I went to NUS conference 5 years ago when I was an undergrad. The problem with the NUS seemed to me then that it is full of politico wannabes. I doubt much has changed.

I’d have to agree with QuestionThat. The NUS had almost zero relevance to me whilst I was a student, or so it seemed.

The problem for a number of years has been that the NUS has an enormous financial blackhole, wastes money on causes that don’t serve the needs of students, and has an overblow democratic structure that is marginally more democratic than picking names out of a hat - gaurenteeing, as it does, positions on the NEC for groups with minimal support in any university campus across the country.

These reforms would have gone along way towards fixing these problems (although not entirely) and helped the NUS to focus on the real battle against fees next year.

Unfortunately all we can hope for now is that they’ll make the best of a bad situation….

Love this line:
“Labour Students, ‘independent’ Labour affiliates and other centre-right groups”

Relevance springs from having different groups with the ability to address different issues, whereas if all have the same politics, then, of course, there will be ideologised bias.

Student elections are meaningless, faceless, powerless ego trips.

Labout students aren’t centre right.

In reality there is little, if any, centre-right in the NUS - and the term right-wing and far right are thrown around almost comically at social democrats.

A bit like a Model-UN then, a waste of time.

I bags being North Korea. :)

Mark,

It doesn’t matter if they are left, right, centre or completely nuts - if they are all of the same cloth, they will cut the same coat.

No competition over ideas, see, just stale complacency - establishment politics isolated from the real lives of students. Which is conservative ossification in action.

It’s as someone above has already commented, the NUS lost relevance a long time ago, the only reason it survives is because of the exemplary route in to politics it provides for a few individuals and because they actually do good work on supporting those in local students’ unions that are responsible for decision making despite only 2 months earlier having been nothing more than a very popular and opinionated socialite with no experience of politics whatsoever.

I don’t believe this is “our fault” though, not directly. The youth of this nation has been systematically targetted by governments for years and years, slow creeping reforms to education are to blame for us “accepting” more examinations because we are forced to accept more examinations at an age where we don’t have a say - simply doing more when we do have a say seems like a large waste of time at that point. It’s a masterstroke of policy making that the government continues to peddle to this day, where forcing changes on the unrepresented that find it hard to get their voice heard seriously can mean that people are indoctrinated in to the governments way of thinking.

But do we ever need an NUS that stamps its feet loudly and publicly? The NUS no longer represents the elite of the country and as such it cannot hold the power that it once did. The government may wish very well to listen to the barking crowds if they contain future politicians, lawyers, and people that will likely gain power in business…but do the thoughts and views of those studying david beckham, . Of course they should, but the power of effect is no longer there and thus it is only right that NUS reforms the way it goes about its business.

Now I have criticisms over their methods, the use of “old boys” tactics to get through the changes the executive want and not what the greater student population want is cynical, and the presentation of the changes was about as complicated and unfriendly to those outside the NUS that they almost deserved to not get the reforms passed…but equally the constant battling with socialists in the NUS doesn’t show a better option.

The ultra-lefties year on year try to divert the NUS’s attention to global issues when the NUS can’t even fight to stop fee increases for students in this country, on an issue they should be strong on, properly. They wish to force the NUS to continue to operate in a financially unstable way because they feel it is more democratic without giving any attention to the needs for the top level NUS democracy needing much more help to filter down to every student. And if I ever have to sit through a debate where a group of people such as “respect” students honestly try to say that while Muslims are allowed to self define what racism is, Jewish people are not, then I swear I shall have to turn in to the hulk or something and go on a rampage. If that’s the best that the ultra-lefties have to offer us on NATIONAL STUDENT POLITICS then why exactly should we listen to their complaints about what packages were available for voting on at conference?

The NUS has become a large group of three types, those that don’t really care enough but have their hearts in the right place, those that care too much and have their hearts in the wrong place, and those that don’t care at all because of the effect of the other two groups constant bickering.

Thomas - the problem is that they are not fundamentally the same. There is a difference in both focus and on tactics, which is significant.

Lee - I agere with most of what you say, but there are some very hard working people in NUS, and there are alot of people who care alot about student but are so put off by the jargon and the actions of the hard-left (or in many cases, other political groupings) that they drift away from the NUS.

The most important thing though, is that the voice of “ordinary students” is quite often overlooked. However, that’s because as a society we’ve become de-politicised, and because students are no longer a single, homogenous grouping…

[…] written on the subject by various political blogs that opposed the reforms. To give three examples, here is the view that students themselves sold their souls. Here is the view that these reforms are […]

Mark,

maybe I’m advocating a re-introduction of democracy into student politics.

National referenda on issues and motions to be debated could be better organised and more wide-spread - the response over tuition fees is an ongoing scandal which followed on from the political collapse over maintenance grants.

While most NUS membership cards provide entry into the club, high-street discounts on unnecessary consumer products and access to some forms of help, but a link into a wider student social world for only a favoured few.

My personal view is that the NUS should function in conjunction with the much more motivated, and biased, NUT, seeing as their interests are widely conjoined. What do students have to say over class sizes, when lecture rooms commonly have 100+ attendance?

I think there is much to be learned from the example of experience.

I agree that there are differences between styles, but none is fundamentally better than the rest, as each has different strengths and weaknesses - it is a continual problem to create a functioning balance at any individual level, let alone across all levels - it’s just some don’t try and don’t want to try.

Aaron - lol, I made the very same point in the original post, which is up at http://pennyred.blogspot.com, along with a smattering of extra personal waffle.

Both institutions have just become finishing schools for political hopefuls, rather than centres for genuine debate and lobbying. My generation of students has sold its soul for the promise of a personally comfortable and meaningful future, something that was far more guaranteed to our parents’ generation.

The NUS sucks partly because most students are just too damn young. A fairly intractable problem, but there you go. Speculating here, if the education system wasn’t mostly about producing good little worker bees for our brave new ‘knowledge’ economy, then just maybe there might be a critical mass of mature students with a little more life experience willing to get involved and focus things on what really matters. Truism though it is, wisdom does come with experience, and it is precisely because of this lack of experience older people are able to shit on politicians and their peers who want to get on that gravy train.

I sympathise with what Lee says. I remember from my own time in union politics (only a decade ago, I’m still young myself, honest) becoming heartily disillusioned with it all. Union politics was as dirty as it was vacuous. Most council meetings the most important item on the agenda was what colour the union bar door should be painted, I remember thinking this is what I have debased myself to get elected for?

I hated the fact that I had been no better than the rest of them, but I learnt my lesson and got out. Unfortunately those that don’t are the ones that end up governing us.

Oops, really should proof my posts better. Meant to write:

Truism though it is, wisdom does come with experience, and it is precisely because of this lack of experience younger people are shat on by politicians and those of their peers who want to get on that gravy train.

The problem with the NUS is that it only represents a very narrow viewpoint, that all students wish to be radical lefties. Many don’t and are therefore rather uninspired by being told to support actions simply because they happen to be doing a degree. Joining up with the utterly bonkers NUT will work against rather than help produce a more representative NUS.

Mark - I don’t deny that there are people working hard, I campaigned and supported those last year that I felt lived up to that. It’s not that all of the NUS is systemically in it for personal gain or because of an extreme political agenda, I wouldn’t agree with anyone that said that, it’s just that (as you say) students are a different beast to what they were and the NUS has not moved with the times.

Now, I’m not convinced that the new reforms moved them any closer to relevancy and they certainly did a poor job of showing that they were if that was the case. But the structure is ultimately too flawed, perhaps too weighty for purpose, with far too little local representation which is actually where most of the problems (albeit perhaps not the biggest problems) arise. The NUS has much more power to effect changes for individual institutions yet this power isn’t used in favour of media friendly campaigns that have not yet won over the general public and thus will never have a hope of being more than a photo op.

There’s going to be a rough few years ahead for students with a likely increase in the cap on tuition fees, caroline flint ignoring her predecessor by giving in to illiberal and quite intollerable ideas from the HMO lobby, selling of the student loans book and increased dissatisfaction with the higher education academic system, and all the while the NUS is going to be looking far too inwardly while this is all happening.

Flaco - I’d say the NUS isn’t actually as bad as you make out, I feel thankful that in the year I went to conference there was a good amount of fairly independent and student focused delegates around to provide the balance between the labourites and the respecties. And certainly in terms of the people elected in to the NUS, the hard left is about as representative as it should be in student politics, if anything the labour focused members on the exec are (as with our real parliament) over represented.

Bighair - Well the demographics show the student population is getting older as far as I know, so I’m not sure how relevant your comments as to why the NUS is relevant makes sense there ;) But you’re right in a sense, I’m not sure how much aspiration is there and that probably isn’t so much about age as about systems…with student having gone from choosing to going to university to university being simply the next stage in the educational process that we should all be supposedly striving to achieve.

By the time a student is done with university the next changes are no longer their problem, they’re someone else’s. It takes a person committed to positive change to stick with their ideals to benefit someone other than themselves based on their own experience. The NUS shouldn’t be focusing on buddying up to the NUT or any other union that the public never listens to and only has power because of the right to strike, they should be finding new ways to actually bring non-students on board with their ideas.

Big Hair -
The NUS sucks partly because most students are just too damn young.

Whilst I agree broadly with the rest of your points, isn’t this a little bit like saying feminist groups are rubbish because there are just so many women?
Yes, students are young and naive and learning. That is *why* we need proper union representation.

Also, as a PhD student I don’t feel the NUS is particularly interested in me. It’s geared towards undergrads.