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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 03:34 pm
Enjoy the beerless taste of defeat, students!
Voluntary student unionism is about to hit students where it will really hurt them—at the bar.
While most do not need the childcare and agitprop funded by compulsory unionism, students are in line for the first attack by the Howard Government on an ancient rite of passage—drinking absurdly subsidised booze.
The University of South Australia will close two of its five bars—at Adelaide’s City West and Whyalla—on July 1, the day the Howard Government’s ban on the compulsorily levying of student union fees comes into effect.
Consider it a helpful lesson in economics.
- #2 – If you can’t run a successful anything commercial on campus, then it should close and you should go back to studying Descartes.
The guilds could fund their childcare and agitprop by taking better advantage of the monopoly/near monopoly various unis provide them in a number of trades on campus. These people are, quite frankly, seriously incompetent and not up to anything much bar petty politicking. And most of them don’t even do that particularly well.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 28 at 08:32 PM • permalink
- Whoops! I meant Sartre. Always get my French philosophers in a muddle.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 28 at 08:35 PM • permalink
- Incidentally, what do you pay for a beer on campus in SA and in other parts of Australia? In WA, which has already had a good dose of VSU in the past, the uni tavs aren’t really cheaper than other drinking houses. Nor are the guild-run refs and cafes, although allegedly they’re “subsidised”. You can still eat far more cheaply at the non-guild Asian food places off campus, however.
Guilds here provide almost no practical benefit for the ordinary student.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 28 at 08:40 PM • permalink
- Who was it on this site that recently told of a student studying Cartesian logic?
Went to the Student Union Bar and when offered a beer at premium prices, replied “I think not…”—POOF!, he disappeared.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 28 at 08:53 PM • permalink
- “Some senior doctors are now accusing universities of attempting to “socially engineer” medical school intakes by giving preference to candidates who reflect the interviewers’ views, allegedly often left-wing.
Let’s not forget about Dr Bobs …. Can you really be sure about the diagnosis?
Have Docs made up illnesses to suit the current reality we live in for profit?
- Sheesh, 1.618, try as I might, I really have difficulty deciphering your posts at times.
Just sayin.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 28 at 09:19 PM • permalink
- 1.618034, the usual problem with ambiguous antecedents is that more than one parse tree makes sense. Your experiment in symmetry of a different kind is very exciting.Posted by P. Froward on 2006 05 28 at 10:12 PM • permalink
- Given that all Melbourne Uni students who signed up at the start of the year had to pay a full year’s Student Union fees, I would be surprised if Adelaide hadn’t done it the same way and this isn’t just a stunt.
Most students will not get the benefits of VSU till next year, and conversely the unions are still raking it in.
- food on campuses is supposed to be subsidised by the union fees. Well that made sense. As a student, you pay a chunk of money in January so that you can eat cheap lunch for the rest of the year. Great plan. I’m sure the system will continue to be popular now that it’s voluntary.
I’ve eaten at several campuses around australia and the food was always bad, and was usually more expensive than nearby off-campus competitors. they’d hike the prices by 15%, then put up a sign saying that students got a 15% discount.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 28 at 10:19 PM • permalink
- Anyone who loses money selling beer to students is clearly an idiot.
#7 James: You can still eat far more cheaply at the non-guild Asian food places off campus, however. Very true. It’s the same in Melbourne and Sydney. Any student with half a brain ought to be aware of the virtues of dirt-cheap asian cuisine.
Posted by HisHineness on 2006 05 28 at 10:26 PM • permalink
- I’m curious about all this ‘advocacy’ they supposedly do. I never saw or heard about them doing any advocacy on campus. Law firms do advocacy. Student unions do agitprop.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 28 at 10:37 PM • permalink
- Rafe: am absolutely aware of that. Hence why I made the correction – Sartre is far more suitable for the self-appointed terribly clever (but not terribly useful wankers) that people much of the Guild movement. Elements of Descartes’s thinking actually has some utility.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 28 at 10:38 PM • permalink
- I’ll also say that it’s an absolute disgrace this legislation was not introduced earlier. CSU is one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties currently present in Australia.
Still, better late than never.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 28 at 10:46 PM • permalink
- Nic — They won’t close because of Howard. They’ll close because the suddenly-sober protesters will look at their wretched caricatures and say, “Christ, whose bloody idea was this, then?”Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 28 at 10:47 PM • permalink
- The principle of VSU aside, the student unions are/were the most corrupt, decadent, politicised viper-nests you could find.
It was all about connections, jobs for friends, spending huge amounts of money that came in every year, and making cardboard signs saying “NO TO HOWARD” etc.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 28 at 10:58 PM • permalink
- The students should use their saved union money to buy a home brew kit if the only thing they want is cheap beer.
Works out about $30 for a dozen long necks. tastes better than most SA beer too.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 05 28 at 11:11 PM • permalink
- “While most do not need the childcare….”?
Not sure that’s correct.
A quick assessment of the infantile behaviour so often displayed by students who most vocally oppose freedom of association suggests that they’re badly in need of being coddled like children – spoonfed, bums wiped and vomit cleaned.
Posted by pick-your-pun on 2006 05 28 at 11:23 PM • permalink
- I’m a “born again” supporter of compulsory student unionism. Throughout my time in student politics in the seventies and eighties, I actively campaigned against compulsory student unionism. (BTW, I don’t recall ever seeing Brendan Nelson on the barricades.)
However, when I visit campuses these days, I’m profoundly depressed by the fact that the predominant student activity advertised on the walls is bible studies. This is undoubtedly due to the Fed Government’s attempts to make universities into overseas student degree factories, and I don’t think that the situation will be improved by VSU.
It should surely have been possible to have retained some aspects of compulsory student unionism that didn’t involve funding for looney political causes or sports facilities that are mostly used by non-students.
(And, before the barbarians weigh in, I was doing a professional degree and, for a considerable part of the time, supported myself through full-time and part-time work.)
- Any chance Webdiary is a union project? Could explain a lot.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 28 at 11:40 PM • permalink
- #30 some responses to your appeal for CSU.
1. you’re depressed by the state of student life and culture on campus these days. But this state of affairs occured while unionism is still compulsory! So much for unions contributing to student life.
2. The cultural changes on campuses are not due to the federal government turning universities into “degree factories” (btw how can they be anything else?). They’re due to the changing role of universities worldwide, and the highly activist nature of campuses receding. It’s a global historical trend, deal with it.
3. what aspects of CSU are worth keeping? The whole system was corrupt to the core. (I’m going to assert that one without evidence, but I sincerely believe it). child care? If students need subsidised child care, then the government needs to provide it, or give tax incentives or whatever. “campus life”? that one is the biggest joke of all. Like 18 year old kids don’t know how to make friends with each other and have fun, without a well-meaning union to hold their hand.
You say you were against CSU- why the hell did you change? (actually I’m just expressing astonishment. I really don’t want to know). And by the way, I don’t remember any “barricades” of students protesting against CSU, in any decade. Refresh our memories.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 28 at 11:47 PM • permalink
- If the universities in Australia are anything like what we have in the US then it should be compulsory whachamacallits and add in heaps more compulsory costs. Heap em up and pile em on until the parents refuse to pay it anymore and start demanding that the high school system gets back to actually educating students instead of just passing them on to the universities to be educated at their personal expense.
I doubt most degreed grads of any western university could pass a 1950’s style middle school/junior high graduation test.
Universities are less and less about education and more and more about political indoc and money fleecing.
- Daddy Dave #19, it’s true – union subsidised food was such a load of bullshit, both economically and gastronomically.Posted by closeapproximation on 2006 05 28 at 11:53 PM • permalink
- #2 Anthony 1982
and there is a hue and cry about the Fred Schonell Theatre closing down, too. How many people do you know who are interested in watching arty-farty dubbed “winner of the Palm d’or in Cannes” movies?
People wouldn’t support it and it couldn’t survive without the compulsory union fees. Didn’t that tell them something?
Food on campus is disgusting and so much stuff is overpriced. Same shit, different day.
Time for a cuppa soup.
- Mr Small Placenta decries the loss of pub-based sporting facilities: “There’s no (other) pool table on campus, I’ve met so many people through this pool table from a vast range of cultures,” Mr Placentino said.
Dunno about cultural meeting places – in my experience pool tables are where fights break out.
- #33 Degree factories
It is a measure of how far universities have declined that anyone can seriously ask how they could be anything other than degree factories. For most of their existence, universities have been places of learning, rather than factories the sole objective of which was to hand over a piece of paper. If you were to look at the evidence, especially (but not only) in relation to overseas students, you’d see that getting that piece of paper is now generally regarded as more important than actually knowing and understanding your chosen subject.
Regarding your memory of student protest against compulsory student unions, I’d quite happily point you to the minutes of the SRC on which I served, which record my attempts to force a referendum on the issue.
It is somewhat ironic that, having been (verbally and physically) threatened by members of the CPA, NCC, campus Gay Club and assorted left-wing academics, I should now be sneered at by neocons who are happy to make assertions while admitting that they have no evidence to support them.
(Oh, and I worked on the polls for Howard at the last election, so my comments aren’t the result of a midlife conversion to leftism.)
- #36 Kae
Yeah I saw that crap in the paper yesterday. Once again, if it can’t pay for itself, who gives a damn. I sure won’t be shedding a tear when it goes.
And no I didn’t know anyone who was interested in the movies there, but I am an engineer. There were not many in our faculty who were sympathetic to the anti-VSU or any lefty causes for that matter.
I fondly recall back in first year when one of the usual types (shaved head but otherwise hairy, purple doc wearing, stinky) came in to encourage us young kiddies to go and protest the evil multi-national companies such as BHP, Rio Tinto, Microsoft etc at some conference. I asked why we would protest a bunch of companies that most of us wanted to work for. The lecture theatre gave a cheer and she was heckled off stage.
Good times.
#30 Stiofan
Don’t know what campuses you were looking at but there was plenty of advertising for student groups and activities at UQ last year. Great structures devoted purely to advertising were everywhere, although they covered mostly in propoganda for the Socialist Alliance.
You also clearly didn’t have a student email account. Almost all advertising for a group or social club’s event went through email.
- Stiofan – I can see your point, however the phenomenon you mention is simply a reflection of students’ shifting priorities. Uni simply isn’t as “clubby” (or rarefied) as it was when you were a student. The guilds want to reverse this trend, but they are fighting a losing battle. They have no right to force-feed unwilling students whatever it is of “university culture” they feel the plebs are in desperate need of. Guilds must scale back their ambitions markedly if they want to stay relevant.
I’ll also add that universities are losing their status as the major repository of mankind’s accumulated wisdom – and they have not been at the forefront of advancing knowledge for a long time. In most fields, the best and brightest no longer become university lecturers – the vast majority flood into the private sector. Also, the internet is giving unis a strong run for their money on both counts I mentioned above. I chance upon a considerably larger number of super intelligent and creative people on the blogosphere in a month than in all the (many) years I’ve been at uni. Is this a bad thing? Depends on your perspective, I guess. I think it’s bloody fantastic, personally.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 29 at 12:45 AM • permalink
They’re getting drunk somehow, if they’re putting adverbs on verbal nouns.
Quite correct. An adverb can modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb. But I learned that at a Bible College, where for some reason I didn’t see a lot of subsidised beer.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 05 29 at 12:46 AM • permalink
- #39
degree factories
… as soon as I hit submit I knew you’d pounce on me for that sentence. I spoke loosely. I meant “how can they not be degree factories.” Of course they are many other things as well. But they produce degrees, and are therefore factories. Sorry. Loose talk. It’s a side-issue, anyway.
I’d quite happily point you to the minutes of the SRC on which I served
I congratulate you on your efforts, but that’s a long way from a barricade- your original description. I guess you were being figurative. Which makes me wonder how Brendan Nelson came into it.
sneered at by neocons who are happy to make assertions while admitting that they have no evidence to support them
I said I would assert without evidence, ie without providing any evidence here on this website. I sure have reasons to say it, but I don’t want to end up in a lawsuit. But you served on an SRC, so you know I’m right, anyway. Why are we even arguing about that one?
my comments aren’t the result of a midlife conversion to leftism
After two long posts, you haven’t given a single reason for CSU, except for flyers advertising bible studies. And as I said, that’s just the times we live in, whether you like it or not. CSU/VSU won’t change it.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 29 at 12:51 AM • permalink
- and Stiofan, I wasn’t sneering at you. I was disagreeing. I thought I was being rather polite, actually.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 29 at 12:54 AM • permalink
- #11 I’ll take credit for that mental floss:
It was from this richard tonken post.
Rene Descartes walks into a bar.
Bartender says, ‘would you like a drink?’
Descartes says, ‘I think not.’
Then POOF he vanishes!—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2006 05 29 at 01:24 AM • permalink
- Well there was a blog on news.com.au about this very story with quite a few contributions – several by my goodself.
A number of people actually made the point it should be impossible to lose money selling beers on campus (not sure if any here commented) but for a lesson in just how its done you might want to read a post or two here from good ol “meg”.
it was also gratifying to see that although there were a couple of bludging, guild die hards commenting here, the majority were in favour….
and as to the solution about how do you keep the good services once VSU comes in, here in WA, after the Liberal Court Government did away with CSU in the ‘90s (and no the sky didn’t fall in or civilisation end), the Gallop Labor Government sort of reintroduced it when they took power in 2001. But what they said was that you had to pay a certain amount ($1-200??) but you could choose to pay it to the guild/union, or you could pay it to the university itself to fund services etc??? so i would assume this would give the uni the resources to probably provide child care, dentristy etc if this is what students really wanted, we just wouldn’t get all the agitprop and people who like to make a career in a sheltered workshop running their make-belive empires, instead of having to get out in the real world….
not sure it happens, but that in a nutshell is how we could keep the good services, while getting rid of the political crap guilds are famous for… its also amazing how quickly the guilds/unions can start effectively meeting the needs of the students, and offering packages that students just might want to take up when they aren’t bullied into parting with their hard earned cash, but get to choose voluntarily whether the guild/union is offering value for money like they did here in WA…. just watch…
- I thought it was you, Nora. Man, I am lazy. Thanks for popping in to remind me.
CSU fees: Every summer for six years, the most subtle tool I used was a 36” pipewrench. My back still hurts.
I paid for my degree(s) with my own money—AND I had to pay SU fees.
The FinAid and StuLoan creeps at the SU really used to piss me off—bitching and moaning constantly, the SU offered half-assed services for half-wits.
The round-heeled socialist creamer-dreamer gals succumbed so easily to a cunning linguist with a little knowledge of history and a guitar—it still makes me laugh.
So, I guess I got my money’s worth.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 29 at 02:48 AM • permalink
- Far be it from me to knock a University education, I wouldn’t have done it any differently—but I went as a “returning” (read “older”) student before all the PC crap curricula and oh-so-sensitive profs oozed their way into the system.
Skeeter, believe me, with four of the bloody things under my belt (and not currently working in any of the fields studied), your life education and current command of the language will stand you in good stead.
However, if you can get into a decent school, plan your own education down to the unit and research the curricula thoroughly (and the professors even more so)—it is definitely worth it, whatever your age.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 05 29 at 03:00 AM • permalink
- MarkL : they’re there, but you have to look pretty hard. They also get ripped down regularly – no doubt by those who decry the intolerance of the right, modern Australia and “ordinary” Australians.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 29 at 04:48 AM • permalink
- I have a confession.
I am a beneficiary of Whitlam’s free degrees in the early 1970s. I also took large advantage of the subsidised grog in the bars.
I believe together, these allowed me to get a filthy, high paid job in the Gaia-raping mining sector which in turn has turned me into a rigid necon, hater of soft lefties and compassionate causes.
<…thinks….>
<crickets>
<grins>
I WANT COMPENSATION !
Whitlam is responsible. I want compensation for the warping of my mind by so much largesse.
Not much. 10 big ones should be enough.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 29 at 04:52 AM • permalink
- “It should surely have been possible to have retained some aspects of compulsory student unionism that didn’t involve funding for looney political causes or sports facilities that are mostly used by non-students.”
Stiofan, I also see your point. Your point is that you are a total idiot.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2006 05 29 at 05:17 AM • permalink
- Hello Stiofan,
Maybe the influx of bible studies posters were just a reaction to all the anti-Christian hullabaloo that’s been going around since the 1960s. Anyhow, what the problem with Unis turning into bible studies centres? Originally, that was what they were created for, y’know. Considering all the mess that the Muslims are coming up with- its just a reaction against the tide.
Posted by Wylie Wilde on 2006 05 29 at 05:25 AM • permalink
- Marketing student David Placentino said he was “shattered” the bar would close. He and his friends would instead drink at a neighbouring pub.
“There’s no (other) pool table on campus, I’ve met so many people through this pool table from a vast range of cultures,” Mr Placentino said.
I’d say there is some successful education being ‘performed’ upon the youth of Australia. A marketing student supporting a bar via the “vast range of cultures” met tells me that bullshit or not, ABC has another voice of “reason” brought and bought. I imagine the “shattered” one is being sought to further admonish/educate the masses as we speak.
- As a student I have been on the front line (counterprotesting) for VSU for a while so I am happy that it is finally (almost) here.
But on the other hand you have to consider the libertarian argument, our universities are independent of the government and thus the government has no place to set the internal policies of the universities, irrespective of government funding.
- Good grief Samuel. “Libertarian argument”??
WTF?
Is it more “libertarian” to allow Universities the freedom to force students to join a union, or is it more libertarian to allow students the freedom of choice of whether to join a union or not?
Compulsory Student Unionism as a “internal policy of universities” ??
So if Universities have an “internal policy” that all their courses will involve home brewing, then “irrspective of Government funding” they should do as they please?
If you have been making the argument for VSU then no wonder it’s taken so long.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 29 at 07:45 AM • permalink
- Nope, screw compulsory fees to fund the variety of self-entitled privileged losers you find in Guilds. I’ve had a chat tonite with the friends of one of my kids (all at ANU). They all hate compulsory fees and get nothing out of it.
But they all have jobs and have to fork over up to a month’s part time job pay (in one case) for absolutely no return.
Then they say they see their money being used by exclusively leftist agitators for THEIR pet projects to enable them to fantasise that they are ‘revolutionaries’, and to fund THEM – so they don’t have to work! A big whine at ANU among the lefties (as one kid put it) is how to fund the 2007 ‘protest season’ without the fees! His response? “Maybe the bastards will have to get their first job, eh!”
Nope. Most of these kids’ll be dancing on the grave of ‘the compulsory ripoff’ as they term it. They are pleasedit is ending.
MarkL
canberra
how to fund the 2007 ‘protest season’ without the fees
that is lovely.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 29 at 08:38 AM • permalink
- OK, if it’s confession time, I too went through Uni in the 70s and actually got paid for going. From memory, it was circa $45 a fortnight.
I supplemented that by working as a bar steward in a pub.
Paradise you say? Let’s see—opening up at about 9.00 in the morning, in the 70s, the stench of a pub is overwhelming: it’s beer-soaked carpets, cigarette smoke, vomit and urine. I still struggle with going into older pubs today.
Then there was the night the lovely older lady having a birthday party projectile vomited over me, from my face downwards; the Sunday session the bikie “lady” wrapped a barstool around my kidneys from behind as I tried to calm down a “situation”; the drunk who bowled me off my motorcycle in the pub carpark; the elderly, very genteel lady who, on New Year’s Eve, took a VERY firm grip on my babymaker and veg as everyone sang “Auld Lang Syne” …
But you know, you tell this to the kids today … and they won’t believe you!
- I take exception at the fact that many seem to claim that the views of students are represented by student unions. A student myself, I think its rather telling that during the Sydney protests, despite having spent in the vicinity of $20,000 of compulsorily acquired student funds on this protest, and bribing students with free food, the National Union of Students could still attract no more than 200 protestors, and had to resort to pulling high-school students from the street to make up numbers.
In contast, 40 students attended a pro-VSU counter rally run on a total budget of $15. You do the maths regarding cost per student!
Similar things were seen with the Melbourne ones.
Students know that if Unions provide good services, they would join.
Unions are just scared that their inefficient crap will give no-one any insentive to join at the current rate, and that, after VSU, they’ll have to stop featherbedding and actually provide services to students.Posted by Yet Another Tim on 2006 05 29 at 09:47 AM • permalink
- BIWOZ — Who the hell puts carpeting in a college bar? Are they daft?
Hell, my old man’s tavern not only didn’t have carpets, it had gaps between the floorboards large enough to let us just hose the place down every morning (It was called the Barn for good reason). Of course, raking out the sand under the place could be unenjoyable, but at least we took the stank outside…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 29 at 10:48 AM • permalink
- Samuel,
But on the other hand you have to consider the libertarian argument, our universities are independent of the government and thus the government has no place to set the internal policies of the universities, irrespective of government funding.
Oh dear, you don’t know do you.
#62 BIWOZ, well, that’s the sacrifice you had to make to get your tertiary education. Kids just don’t understand how hard it was in the old days!
#63 Tims are everywhere!
I would have expected the student union to represent students in student/education matters, not grandstand on ‘refugee issues’ and similar crap. And waste their entire annual student
ragmagazine budget on the first studentragmagazine they produced for the year.
There is also an element within who believe that education should be free. To everyone. Foreign students, etc. Which I think is ridiculous; Australian taxpayers fund a percentage of University and therefore should be entitled to free/subsidised (HECS/PELS) tertiary education. But people who don’t pay tax here shouldn’t. Is that too simple?
To many international students Australian universities are the gateway to migration; the only advice required is which course to do to allow them to become permanent Aussies.
- kae,
I think Samuel was a troll in disguise. The disguise being the statement:I have been on the front line (counterprotesting) for VSU for a while
this is a common troll pattern. Announce your right-wing credentials, then say something ridiculously socialist. Here, I’ll give you an example.
I’ve been a Howard voter all my life and I certainly hate those lefties, BUT, geez, the workers sure are downtrodden these days by the corporate fascist Bush supporting capitalists, aren’t they?
see? Now you’ll know what to look for.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 29 at 09:50 PM • permalink
- #68
There is a depressing near-uniformity of views on this topic, which this posting typifies. Sometimes, kids, life ain’t black and white. To paraphrase Oliver Cromwell, think it possible that you may be mistaken, that it may be possible to support the war in Iraq, but not Workchoices, or to be a conservative and not to support the idea that the sole purpose of attendance at university is to get a piece of paper. It may even be possible that someone could support a modified form of compulsory student unionism without being an “idiot”.
kae,
I think Samuel was a troll in disguise.You got that right. A true libertarian would be asking wtf Government has to do with unis, period! I.e., they shouldn’t be funding them, and they shouldn’t be regulating them.
And THEN, the uni, being fully dependent on privately paid fees, could levy whatever fees it decided, and what the market will bear will sort them out.
It’s a pity these lefties have no idea what it is their opponents are all about.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 05 29 at 11:47 PM • permalink
- stiofan, that’s three posts (and counting) you’ve made on this thread without giving a single reason for supporting CSU.
Why are you so sure that university life would be shallow and empty without the student union? Surely, if students are learning and reading and meeting other students, it will be a rich and rewarding experience- even if they are not members of a union.
Besides, this whole “student experience” thing is, and always has been, a luxury of students in easy courses. Engineering and medical students, for example, usually don’t have time to scratch themselves.
I’m sorry if my views are depressing to you. But the world will not end when student unions end.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 29 at 11:52 PM • permalink
- pfft I support vsu, I was just floating an idea, jesus christ some of you are sensitive.
You got that right. A true libertarian would be asking wtf Government has to do with unis, period! I.e., they shouldn’t be funding them, and they shouldn’t be regulating them.
Exactly, the Howard government has on one hand helped the universities become more independent through a decrease in funding but on the other hand over regulating them through things like VSU. Sorry people but it goes both ways…
Exactly, the Howard government has on one hand helped the universities become more independent through a decrease in funding but on the other hand over regulating them through things like VSU. Sorry people but it goes both ways…
How is removing a government restriction then seen as imposing one? The Govt. still funds the unis, and as the old saying goes “He who pays the piper calls the tune”
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 05 30 at 05:02 AM • permalink
How is removing a government restriction then seen as imposing one? The Govt. still funds the unis, and as the old saying goes “He who pays the piper calls the tune”
Yeah fair enough – as I said, I support VSU – I just hope the majority of you would not support it if universities were completely privately funded.
- I actually don’t mind compulsory student unionism. The posturing and nepotism of lefty student politicans was an impetus for me to question long held views, and eventually led me to shift from being a lefty to a RWDB. And for that, I thank them!
Also as Churchill said “A man who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart. A man who is not a conservative by 30 has no brain.”
I can empathise with that saying. At that age, I went to lots of protests – but deep down, I just wanted to bonk hippy chicks.
VSU just doesn’t get me that excited.
I just hope the majority of you would not support it if universities were completely privately funded
Why would private funding make any difference? In the US, many universities are privately funded- universities like Harvard, Yale, Cornell, etc, and last I heard they don’t have compulsory student unionism. Please spell it out, because I really don’t understand. If unionism is not compulsory at these places, what are you afraid will happen?
Another question: why on earth would a private university allow a union to force students to join? This makes no sense at all.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 30 at 02:24 PM • permalink
- oh I get it. You’re saying:
CSU is wrong. But private universities should be able to do whatever they like. And if that means levying a compulsory union fee, then that’s what they should be allowed to do. Government should just back off and let them do the union’s work for them.If that’s what you’re saying then, okay.
And if every business in town wants to pay protection money to the local mafia to stop bricks coming through windows, then that’s what they should be allowed to do. Who are the police to tell them what they can and can’t do with their money, right?Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 31 at 12:54 PM • permalink
- Samuel,
I guess you’re in favor of “Voluntary Compulsory Student Unionism” (VCSU). An interesting perspective.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 05 31 at 03:32 PM • permalink
- dammit, all the trolls went home. *sigh*
and I was having such fun…Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 01 at 02:03 PM • permalink
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I studied hard at uni, and didn’t have much free time to hang out at the bar and drink beer during the daytime. At night, with so many other venues in town, the various Uni Bars never featured high on the list of desirable places.