Imperial Issues
Feb. 27th, 2007 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerThe Guardian carries an interview today with Prof Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College. Although they don't call him that - he'd referred to throughout as the 'head', almost certainly because the fact that the senior academic at IC is a rector rather than a vice-chancellor is almost certainly one of the things that Prof Sykes wants to change about the place.
I'm aware that many people at IC are not that keen (to be diplomatic) on Prof Sykes' plans. As an IC alumnus myself I regret the loss of many traditional structures that he has swept away, such as the Constituent Colleges. But it's hard to disagree with some of his points, be they IC-specific (sixty-five people reporting directly to him under the structure he inherited?) or more general (pop-science GCSEs, or the current government's obsession with getting half the population into university). And I fully sympathise with his frustration about IC's lack of recognition. When I put IC top of my UCCA form, my headmaster was horrified; I was going to dent my schools Oxbridge admissions statistics!
I'm aware that many people at IC are not that keen (to be diplomatic) on Prof Sykes' plans. As an IC alumnus myself I regret the loss of many traditional structures that he has swept away, such as the Constituent Colleges. But it's hard to disagree with some of his points, be they IC-specific (sixty-five people reporting directly to him under the structure he inherited?) or more general (pop-science GCSEs, or the current government's obsession with getting half the population into university). And I fully sympathise with his frustration about IC's lack of recognition. When I put IC top of my UCCA form, my headmaster was horrified; I was going to dent my schools Oxbridge admissions statistics!
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Date: 2007-02-27 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 11:30 am (UTC)When I was doing my MBA, I spent a lot of time in Mech Eng, both for the paninis and the fact that one of the Tanaka computer rooms was in Mech Eng and I was struck by how empty the building felt. Where was the white heat of technology. To be fair, this was less true of other departments. I always imagine that MIT *feels* like a hotbed. But then I have been to many universities and research institutions over the years and never found a hotbed (it's me, of course).
`Sykes points to the US system as the way to do things properly. "If you're not good enough to go from school to university, you can go to the community college. You could come out of a bad school, go to a community college and end up at Harvard or Princeton. You used to be able to do that in this country - you can't any more."'
How did you used to be able to do that anymore that you can do it now? Tge lower tier of the UK education system (the university colleges, then the universities that were only CHEs, never polytechnics) is the equivalent of the community college system. It would be entirely possible to go to St Martin's College, Lancaster (soon, oddly, to be part of the University of Cumbria - slight geographical issue there, I think), get a first, proceed to the University of Lancaster, do a master's degree and then go on to do a DPhil or a PhD at Oxford or Cambridge (or Imperial).