I remember how it was -- JR
UK: University sends shocking email offering sex work training
The student union of Durham University in England sent an email to all students and staff promoting a sex work training course offered by the university.
“The SU position on students in sex work are [sic] clear: support, informed advice, de-stigmatization and collaboration with expert organizations,” the email read.
The university brought in the external “Students Involved in the Adult Sex Industry” session in response to student requests, a spokesperson for Durham University said. Adding that sex work is a “feature” within higher education “across the UK.”
“We are emphatically not seeking to encourage sex work, but we are seeking to provide support to our students,” the spokesperson said. “We make no apologies for working to ensure that Durham is a safe environment for all of our students and staff.”
A sex work course offered via video conference offers to “support students in a difficulty arising from the reality of rising costs in higher education,” according to student union welfare and liberation officer, Jonah Graham. “Trying to create a scandal from an attempt to support people whose work can make them vulnerable is contemptible.”
The email advertising the course described it as a “training opportunity,” and stated that “student sex workers should not face any barriers to accessing support which is well informed and free from prejudice.” The “Level 1 Training” for “student sex workers” was described as a one, hour-long meeting, and the “Level 2 Training,” would last 90 minutes.
“Sex work is degrading, dangerous and exploitative. Uni should have nothing to do with it,” Member of Parliament Diane Abbott said on Twitter.
A similar incident occurred at Leicester University in October when the school offered an online “toolkit” for students involved in prostitution and assured them that “sugar daddies,” working on sex chat lines and selling one’s underwear online are all legal.
https://dfctoday.com/university-sends-shocking-email-offering-sex-work-training/
**********************************************UK: White working class suffer from class privilege... that's why they hate the idea of white privilege': Actor Eddie Marsan
Actor Eddie Marsan has said white working class children are suffering from 'class privilege'. The Ridley Road star, 53, said they should be seen as a distinct group with issues that need to be fixed.
He called for universities to set up quotas for them and said he would be in favour of a Stormzy-style scholarship scheme for white boys and girls.
Meanwhile the actor called for the government to launch more grammar schools to boost their education.
It comes after a report last year found white working class children were the UK's most deprived pupils. Researchers found they were being left behind at school, face a lifetime of economic hardship and are hit hardest by the pandemic.
Marsan, who starred in Sherlock Holmes and War Horse, claimed he had benefited from white privilege but also suffered from class privilege.
The actor said playwrights Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter helped him realise grammar schools could help.
He told the Times: 'I think we have to acknowledge the white working class are suffering from class privilege. 'And, probably, that's why they have an aversion to the idea of white privilege because they think it's really hard for us as well. But the two can exist at the same time.'
Marsan said his background stemmed his education, having not read his first book for fun - The Diary of Adrian Mole - until he was 16.
He told how he wanted to do his A-levels but when he told his father he told him he needed to get a job. He added: 'You have to acknowledge that the white working class are an individual social group, that their needs and their problems need to be addressed.'
Marsan was born in Stepney, Tower Hamlets, east London, to a lorry driver father and dinner lady mother. They moved to Bethnal Green and he went to Raine's Foundation School before leaving aged 16. He went on to work in a printers before moving into theatre and attending drama school.
Marsan was asked how universities should deal with a smaller proportion of white working class people applying.
He said: 'I would do a quota. I don't know how you would but I would.' He added bosses should set up a system for these people like the ones for ethnic groups.
The actor said he would be in favour of a scholarship for white working class pupils similar to singer Stormzy's Cambridge University one for black students.
Dulwich College and Winchester College refused to set up scholarships for poor white children worth £1.2million. They said they could not attach a racial element to any bursary after enquiries by mathematician Sir Bryan Thwaites.
A report last year found white working-class children are being left behind by the school system and face a lifetime of economic disadvantage. But it said help to raise educational standards is often targeted at ethnically diverse areas and pupils from minority backgrounds.
The research, submitted to the Commons Education Select Committee, revealed white pupils eligible for free school meals are half as likely as their peers from poor ethnic minority backgrounds to achieve strong passes in the eight GCSEs used in school league tables.
They are also more likely to attend a failing school and live in struggling communities in the North and Midlands.
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A new higher education ranking has placed five Australian institutions in the top 50, comprising almost 10% of the top 50 universities.
The Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities (ARTU) ranked the University of Melbourne as the 28th best university in the world, followed by University of Queensland and the Australian National University at 42nd and 44th respectively.
The report also placed University of Sydney and University of NSW in the top 50.
In its third year, the ARTU combines the three main global university rankings to form a single index, examining 10 years of data.
Nicholas Fisk, the ranking’s creator and deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of NSW, told the Australian Financial Review the project provides a comprehensive picture of the state of the university sector.
“It smooths out the volatility and variance of the three major ranking systems,” Fisk said.
The rankings show that Australia has catapulted in global standing over the past 10 years, with the country’s Asia Pacific neighbour China following closely behind.
“In the past decade, Australia has gone from five universities in the top 200 to 13, China has gone from five to 10,” Fisk said. “It is Australia and China that have really been the movers and shakers.”
With 13 universities in the top 200, Australia is behind only the U.S. with 54 and Britain with 27.
Fisk said that considering the country’s population, its growth as a higher education superpower was impressive.
“10% of the world’s top 50 universities are in Australia,” Fisk said. “That is truly remarkable for a country with 0.3% of the population and 1.7% of GDP.”
UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs said the internally developed index came together when the institution began working on a 10-year strategic plan to understand how it was performing against the world’s best.
In 2015, UNSW set a target to be in the world’s top 50 universities by 2025, a goal that has been achieved four years early.
“We wanted to be hard on ourselves and objectively measure what we had done,” Jacobs said.
“Rankings are one way of looking at how we are performing relative to other universities in the world,” he said, adding, “We are not suggesting that rankings are in any way perfect, but they are about the best surrogate measure we have.”
Fisk said each of the major rankings had quirks, adding to the arguments for its aggregated index.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities gives 33% of its score for Nobel and Fields medallists over the past century, whereas the Times Higher Education places significant weight on reputation by asking academics which universities they think are the best, and QS judges teaching quality by looking at staff-to-student ratios.
Jacobs said the success of Australian universities was “not something that happens overnight” and suggested it was based on strong foundations, including healthy public investment over the past three decades.
Universities are Australia’s third largest export industry, contributing a record $22.4 billion to the Australian economy as of 2017. However, the shockwaves of the pandemic rocked the sector hard, exposing the uneven nature of government funding and its internal business models.
The top five universities in the world are: Harvard, Stanford, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Oxford and Cambridge. The rankings that feed into the ARTU are the Academic Ranking of World Universities from China, those from Times Higher Education and QS.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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