Saturday, March 12, 2011
Unidoom reprised
Woke up this morning to a brain wave, visibility possibly enhanced by their present rarity. On 26th February, à propos of the death of university life as we know it, I touched on the need to have some algorithm for allocating public money to those universities who do not live off their private incomes, endowment or otherwise, which is to say virtually all of them.
First part of the wheeze was to have ten year settlements. This would take some of the pressure of continually having to explain how one's work profited UK PLC off of hard working academics. It would also slow down the ebbs and flows of funding fashions.
Second part of the wheeze was that the annual grant for a university for the coming ten years would be A plus N1 times B plus N2 times C, where A, B and C are positive numbers, N1 is the number of students completing their courses in the previous ten years and N2 is the number of students admitted in the previous ten years weighted for their A level achievement. Answer in millions of euros.
The idea is that a university gets more as the quality of the applicants they accept rises. If a university can take on great swathes of people with fancy qualifications it must be good and so deserve the wedge. Payment by results sort of thing. Promotes merit but does not promote class. No extra points for taking on specials.
I can now spend the morning thinking of the catch with this splendid wheeze before submitting it to Cameron's Citizen Suggestion Box. Fame and reward for good suggestions.
PS: good bread bake yesterday. I think I really am getting the hang of things. See http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8152054/Bread-20110120.xls.
# posted by Jim @ 12:55 AM 
