After the ongoing trauma linked to the future the School of Health and Social Care, more worrying news from Reading University where another important department is under threat.
The School of Continuing Education is huge asset to the University, allowing more people to benefit from a University education who might not already have done so, particularly mature students.
In addition many people from the Reading area attend courses at SCE to broaden their education.
Now, more than ever it is vital that we invest in improving people's skills to help them cope better during a recession when people might be forced to change careers or take on new roles.
This makes the Labour government's decision to withdraw funding for these types of courses, announced in September 2007, appear to be completely shortsighted. A generation of students have been let down by the Labour government who after nearly 12 years in power have failed to deliver on it's promise of widening access to university education for all.
The Labour Government announced last year that they were cutting the £100million Equivalent or Lower Qualifications (ELQ) funding, which has enabled residents to requalify in new skills. After a review, the University has announced the closure of its public programme to new students from May.
At our Spring Conference in Harrogate last weekend (6-8 March), the Lib Dems overwhelmingly endorsed new education proposals which included a specific commitment to reverse Labour's cuts to the ELQ programme.
Locally we will be doing everything we can to support staff and students campaigning to fight this closure.
This will be a very bad development, both for the University and the Town. The University has always been a "good neighbour" in making its facilities available to the people of Reading, but adult education is, by definition, what the University does best. If it stops its extramural work, less people will know about the University and less people will care about it. The University of Reading needs friends these days, and it seems to be going out of its way to lose quite a lot of them.
Posted by: David Langshaw | March 13, 2009 at 08:47 PM