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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

I bags being North Korea. :)

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.

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.

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….