Aging students read less and cry for attention

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:59:26 GMT

Or maybe it's just a collection of links. Wait, it's links about... Ah, you get the idea...

GE in a blatant corporate search optimisation bid, have a brilliant visualisation of age demographics over time, huge chunks of the projected population expansion in the next few decades is because we've stopped dying as quickly. Which is, broadly, a good thing, right?

Now, university funding and numbers. Remember that 50% should go to university target that the Govt set? The one that was initially "some form of FE, including apprenticeships" but got changed because they forgot the point of their own policy? You'd have thought that, given that target, the proportion of young people graduating with a degree would've gone up a lot over the last 13 years, right? Wrong. The number of graduations as a proportion of the number of 21 year olds has stayed pretty much constant. nmg does have some caveats, but the basic principle is sound. More students due to a rise in the number of people at university age. That visaulisation above? My age range (born 1974-1980) is one of the smallest, so as the numbers peaked, the total number of students went up, but that was all. More kids = more students. Another failed Labour policy, or just an example of maths inability?

Now, given we've just taken power locally and have to set the budget for the council for next year, news that greater participation and consultation improves information and makes cuts easier is useful to know. The caveat that the society that commissioned the survey was set up to promote participatory democracy is useful but doesn't discredit it.

This, on the other hand, is weird. Giving poor kids computers can decrease their academic attainment. Not conclusive, but far more important to increase the thirst for learning, worries about a "digital divide" may be misplaced, much better to provide a big pile of books. Makes sense to me.

Keeping in touch with people from college is useful. David, now studying astrophysics, likes to think, a lot. The type of disaster that kills the most people is actually the humble heatwave. We're good at dealing with floods and famines, not-so-good at dealing with slower, less obvious problems, but they tend to kill more people. If the world continues to heat, we'll need to adapt to that, fast.

Last up, for now, a bit about mental health. There're lots of pejoratives surrounding mental health problems. The stigma attached is lessening, for some conditions, quickly, and people are much more able to talk about them. But stigma still exists. Especially for those "doing it for the attention". Maybe if those attantion seekers actually got some real attention every so often, they wouldn't need to do it?

Anyway. That's folder one of my link collection emptied out. Some of it was time dependent and deadlines are missed, so not posting, but, y'know. More to follow. Probably. But not tonight, insomnia has kicked in badly last few weeks, but it's partially self inflicted, time to try to sleep, again...

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Mat Bowles

Aging students read less and cry for attention