20% of parents want kids to go to local university
A survey of more than 2,500 parents by the pollsters YouGov reveals nearly 20 per cent have asked their children to pick a local university - so they can still live at home. About 4 per cent are even considering sending non-working partners back into employment to help their offspring with debts. The findings show parents believe they will have to pay for the cost of debt incurred at university. The government is abolishing up-front fees when it introduces annual top-up fees of up to £3,000 from 2006. The sample also showed that 13 per cent of parents were contemplating working longer hours, 9 per cent seeking a better job and 6 per cent remortgaging their homes.
(Independent, Daily Express)
Hodge letter on undemanding science
"I share the concern about threatened closure of the chemistry department at King's College, London." "I am sure your readers will agree that it would be wrong to fund teachers and places on university courses where there is little demand. Science suffers from lack of demand at university, not from the 50 per cent target. We should not obfuscate the two."
(Daily Telegraph)
Rumour of black female Oxford vice-chancellor
Dr Mamphela Ramphele, a key figure in the Black Consciousness movement and partner of the late Steve Biko, has been named in connection with the post of Oxford vice-chancellor.
(Daily Express)
Plath's schoolgirl love poem on sale for £4,500
An early poem by Sylvia Plath reveals that she had a schoolgirl crush on an ice hockey player. Plath was 12 years old in 1945 when she wrote King of the Ice, a breathless hymn of praise to her unknown "hero on skates", thought to have been a fellow school pupil in Massachusetts. Today the original pencil-written manuscript of the 10-line poem will go on sale for £4,500 at the Antiquarian Book Fair at Olympia, west London.
(Daily Telegraph)