There has been a lot of noise in the media recently about Universal Living Allowances for all students.

I am a strong believer in the fact that you go to University to learn and get an education that will better you and the country. I do not believe that you should have to distract yourself away from studies to do part time work to support yourself financially. If the Government wants an knowledge economy of the future they must first fund it.

What I propose is a Universal Living Allowance for all fulltime students as follows:

• To qualify you must be enrolled as a fulltime student in a course with a minimum length of 6 months.
• The student allowance rate should be set at the same amount as the dole.
• Once you have completed your first year on the USL you can only qualify for subsequent years if and only if you pass 75% of your papers in your previous years.
• USL should only be available to undergraduate and honours students. Any research driven post-graduate qualifications should be paid for through scholarships.
• Only University and Polytech students in a recognised post-secondary course should be eligible.

Now I have no idea of how much this would cost. But this is what this country needs. Hand ups to those who deserve it, not hand outs to those that don’t.

http://melissa-network-news.blogspot.com/2008/05/healthy-competition.html

I read an interesting blog post today about supposed “healthy competition” between universities (see link above).

Now I want you to ponder this. Should universities be in competition with each other?
What marks the difference between “healthy” and “unhealthy” competition?

This is something that the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) has been focusing on over the past few years and trying to stamp out. Universities and other tertiary providers should not be in competition with one and other but should rather be working together. At the end of the day cooperation benefits everyone far greater then competition.

Think about this. With cooperation in research people can move forward on ideas faster. How many different universities need to invent the wheel? Cooperation in research also allows for more open, honest and transparent findings and less allegations of faking results because rather then being the first to do something, as a team you are the best at doing it and therefore you have the best result. Competition does not drive improvements in research but rather forces researchers to work harder and rush things often making mistakes rather then actually doing something beneficial.

So how does this apply to undergraduate and postgraduate taught classes? Well the reality is this, in New Zealand you are forced to pay for your education. Therefore the education that you receive should be the highest possible quality education and you should get value for money. Money aka your fees should not be wasted on competition between universities such as advertising that trades off one university against another and neither should it be spent on anything other then the provision of your courses. Universities should not set up courses to compete with each other and steal students off one an other but should rather be introducing courses to meet the need of the market - something the TEC is trying to implement through its investment plans.

So is any form of competition healthy? No. Competition should not be permitted between universities. There are only 8 universities in New Zealand we are a small country and the majority of our funding to our universities comes from the government and at the end of the day they are all owned by the crown so in a round-a-bout way you only end up competing with yourself. Cooperation not Competition!

This is the video of the transcript that I posted a few weeks back

I am on cloud nine (to steal a commonly used quote from my GF).

I got informed today that for one of my papers last semester I scored 100%. In other words, 15/15 for Assignment One, 15/15 for Assignment Two, 70/70 for the Exam.

I am only the second person ever in the history of the paper to do this.

Now I just have to find a way to celebrate.