ON THE WATER
NEELS BLOM: Why must taxpayers subsidise snotnoses?
IS IT an exceptional coincidence (for irony it is not) that those yet-to-be-educated students who demand that education must be "decommoditised" fail to understand that education has never been a commodity and never will be? The same question can be asked about "decolonising" education.Obviously it is no coincidence. In either instance, ignorance is what permits our protesting students to present a straw man as justification for anger and violence when they don’t get their way. Anyone who can articulate the desire for knowledge can acquire it at no cost extraordinary to that of the cost of living.What does cost a lot of money is the efforts of scholars who research and design degree courses, and the labour involved in monitoring and assessment, and the myriad details required to maintain institutions of higher learning. Taxpayers — that is, a dwindling number of already overburdened taxpayers — make higher education at public institutions possible and now they have no more to give. ...
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