The cost and price of an education

Lots of people more articulate and intelligent than me are spending a lot of time talking through and about the tuition fee announcements that have been revving up over the last couple of weeks. I heartily salute all of them. But the thing that gets me isn't the price, it's the cost. Because what universities are choosing to charge is definitely a price, not the cost of running those degrees. For the lower HEFCE funding banded subjects - mainly arts and humanities - by charging about £9k you've added approximately £2.5k on top of the current tuition fee plus HEFCE grant. I haven't seen any discussion of the actual cost of delivering different types of undergraduate degrees during the course of the tuition fees debate. If I've missed a decent analysis please enlighten me by leaving a comment.

As a large part of my job is about trying to set up the delivery of degrees somewhere other than our main university campuses and without HEFCE funding, the underlying budgeting model doesn't apply. I have tried to push the academics I work with and the decision making structures to pursue accurate costing for these projects. The majority of these activities are meant to at least cover their costs and ideally make a contribution to the running of the School they are based in. But if you haven't costed it properly, and that includes working out an appropriate overhead contribution, then you won't know if you are meeting that goal. Frankly the attempts at costing I've seen - both involving and not involving accountants - are dismal, deeply limited and unrealistic. This is a big part of why the great white hope of internationalisation is not all it is cracked up to be - if we costed things properly most of the time we wouldn't actually be able to justify doing them.

Surely this is just as important for mainstream teaching on our home campuses.

• How much does it actually cost to teach an undergraduate these days?
• In addition to the direct costs (time of academic staff, classrooms etc.) what indirect costs do we need to apply?
• What's fair to add to the student's bill and what should we be funding from other sources?
• How fair is it for arts students to subsidise more expensive subjects, or is that ok? 

What would a breakdown of where the new £9k fees are being spent look like.... anyone.... anyone?

Plagiarism and the importance of learning how to write

Just over a year ago I took over as secretary to my university's academic misconduct committee. As a university level committee it only deals with the most serious cases of plagiarism, cheating in exams and other forms of misconduct so if it makes it to us, it's either pretty bad, or pretty complicated, or both. As an aside to my normal international work I find it a refreshing change and both an interesting and challenging addition to my job.

Some students are what I would call out and out 'chancers', they fully know and understand the rules but they have made a calculated decision to break them anyway. They have normally done something fairly daring, and they always continue to deny any wrongdoing no matter how damning the evidence against them...

'Just because my dissertation is 86% the same as this other one, with only the country in the study changed and my dedication page, I still don't see how you can say I've plagiarised'. 

'No, I composed the survey questions and conducted the analysis on my organisation entirely myself. It is purely co-incidental that the questions and data are exactly the same as in that published report'

These, I have no sympathy for and I am pleased when the committee throws the proverbial book at them. However, they actually make up the minority of our serious misconduct in coursework cases - perhaps as little as one in ten. The majority of students fall into one of two other categories: ran out of time and panicked or really just didn't get what we expected from them and what academic writing is all about. We can try and help the first bunch by staggering deadlines, compulsory submission of drafts etc. but its the second lot that really makes me worried - because isn't it one of the fundamental qualities employers need in graduates the ability to write well?

Of course when I say write, I mean all the critical thinking and analysis that goes behind it as well - it all goes hand in hand. The opportunity and encouragement to truly learn to write was one of the greatest gifts given to me in my undergraduate arts degree. I was by no means the perfect student - I didn't do all my reading, didn't turn up for all my seminars. But I was lucky enough to be studying something that would regularly touch on areas that really piqued my interest. So I'd pick my essay topics carefully and dive in to the primary and secondary sources with gusto - trying to pull them apart and put them back together to make the argument I wanted to make. Goodness knows if you ran one of my first year essays through Turnitin you might find some fairly 'poor academic practice' but through understand my marks through feedback and by the process of writing itself, my maturity as a student grew and by the end of my degree I really loved writing.

Not every student is going to start out and progress of their own accord with the minimum of specific help like I did. I had a fantastic foundation laid for me by certain teachers at school and most of all my mother, who proofread and commented on endless pieces of GCSE and A-level coursework. For many however, who lack those foundations, and perhaps a particular passion for their subject of study, it seems like going to university is just going through the motions or just too baffling a new universe to comprehend. Maybe if we were more creative at the start of degrees, in introducing materials and topics that are more likely to spark interest, and in doing so introduce them to the art of academic writing rather than just giving them lessons on referencing styles and baffling them with our official definition of plagiarism.

In US universities I think its almost universally compulsory for students in their first year or two to take 'freshman composition' classes - for tales of this see the blog College Ready Writing, in particular the recent post about using Fahrenheit 451 in an exercise about developing a central argument in essays.

This level of attention to developing students as scholars and writes takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Often it just seems easier to say - 'well we print study guides and run sessions if they want them', 'well they should have learnt this at A-level' or 'if they don't understand UK higher education we shouldn't let them in'. I feel that this is just abdicating our responsibility for actively developing our students. Its always argued that students need to be active learners, but before that can happen at the start of the process we need to be active teachers.   

Einstein and IELTS

So its not been a great day today, still recovering from my CFS hangover after attempting to be social on Saturday night. Day two on twitter and I gave the UEL VC some tourist tips on visiting Malaysia so I'm counting that as a success.... But its got to past five o'clock and I need some distraction so I'm drawn to the wonder of TED, and today I fell upon Patricia Ryan's - Don't insist on English.

Wherever I've travelled in the world I've found speakers of English - whether it be western China, the hinterland of Kazakhstan or a taxi driver in Madrid. And as an often solo traveller finding an English speaker, particularly when I'm jet lagged and desperately trying to find my hotel in a strange city, I find a wave of relief often washes over me. Somehow, some way I will be understood. Then when the jet lag wears off, and I start the process of acclimatisation, a subsequent wave washes over me - tinged with a bit of shame and sadness that I am still, pretty much monolingual.

A little bit of French lingers from school, and I am still persevering with my Mandarin studies, but basically I am still a monoglot - like most of us who have English as our first language. Patricia Ryan's TEDtalk wasn't so much about how terrible the lingua franca of English is, but the benefits and value of language diversity.

As hard as it is to find the time at the moment, I have really enjoyed getting to know an entirely different language system in Mandarin. It's a very rich language, by building its words out of individual characters and sounds it can be very flexible in its standard vocabulary, perhaps even more flexible that our immensely wordy English. We may have grandfather and grandfather, they have distinct words for mother's father, mother's mother, father's mother and father's mother. There are also specific words for older sister and younger sister. I also love the compound words for everyday things - 'baoguo' money bag for wallet.

So what do we lose when we make English almost the only language for science and higher education? Do we stifle creativity by forcing our research and thoughts into a single set of signifiers? Why do our 'internationalised' universities still placed such little value on learning different languages (come on we all know its mainly 'lip service'? Maybe we should make more effort to interact with our partners and colleagues around the world in their languages, rather than teaching and publishing almost exclusively in English and only recognising what has been published in English language media. It doesn't mean we all have to be fluent, we are increasingly moving towards a situation where the 'universal translator' of Star Trek fame may become a reality - so why should we continue to get trapped by our English?

All the way back

Ok, I'm not going to try and fob you off with an excuse that I was too busy to blog for 10 or 11 months. I have been busy - travelling, selling a house, buying a house, moving house, working getting sick etc. But I really should have found some time to write. But I'm back now, all will be well.
As well as the usual movie, books and me posts, I'm also going to try and blog a bit more about higher education and stuff that gets me ranting. I thought about starting a new 'HE confidential' type blog, all anonymous and super secret identity like. Even went so far as creating it on WordPress. Then I realised I couldn't be bothered keeping up an alternate identity and that I was semi-anonymous on this blog so I should just suck it up and start blogging here again.
I've also finally joined the twitterverse after figuring out it could fed my information addiction and maybe some fellow HE ranters will find some interest in what I say. Well even if they don't, it gives me a place to rant. See you soon. 

I am that woman

So I've been basically working my arse off this year. Harder than I've ever worked. I've travelled to: India, USA, Kazakhstan, Trinidad, China... and I've got trips to Greece, South Africa, Malaysia and France to do by the end of September. I've written ridiculously long and thorough reports on stupidly complex problems. I've commissioned £100k's worth of market research and worked with lawyers to solve the problem of China. Not to mention turning 30 next month, that one's going to be a kicker.

And this week a momentous change happened in my working life. I became a line manager to L. She's looking like she's not going to need 'managing' per se, but she is going to need a lot of support and attention to bring her up to speed and train her for the next 6 months to a year as this is a very new kind of work for her. She's coming to Greece so hopefully we'll have some girly bonding around the Acropolis.

In home life, Hubland has a new job (with my employer, but at different site) so we can finally move to near where I work, ending my 3 hour a day commute. So we're DIYing the house to death, hopefully to get it on the market at the start of the first proper week of June. We've sorted a week day place to crash from when Hubland starts work in July, and then we'll be able to start house hunting proper - and ye gads our budget is now up to £250k. That's a quarter of a million people.

But... thankfully... I do have the weekend off for my birthday... and we have our supercool Texan friend coming to stay in July/August so we'll do some chillaxing (Hubland hates me using that word) when she's here.

It's pretty much all good, even my health is holding up ok, it is just crazy busy.

Zim

Hubland and I ending up watching the documentary 'Zimbabwe's Children' last night.... we didn't mean to, most evenings we're just not up to coping with that sort of programming, however much we want to know about what is happening in the world. I'm glad we watched it as sometimes we all need to be reminded of the everyday suffering of ordinary people in places like Zimbabwe.
I'm just about to finish reading a book entitled 'Dinner with Zimbabwe' which is a psychological biography of the premier based on a series of interviews with people inside and outside of Zimbabwe that know and knew him, and even an interview with the man himself. It tries, from a psychological point of view, to understand how a shy, intelligent boy, hero of his people, became one of the world's most loathed dictators.
When I've finished I'm going to send it on to my uncle, who with my wife and cousin lived in Harare in the late 80s early 90s. Things were not easy then, I remember sending various things in the post to my aunt, including bras, but they are nothing compared with what has happened since the farm invasions in 2000. I know that what has happened in Zimbabwe has broken their hearts.
The tragedy of Zimbabwe - 1 in 7 of the population HIV positive, one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, half the population surviving only due to food aid - was a completely avoidable tragedy. The rest of the world has stood by and let it happen and that is unforgivable. Without the tacit support of its neighbouring countries (and governments further afield like China) Zimbabwe's decent into chaos would surely have been halted by now.
As Britons our hands are largely tied, with the fear that any intervention could be seen as more colonial interference. Our present Labour government, while not responsible for Mugabe's madness, contributed significantly to the descent when it refused to honour the agreements that had been made regarding compensation and land distribution by the Conservative government at the moment of independence. We also managed to communicate it through one of our least tactful citizens - Clare Short.
Despite all of this, our complicity, our responsibility, and our penchant for following other country's tragedies as they unfold, there is so little ongoing coverage of what is happening in Zimbabwe. I simply don't understand why that is.... and I'm not sure what I need to do about it.

All over the world

Shamed by the fact that even adventuringjen with baby boo can blog I thought I'd better update this beast for any of you that check occasionally.

It has been an insane 2010 so far - with two continents covered so far, prospects of a new person to help at work, a realisation that I really can't keep up this commute... and today, a new baby born to my sister-in-law - so I'm now officially an auntie.

It doesn't look like its going to let up anytime soon... hubland has to has to has to has to has to has to has to finish the professional qualification he started over 10 years ago. His studying will hopefully be helped by the fact that I'm out of the country for one week a month for the next three months - Kazakhstan, Trinidad and China.

Life is hectic, but mostly good... just wish I had a little more energy to enjoy it!

Who am I?

So yesterday was my last day in the office for two weeks. I'm not going to say it was my last day at work, because I no longer have a job where that happens. Hopefully a bit of puttering around on Mon-Wed will allow me to finish what I needed to finish and keep on top of developments. Thank goodness the University does close completely for a bit so nothing much will happen between Christmas and New Year..... so during that time I'll catch up on some reading.

As much as I bitch and moan, and particularly get bumfuzzled by some of the insanity behind the running of my workplace, I do really love my job. I bought myself the boxed set of the West Wing a few weeks ago and I've been using at as my own personal therapy. I'm hoping that these two weeks off will hopefully let the lessons of the West Wing sink in a little more. I think, at the moment I'm Josh - very enthusiatic, good at assimilating information, but sometimes a little overwhelmed by my own momentum. I want to be CJ (just appointed Chief of Staff as I'm watching season 5) who is learning how to not have to do everything herself, but use the people around her to achieve more than she can achieve on her own.

At some point soon I might get some admin support, and some 'back fill' for a mysteriously undefined secondment that I may or may not fully undertake.... so I'm going to have to learn to delegate and trust that other people can do the stuff I do... without hand holding. I do trust and respsect them, they're bright, talented... but they're Donna, not Josh. I need to figure out how to let go a bit and help them develop.

Who needs management develoment... WW all the way...

Guilty pleasures

Although a fan of last.fm, I've pretty much converted to Spotify these last few months. Music has always been a big part of my life. This fact was brought home by listening to Dale Winton on Radio 2 on Saturday as we drove back from the North. His Pick of the Pops was 1989, I knew 19 out of the top 20 tracks for that day. I was nine years old so I think that's fairly impressive.

So that gave me a guilty pleasures to follow up on on Spotify - Cher. Today I'm listening to Michael Bolton. Should I feel guilty? Probably not, because ultimately who cares what's 'cool' anymore, everything is 'cool' to someone, otherwise how would the rest of us ever here about it? But who gets to decide? So much is 'cool' at the moment which I think is totally nuts - skinnyness, binge drinking.... and don't even get me started on John and Edward.

Spending a week with pregnant ladies and new babies has made me reflect (again) on whether we'll have kids. As always its still a maybe - we never stay on one side of the fence for long. But I hope if we do we'll be able to raise them to spend as little of their time worrying about what is 'cool' and just focus on what they enjoy. So many people seem to spend their lives worrying about 'coolness' that they never have time to find out what's 'cool' to them...

So come on - what are your guilty pleasures?

Multitasking...

So, I'm still feeling pretty crap. But this week is not allowing me to acknowledge that at all. I've been in the office three straight days so far - something I haven't done since July I think. I have two major things due on Friday - one I've known about for ages and is 95% there. The other, I thought we'd missed one deadline and I therefore had 6 months to fix it, but no, we got an extension so I now have 4 days to fix it. And I had to make it to all my usual meetings and answer email and phonecalls. Email lawyers, berate bad translation companies, give a two hour lecture on quality assurance. Cue manic multitasking.

I do work well under pressure. I work my best under moderate pressure - this week has exceeded this. My brain ran out of steam on the phone at 5.30pm. But luckily its quite clever and woke up to the solution to the problem by 6.15pm when I was on the train home.

I've learnt so much in my job of the last two years. A few weeks ago I thought I was really starting to get it - now I realise I've just moved to level 2 of the game.

Blogging when you're (not) winning

So it's the end of the summer. High winds, driving rain, and feeling chilly enough to consider putting the central heating back on. Frankly, I've had a crap summer, gradually getting sicker and sicker for no reason that I can identify. I'm on annual leave this week and getting dressed and brushing my teeth are considered great achievements. I haven't the foggiest how next week back at work, a conference, then another conference in Madrid the week after are going to work. At least after that I won't feel quite as guilty if I collapse. I worked out that its been about 3 1/2 years since I was this poorly - I had a major crash just after hubland and I got married which took about 6 months to work its way out. This is feeling like a similar scale of crapness, only this time I live 90mins away from work instead of 5.... so slightly more tricky to handle.
Trying not to feel too stressed, or too sorry for myself as I know people close to me who are having crappy times at the moment. Anyway, send me positive thoughts if you've got any to spare.

So where am I again?

I seem to be missing ten days or so, can anybody help me find them. I spent most of last week in bed feeling all kinds of rottenness, not sure if it was the old bastard CFS or a virus or a combination of the two. Made it in to work on Friday mainly due to absoloute boredom and prospect of free lunch. Saturday night, just sat down to watch Iron Man (good Robert Downey Jr chest shots, could have done with a lot more plot) when the now all to familiar eye wobblying began.... a migraine was inbound. It is now Tuesday and I am just about surfacing, although my eyeballs are still hurting when I look at this.

So.... I'm pretty hacked off with my body. I'd like a new one now please as this one just isn't working for me.

Pondering

I've just returned from a lovely weekend in Pembrokeshire with Hubland. A wonderful time to catch up with each other after a month of either missing each other through my far flung location of me being asleep recovering from travelling.

While we were away I got the email (magic phone) telling me that I'd not been shortlisted for a job I'd applied for at another Uni. I was pretty disappointed as I thought I pretty much fit the job description perfectly... but obviously not quite closely enough. It was a perfect job, but not at all perfect geographically so Hubland and I were also rather relieved. For a couple of weeks, however, it had distracted me from the disatisfactions with my job. I still like a lot of the things about my job, unfortunately various institutional circumstances, massively worsened by the economic situation are currently frustrating the hell out of me. I seem to spend my day solving trivial problems while being prevented from getting stuck in to solving the big ones.

Unless something magical comes up I doubt I'll be applying for a job again in the future..... but I definitely need to work on a way of being a bit less 'aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' about work so I retain my sanity.

A different kind of city

Why is it that a feel at home in continental European cities? Despite my love of Hong Kong and KL somehow Krakow feels like what a real city should be. I haven't had a chance to see much as I've been working since we arrived yesterday lunchtime. Thankfully as of about an hour ago I am now off duty, K arrives late afternoon tomorrow so I've got a day to wander around on my own but with the lovely knowledge that a friendly face will be arriving just in time for dinner.

K and I had been discussing if we were going to head out of town at all - the salt mines look very, ,very cool so I think we will try and make it to them - if I was here longer I would go to Auschwtiz, but in such a short break I know I just can't take it. I want to bring Hubland back here and explore the area as the nearby mountains also look so lovely.I've got an hour to rest and then its off for dinner at Polish restaurant followed by 'Jazz Club' (haven't had the heart to say I hate jazz... might sneak off at that point).

Uptown girl

So I've done the hotel shuffle and moved uptown to a posh hotel that work had booked for the two nights I'm here on 'their dime'. Yes it is swish, but it is also about another £60 a night which if I'm paying is a lot - and still doesn't include breakfast.
I've had a love day exploring Toronto island (did you know it had one?) then failing to locate Kensington Market - was it meant to be a building like the picture on the map showed, or was that street it? Finding nice places for brunch and dinner and having a walking tour of downtown Toronto pointing out where all the ghouls and goblins reside.
My feet are killing me. I've done more walking in the last two days than in the last two months. I have blisters on my soles..... but it's been worth it. Although it has been strange having a full two days and two nights on my own in a strange city, I'm glad I came early because visiting places and never seeing them is just crap, after Vienna I swore I'd never do that again (all I saw was the train station and the Hilton which was opposite the train station). Travelling is much better with someone to share it with, it feels more 'real' somehow, but on your own is definitely better than not at all.
Luckily for my trip next week to Poland I will be joined by my friend K for the weekend so we can explore together. This is turning into a rather expensive few weeks...

The thing I've never done....

Is travel on my own. I've just realised this as I was sat in a pub in Toronto, eating a pizza and testing a local lager. It is a strange phenomenon, truly being on your own, a little scary, but not too bad. And after all it is Toronto so a lot of it is strangely reminiscent of home. My first observations so far are:
- Oreo Cakesters are a great invention
- The UK really has gone to town investing in 'street scene' recently - shiny paving, signs, street lights etc. I'm sure there are bits of Toronto that I'll find fully shinified but in London nothing within the circle line isn't. That isn't the case here.
- People are friendly, and responsible. I was a bystander in a lost cat rescue situation on the way back from the pub.
- I can't work out how to turn on my bedside lamps or properly lock my bedroom door (don't worry, there is a latch). I'm hoping this diminishing brain capacity is due to lack of sleep and/or the beer I had.
So, I'm on my own until late Monday light, when the cavalry from work arrive. I'm glad I made the trip early, I hate travelling and seeing nothing of my destination. So tomorrow it's straight up the tower...

Wonderful b****ks

We've had a lovely weekend - 100% home town based - which is blissful. On Saturday we had a few friends and neighbours to (very loosely) celebrate Beltane, the celtic spring festival which takes place at roughly the beginning of May. As with many paganesque festivals it is basically about sex, this time about the fertility shown by late spring and early summer, and about ensuring a good harvest for the growing season. Beltane is one of the four fire festivals - the others being Lammas in August, Samhain in October and Candlemas in February. So burning stuff seemed a good idea and our new fire pit came into its own. I'm not really pagan, but I like the idea of the wheel of the year, marking the passage of the seasons and it was a good excuse to catch up with old friends.

Sunday was gardening day - trip to the garden centre, some edging panels to stop the garden falling into the garage, and a couple more plants. Rest of said day was spent installing the panels and sieving the soil in the bottom corner of the garden getting rid of three buckets of stones. Looks top now.

Today we visited the open day of our local 'adult education college'. We had never been to the college before. It sits high on a hill looking down over a very green valley. It has a working cooperative farm, a metal work studio and a sculpture studio. It isn't a normal educational establishment, apart from the 10% of courses which are about artistic activities, the rest are well and truly alternative. Want to find you chakras? Join a western mystical order? Learn how to breathe? This is the place to come. It's a beautiful house, in a beautiful setting and its primarily a venue for the promulgation of this wonderful b****ks. B****ks because I think it is, wonderful because it's a wonderful peaceful place that offers all sorts of support and experiences to take part in totally harmless and probably pretty relaxing activities. Normally houses like this are either hotels or in private hands with large gates and walls. This college is open to the public, trying to be environmentally friendly, a source of organic vegetables, and a place for all our local hippies (we do have a lot of them) to get to together and chant. How truly lovely.

Conversations

WARNING - some readers may find this post distressing

I am a very open person, on occasion too open I think. But last night I was glad that I'm an open person and that I come across as an open person. Someone I've met on only a couple of occasions asked me to do some research for them - they knew I was good on the internet and knew how to find things out. They asked me to look up some information for them on date rape - as their daughter had just been the victim of a drug facilitated sexual assault.

Their daughter, let's call her Kirsty, she's 26. Kirsty had been out with a couple of girlfriends dancing in a club in London. Kristi is married and has a little child but she loves dancing. A guy began hassling them, when he wouldn't go away a 'knight in shining armour' stepped in and got rid of him. The Knight wanted a reward and he asked for a drink using that phrase . They felt obliged so they went to the bar and bought drinks for the Knight, his friend and themselves. They don't remember anything in detail much after that until they regained full consciousness in a bed, together, with a used condom nearby. Kirsty described the events to her mother as if she was aware of what was happening but was very detached from the experience and wasn't able to stop it. She knows that someone had intercourse with her that night.

Kirsty has been to the police and the STI clinic and has decided she doesn't want to press charges. She hasn't told her husband yet but he is a very difficult and emotionally abusive man. At the moment Kirsti doesn't see what happened to her as sexual assault or rape and is blaming herself for the entire incident.

My acquaintance and I talked for nearly 2 hours - about Kirsty, about her husband, about my acquaintance's family and life. I told her about my life as well. For two almost complete strangers it was a startlingly honest conversation. That's when I don't think I'm too open - when it helps.

I've done the research. Pulled off details from the national rape crisis website and the equivalent in the US which had a lot of details on the drugs that are used to facilitate sexual assault - and I've emailed them to my acquaintance suggesting that even if her daughter won't get in touch with the local rape crisis centre than she should for herself.

I honestly don't know what else to write. Reflecting on it, last night was one of the most surreal and interesting of my life. I hope Kirsty survives, and my acquaintance finds a way to help her. And I hope I never have to go through anything like they are going through.

Updates - Chinese and Saudi Arabia

So I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for a few weeks now so I thought I'd write an update. I'm still loving it - studying for 1-2 hours a day, mainly utilising my long commute. Progress is slow but steady, I'm up to around 250 words and about 200 characters. You need at least 1000 characters to give you some kind of fluency in reading. My pronunciation and verbal fluency is of course leagues behind, but I'm hoping that once I've got a decent grasp of it I might be able to find a private tutor to help me with the verbal aspects - or bribe my colleagues with cake.

It isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. It's hard, learning any language is hard, but I don't think Mandarin is as bad as it is made out to be. You do have an extra step as you need to memorise the connection between the English-Pinyin-Character trio but using the wonderful Anki that seems to be happening. I'm pretty good at recognising characters and I'm starting to remember the most frequent ones enough to write them from memory when I see the English phrase. I think truly memorising them enough to reproduce them easily will take some time.

I do love the simplicity of the the language. A far simpler grammatical system - no verb conjugation, past tense and questions indicated by the addition of a syllable at the end of the sentence or after the verb, very little us of 'is', 'of' and 'and'. Simple sentences just run pronoun-noun-verb-question participle i.e. You today go out? which translates into normal english as Would you like to go out today?

I've bought a couple of books to help me understand the context of the language, particularly the written characters. A small percentage of characters do have their origins in pictographs (although not as many as you might believe) and understanding how these evovled is useful to me in understanding the structure of the language. So the two characters for morning relate to 'sun rise' and represent the sun above the earth and up.

On the other matter.... I have only found one other colleague who feels the same way as I do. Most just didn't see the problem. I did quite a lot of research and soul searching after writing that last post, just to confirm that women really are in a pretty poor situation in SA. I've decided I don't agree with academic boycotts because I don't think in 99% of cases they are justified - economic and political boycotts are a different matter. But I don't think we should enter into a partnership with any University in a country where we are forced to compromise the way we work and our own obligations under UK equality legislation i.e. how would we handle an admissions process where women are automatically excluded? If I can be convinced that working with a SA University does not force us to do this, then I might be able to reconcile myself with it, but otherwise I'll take a personal stand.

Two words

I've done pretty well not to think about work this week. I've been at home, chilling out, attempting to drill some more Chinese into my head, baking, and hanging out with friends. And then two words popped into my head, two words that really make me stressed. They are a rather strange couple of words, and they've been coming for a while - I knew they'd pop up eventually.

The two words? Saudia Arabia. I work for a University helping it to work with other Unviersity's around the world. I'm not entirely comfortable about the human rights, equality of opportunity and democracy records of all the countries we work with. But somehow I manage to rationalise myself out of the problems with most of them: China, India, UAE etc. I argue that they're on a course towards improving the situation in which their populations live, my favourite is China - and despite what you read in the press - visiting and working with Chinese Universities gives me a lot of hope.

Before I headed off on annual leave we had an approach from a Saudia Arabian University, and I had a discussion with a colleague about a scholarship scheme operated by another. I'm not sure everyone thinks that working with Universities from this country is problematic, but I seriously have to think about whether I'm willing to work with them at all. It's an Islamic monarchy. Women's and children's rights are not recognised. There is no democratic involvement whatsoever. I believe that by working with them my employer might breach its duty under the various pieces of equality legislation.

I don't want to be a trouble maker, but I know that this isn't something I'm going to be able to let lie. Obviously nothing has happened yet, but the approach is a genuine one, and they will be visiting. I want to work for a University that is true to itself as a bastion of free thought and academic critique, and I hope that I will be able to raise this issue for debate and have the senior staff engage with the complexity of this issue - rather than being blinded by the glamour of the opportunities that might present themselves. Fingers crossed.