore manageable.

LSE has insisted that the 6% cut in funding from HEFCE– which makes up 11% of LSE’s overall budget – can be covered by efficiency savings, surplus from previous years, and a rise in external revenue. It is not listed by the UCU as a university placing jobs at risk.