WOLVERHAMPTON - THE MOST IMPORTANT UNIVERSITY IN BRITAIN
March 03 brought the news that Wolverhampton University has 48% working class students. This is the highest in the country. It is the most important educational achievement of the decade. Another first for Wolverhampton.
This makes Wolverhampton University the most important in Britain. More important than Oxford and Cambridge where the very influential Heads of Public Schools are at this very minute squabbling to keep their centuries old monopoly to send their pupils to those and other elite Universities. They have seen the future and it works. The 48% is the harbinger of the centuries to come. That figure will grow as increasingly the working class seeks education. What is the limit? No one knows, 75%? 90? But we face an almighty class struggle. For on their monopoly of education rests the power of the ruling class to control and exploit the working class and thus maintain their wealth.
The achievement of 48% is even more important than it appears, for no one knows how it was achieved. The University authorities made the orthodox attempts to attract working class students. But no one knows why Wolverhampton at 48% succeeded and Leeds 16%, Newcastle 17%, Manchester 19% and all other Universities failed. It can only mean that the working class students themselves found their way to higher education despite and not because of the feeble attempts of the authorities to attract them. In this lies both the strength and the weakness of their position and we must see that totally different methods of governance are used than the present orthodox ones. The elitist counter attack tactics are clear. Yes. this is a considerable achievement they will say, but of course, the academic achievement is low (in fact this is not the case and present standards are quite good), so that it must remain at the lowest rate of funding as it is now. That, together with student payment of fees, horrendous student debt and other destabilising measures (whether by Tory or New Labour governments) ought to keep working class numbers
under control. This must be opposed and the same principles applied to students as Gordon Brown applied to colleges. The most important task of a Labour Government is to end poverty and to this end priority of educational revenues must be spent in educating the uneducated.
27% of these numbers at Wolverhampton are ethnic minority students. This also is a record percentage and represents an earlier record achievement for Wolverhampton. Bilston Community College was the first multicultural college in Britain with a record 30% of ethnic minority staff. What happened to it? It was closed by racists, educational elitists, snobs, supporters of Wulfrun College and other thoughtless people. Among these were either two high officials of the University acting on their own, or the governing body of Wolverhampton University.
The present position is that all those who closed Bilston Community College or support the closure will be expected to apologise for their institutional racism. These include the Further Education Funding Council and its successor body the Learning and Skills Council. Also the successive Ministers, David Blunkett, Lady Blackstone, Margaret Hodge etc up to Charles Clarke. At present they are all engaged in attempts to censor us by engaging in the highly undemocratic process of totally ignoring everything the Friends of Bilston Community College address to them.
It is vitally important that the Wolverhampton University position is cleared up as it would appear that certain leading figures are not capable of leading the struggle for an entirely new form of university education made possible by the 48% of working class students at Wolverhampton.