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University drop-out rates and graduate earnings to be taggedPosted on 11/13/2009 at 2:29 AM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkUniversity courses are to be tagged with their drop-out rates, graduates' future earnings and the number of contact hours students can expect with tutors. The move, which will be modelled on a food-labelling system, is part of a consumer revolution in higher education to be unveiled this week by Lord Mandelson, the universities secretary.Students should be treated more as paying customers and given better information about the quality of their courses before they embark on a degree, the pearl jewelry new government framework for universities is expected to say on Tuesday. The plan aims to set out the future priorities for universities before a major shake-up of the student funding system. It is also expected to recommend greater business involvement in universities and new admissions systems to identify talented applicants from poorer backgrounds in an attempt to break middle-class domination of the top institutions. But the heavy emphasis on providing better value for money to students by making it clearer what their contribution is being spent on will fuel speculation that the government is paving the way for a rise in fees after the general election. Universities are lobbying to be allowed to charge more in top-up fees to increase their income ¨C or protect it against looming public spending cuts. Ministers have already indicated that they will expect both students and employers to pay more towards the cost of university studies. Under the plans for England, each course will come with a biwa pearl list setting out what the subject involves, how much teaching time students can expect, how often they will have tutorials with star academics and how much work they will be expected to do independently. It will also state the assessment methods and how often they will be examined. Drop-out rates and statistics on employability of graduates will be given for six months and three years after they complete their studies. Future earnings could also be factored in to calculate the premium of studying high-intensity courses such as engineering and medicine. The government is expected to launch a consultation about how the system would be introduced. There could be a central website or universities could be expected to publish details in their prospectuses. The National Union of Students said the system could warp universities' priorities in the way that school league tables have encouraged schools to focus disproportionately on Sats tests. The plan reflects the fact that there is growing anger among undergraduates about how their £3,225-a-year fees are being spent. In May this year undergraduates at Bristol University staged a tuition fees rebellion, complaining about reduced teaching hours and attempts to have essays marked by undergraduates instead of lecturers. Some 600 students reading economics and finance signed a complaint arguing that the university had failed to improve since fees were raised to more than £3,000 in 2006. By clearly labelling each degree course, it is thought students will have more realistic expectations and universities will be forced to akoya pearl improve how they operate. David Willetts, the Conservative shadow universities secretary, is working with Microsoft on plans to set up a Wikipedia-style guide to universities that would draw together data on graduation rates and job destinations and encourage students to give feedback to help other applicants. He has said universities should not be allowed to charge more in fees unless they can prove students are getting better value for money. Wes Streeting, president of the NUS, said: "There is a balance to be struck between transparency and really commodifying higher education. There needs to be very good data included otherwise universities will offer more hours in huge lecture halls and cramped seminars when fewer hours with smaller groups would be much better. The benefits may f How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town(2)Posted on 11/13/2009 at 2:29 AM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkFor them the recession is far from over. It rages on like a forest fire, burning through jobs, savings and homes. It will serve to exacerbate a long-term trend towards deepening inequality in America. Real wages in the US stagnated in the 1970s and have barely risen since, despite rising living costs. The gap between the average American worker and high-paid chief executives has widened and widened. The richest 1% of Americans have more financial wealth than the bottom 95%. It seems the American hope of a steady job, producing rising income and a home in the pearl jewelry suburbs, has evaporated for many. A generation of aspiring middle-class homeowners have been wiped out by the recession. "Poor people just don't have the political clout to lobby and get what they need in the way Wall Street does," said Brother Jerry.There is little doubt that Detroit is ground zero for the parts of America that are still suffering. The city that was once one of the wealthiest in America is a decrepit, often surreal landscape of urban decline. It was once one of the greatest cities in the world. The birthplace of the American car industry, it boasted factories that at one time produced cars shipped over the globe. Its downtown was studded with architectural gems, and by the 1950s it boasted the highest median income and highest rate of home ownership of any major American city. Culturally it gave birth to Motown Records, named in homage to Detroit's status as "Motor City". Decades of white flight, coupled with the collapse of its manufacturing base, especially in its world-famous auto industry, have brought the city to biwa pearl its knees. Half a century ago it was still dubbed the "arsenal of democracy" and boasted almost two million citizens, making it the fourth-largest in America. Now that number has shrunk to 900,000. Its once proud suburbsnow contain row after row of burnt-out houses. Empty factories and apartment buildings haunt the landscape, stripped bare by scavengers. Now almost a third of Detroit ¨C covering a swath of land the size of San Francisco ¨C has been abandoned. Tall grasses, shrubs and urban farms have sprung up in what were once stalwart working-class suburbs. Even downtown, one ruined skyscraper sprouts a pair of trees growing from the rubble. The city has a shocking jobless rate of 29%. The average house price in Detroit is only $7,500, with many homes available for only a few hundred dollars. Not that anyone is buying. At a recent auction of 9,000 confiscated city houses, only a fifth found buyers. The city has become such a byword for decline that Time magazine recently bought a house and set up a reporting team there to cover the city's struggles for a year. There has been no shortage of grim news for Time's new "Assignment Detroit" bureau to get their teeth into. Recently a semi-riot broke out when the city government offered help in paying utility bills. Need was so great that thousands of people turned up for a few application forms. In the end police had to control the crowd, which included the sick and the elderly, some in wheelchairs. At the same time national headlines were created after bodies began piling up at the city's mortuary. Family members, suffering under the recession, could no longer afford to pay for funerals. Incredibly, despite such need, things are getting worse as the impact of the recession has bitten deeply into the city's already catastrophic finances. Detroit is now $300m in debt and is cutting many of its beleaguered services, such as transport and street lighting. As the number of bus routes shrivels and street lights are cut off, it is the poorest who suffer. People like TJ Taylor. He is disabled and cannot work. He relies on public transport. It has been cut, so now he must walk. But the lights are literally going out in akoya pearl some places, making already dangerous streets even more threatening. "I just avoid those areas that are not lit. I pity for the poor people who live in them," he said. The brutal truth, some experts say, is that Detroit is being left behind ¨C and it is not alone. In cities across America a collapsed manufacturing base has been further damaged by the recession and has led to conditions of dire unemployment and the creation of an underclass. Richard Feldman, a former Detroit car-worker and union official turned social activist, sees disaster across the country. Sitting in a downtown Detroit bar, he lists a grim roll call of cities across America where decline is hitting hard and where the official end of the recession will make little difference. Names such as Flint, Youngstown, Buffalo, Binghamton, Newton. Feldman sees a relentless decline for working-class Americans all the way from Iowa to New York. He sees the impact in his own family, as his retired parents-in-law have difficulties with their gutted pension fund and his disabled son stares at cuts to his benefits. The economic changes going on, he believes, are a profound de-industrialisation with which America is failing to come to terms. How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town(3)Posted on 11/13/2009 at 2:28 AM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link"We are going to have to face the end of the industrial age," he said. "This didn't just happen last October either. It's been happening here in Detroit since the 1980s. Detroit just got it first, but it could happen anywhere now."The busy highway of Eight Mile Road marks the border between the city of Detroit and its suburbs. On one side stretches the city proper with its mainly black population; on the other stretches the progressively more wealthy and more white suburbs of Oakland County. But this recession has reached out to those suburbs, too. Repossessions have spread like a rash down the streets of Oakland's communities. Joblessness has climbed, spurred by yet another round of mass lay-offs in the auto industry. Feldman recently took a tour down Eight Mile Road and was shocked by what he saw: "I went door-to-door north and south of Eight Mile and I could not tell the difference any more. I did not believe it until I saw it." Professor Robin Boyle, an urban planning expert at Detroit's Wayne State University, believes the real impact of the recession will continue to be felt in pearl jewelry those suburbs for years to come. For decades they stood as a bulwark against the poverty of the city, ringing it like a doughnut of prosperity, with decrepit inner Detroit as the hole at its centre. Now home losses and job cuts are hitting the middle classes hard. "Recovery is going to take a generation," he said. "The doughnut itself is sick now. But what do you think that means for the poor people who live in the hole?" That picture is borne out by the recent actions of Gleaners Community Food Bank. The venerable Detroit institution has long sent out parcels of food, clothing and furniture all over the city. But now it is doing so to the suburbs as well, sometimes to biwa pearl people who only a year or so ago had been donors to the charity but now face food shortage themselves. Gleaners has delivered a staggering 14,000 tonnes of food in the past 12 months alone. Standing in a huge warehouse full of pallets of potatoes, cereals, tinned fruit and other vitals, Gleaners' president, DeWayne Wells, summed up the situation bluntly: "People who used to support this programme now need it themselves. The recession hit them so quickly they just became overwhelmed." In Detroit many people see the only signs of recovery as coming from themselves. As city government retreats and as cuts bite deep, some of those left in the city have not waited for help. Take the case of Mark Covington. He was born and raised in Detroit and still lives only a few yards from the house where he grew up in one of the city's toughest neighbourhoods. Laid off from his job as an environmental engineer, Covington found himself with nothing to do. So he set about cleaning up his long-suffering Georgia Street neighbourhood. He cleared the rubble where a bakery had once stood and planted a garden. He grew broccoli, strawberries, garlic and other vegetables. Soon he had planted two other gardens on other ruined lots. He invited his neighbours to pick the crops for free, to akoya pearl help put food on their plates. Friends then built an outdoor screen of white-painted boards to show local children a movie each Saturday night and keep them off the streets. He helped organise local patrols so that abandoned homes would not be burnt down. He did all this for free. All the while he still looked desperately for a job and found nothing. Yet Georgia Street improved. Local youths, practised in vandalism and the destruction of abandoned buildings, have not touched his gardens. People flock to the movie nights, harvest dinners and street parties Covington holds. Inspired, he scraped together enough cash to buy a derelict shop and an abandoned house opposite his first garden. He wants to reopen the shop and turn the house into a community centre for children. To do it, he needs a grant. Or a cheap bank loan. Or a job. But for people like Covington the grants have dried up, the banks are not lending, and no one is hiring. There is no help for him. It is hard not to compare Covington's struggle for cash to the vast bailout of America's financial industry. "We just can't get a loan to help us out. The banks are not lending," he said. On an unseasonal warm day last week, he stood in his urban garden, tending his crops, and gazed wistfully at the abandoned buildings that he now owns but cannot yet turn into something good for his neighbourhood. He does not seem bitter. But he does wonder why it seems so easy in modern America for those who already have a lot to get much more, while those who have least are forgotten. How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town(3)Posted on 11/13/2009 at 2:27 AM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link"We are going to have to face the end of the industrial age," he said. "This didn't just happen last October either. It's been happening here in Detroit since the 1980s. Detroit just got it first, but it could happen anywhere now."The busy highway of Eight Mile Road marks the border between the city of Detroit and its suburbs. On one side stretches the city proper with its mainly black population; on the other stretches the progressively more wealthy and more white suburbs of Oakland County. But this recession has reached out to those suburbs, too. Repossessions have spread like a rash down the streets of Oakland's communities. Joblessness has climbed, spurred by yet another round of mass lay-offs in the auto industry. Feldman recently took a tour down Eight Mile Road and was shocked by what he saw: "I went door-to-door north and south of Eight Mile and I could not tell the difference any more. I did not believe it until I saw it." Professor Robin Boyle, an urban planning expert at Detroit's Wayne State University, believes the real impact of the recession will continue to be felt in pearl jewelry those suburbs for years to come. For decades they stood as a bulwark against the poverty of the city, ringing it like a doughnut of prosperity, with decrepit inner Detroit as the hole at its centre. Now home losses and job cuts are hitting the middle classes hard. "Recovery is going to take a generation," he said. "The doughnut itself is sick now. But what do you think that means for the poor people who live in the hole?" That picture is borne out by the recent actions of Gleaners Community Food Bank. The venerable Detroit institution has long sent out parcels of food, clothing and furniture all over the city. But now it is doing so to the suburbs as well, sometimes to biwa pearl people who only a year or so ago had been donors to the charity but now face food shortage themselves. Gleaners has delivered a staggering 14,000 tonnes of food in the past 12 months alone. Standing in a huge warehouse full of pallets of potatoes, cereals, tinned fruit and other vitals, Gleaners' president, DeWayne Wells, summed up the situation bluntly: "People who used to support this programme now need it themselves. The recession hit them so quickly they just became overwhelmed." In Detroit many people see the only signs of recovery as coming from themselves. As city government retreats and as cuts bite deep, some of those left in the city have not waited for help. Take the case of Mark Covington. He was born and raised in Detroit and still lives only a few yards from the house where he grew up in one of the city's toughest neighbourhoods. Laid off from his job as an environmental engineer, Covington found himself with nothing to do. So he set about cleaning up his long-suffering Georgia Street neighbourhood. He cleared the rubble where a bakery had once stood and planted a garden. He grew broccoli, strawberries, garlic and other vegetables. Soon he had planted two other gardens on other ruined lots. He invited his neighbours to pick the crops for free, to akoya pearl help put food on their plates. Friends then built an outdoor screen of white-painted boards to show local children a movie each Saturday night and keep them off the streets. He helped organise local patrols so that abandoned homes would not be burnt down. He did all this for free. All the while he still looked desperately for a job and found nothing. Yet Georgia Street improved. Local youths, practised in vandalism and the destruction of abandoned buildings, have not touched his gardens. People flock to the movie nights, harvest dinners and street parties Covington holds. Inspired, he scraped together enough cash to buy a derelict shop and an abandoned house opposite his first garden. He wants to reopen the shop and turn the house into a community centre for children. To do it, he needs a grant. Or a cheap bank loan. Or a job. But for people like Covington the grants have dried up, the banks are not lending, and no one is hiring. There is no help for him. It is hard not to compare Covington's struggle for cash to the vast bailout of America's financial industry. "We just can't get a loan to help us out. The banks are not lending," he said. On an unseasonal warm day last week, he stood in his urban garden, tending his crops, and gazed wistfully at the abandoned buildings that he now owns but cannot yet turn into something good for his neighbourhood. He does not seem bitter. But he does wonder why it seems so easy in modern America for those who already have a lot to get much more, while those who have least are forgotten. Stephen Fry's fans lobby actor not to give up TwitterPosted on 11/13/2009 at 2:26 AM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - LinkStephen Fry was tonight inundated with messages from fans begging him to reconsider a threat to quit the social networking site Twitter, of which he has become Britain's best known exponent.The actor and presenter, whose "tweets" about his daily life are followed by close to a million users of the micro-blogging site, and who has played a key role in its emergence as a lightning conductor for public protest, sparked a deluge of online mesages after he announced his "retirement". "Think I may have to give up on pearl jewelry Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around," Fry commented earlier in the day, following an online disagreement with another user. In a message to that user, he said: "You've convinced me. I'm obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone." However, he later posted another tweet in which he implied that he had not yet made up his mind, saying: "Well maybe I'll see how I feel in a few days. Very low and depressed at the moment and any drop of meanness makes it so much worse. Sorry." Fry's threat to leave Twitter comes in the biwa pearl wake of his prominent involvement in the recent campaign by the so-called "Twitterati" to force the oil-trader Trafigura into withdrawing an injunction preventing the Guardian from publishing anything about a leaked report detailing the potentially lethal nature of waste dumped off the Ivory Coast. Separately, his tweets hitting out at controversial article by the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir, about the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, formed a high-profile part of the wave of criticism which led to the Press Complaints Commission receiving a record-breaking 1,000 complaints. Fry's disagreement with another tweeter began when the latter said "I admire and adore" Mr Fry, but that he found his tweets "a bit... boring... (sorry Stephen)". The tweeter, who said that he had been blocked him from viewing Fry's Twitter feed, later apologised and acknowledged that Fry suffers from bipolar depression. The actor has talked openly in the akoya pearl past about his struggles with the condition, also known as manic depression, and made a BBC do***entary three years ago about it. Last night, a steady stream of Twitter users, who posted messages pleading with Fry to stay on the site, included some who said they also suffered from suffered from the condition. |
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