COMMENT: VOTING NO AT THE UGM | SOCIAL: WORKING - WHY LESS IS OFTEN MORE | FEATURES: THE SYRIAN RESOLUTION
thebeaver
07.02.2012
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China Week roars through campus Shu Hang
Last week, the LSE Students’ Union Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) brought China Week to Houghton Street. Held in conjunction with the most important date on the Chinese calendar, Chinese New Year, the week was packed with events aimed to give students a taste of the festive celebration and broaden understandings of Chinese culture. According to Hou Yu Chen, director of the CSSA’s China Week Committee, the aim of the week is to “raise awareness of the Chinese culture among students and to demonstrate the multi-dimensional characteristic of China.” “There is a lot more to the culture than Kung Fu and delicious food,” he added, ”and we want to show the students all the interesting things the culture has to offer.” It was only appropriate that a dragon dance show would kick off the celebration as, acording to the Zodiac calendar, 2012 has been designated ‘The Year of The Dragon.’ A professional team was hired to bring the colourful dragon costume to life, dancing their way across Houghton Street. On Tuesday, the society offered traditional Chinese tea and wine to passerbys, drawing a large crowd. One student won a stuffed dragon doll after finishing a whole bottle of scalding Er Guo Tou, a Chinese white wine, in one go. A film called “The Flowers of War” was also screened on Tuesday, retelling the story of a mortician leading a group of women in a church to
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Students celebrate the year of the Dragon on Houghton Street | Photo: CSSA Society
LSE applications drop by 8.2 per cent Nona Buckley-Irvine
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) published figures for the 2012/2013 application cycle revealing a drop in applications to the London School of Economics (LSE). The LSE saw applications decline by 8.2 per cent, lower than the national average of 8.7 per cent. This follows the controversial increase of home student tuition fees to £8,500. The LSE is the only Russell Group university, a consortium of twenty leading UK universities, to decline charging the maximum fee of £9,000.
UCAS figures further revealed a national decline in the popularity of social sciences: overall the number of students choosing to study combined social sciences has dropped by 11.8 per cent. Choices for sciences combined with social sciences or arts fell by nearly twenty per cent, with applications for popular subjects such as medicine and law showing little decrease in applications. Nationally, the LSE has generally fared better than the national average drop of 8.7 per cent and didn’t suffer as badly as rival Kings College London (KCL), who saw applications drop by more than ten per cent. Results show that other rivals such as Oxbridge, University College
London (UCL) and Imperial College London saw little change in applications, despite raising fees to £9,000, £500 more than the LSE. The University of Cambridge saw an increase of applications by 2.3 per cent. Meanwhile, UCL, Imperial, both London based universities saw a mere drop of 1.5 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively.This is in spite of the LSE being named as the best London university in 2011 by the 2012 Guardian University Guide and being ranked fourth in the country. The LSE also boasts a generous bursary scheme, where students from lower income backgrounds can receive up to £2,500. Tim Leunig, Head of Economic History at the LSE and Chief Econo-
mist of the think-tank CentreForum wrote on the LSE Politics and Policy blog that “bursaries have no effect on student choices.” Explanation for why the LSE has seen one of the biggest drops in applications among its competitors still remains to be heard, though it is probable that this is in following with the above trend demonstrating the decrease in social science applications. Leunig, who voted on the Academic Board in favour of charging the maximum fee, £9,000, sees the drop in applications as irrelevant. “I think LSE still has a higher ratio of [applications/places] than is typical in the Russell [group] - frankly once you get over 10 applications per place it makes little difference.”
The rise in tuition fees follows the Coalition Government’s decision to allow universities to charge a maximum of £9,000 through a tuition loan system. The LSE decided last year to raise fees to £8,500, choosing to rule out charging the maximum fees. Two Sabbatical Officers at the time, Ashok Kumar and Hero Austin, the then LSE Students’ Union Education Officer and LSE Students’ Union Community and Welfare Officer respectively, wrote in the Guardian that the LSE was the “only Russell Group institution with fees below £9,000, the only university enacting our principles and rejecting the current attack on public higher education.”
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