That is why Britain needs truly independent universities After listening to Allibone's proposals for building a very high-voltage generator and discharge tube, Rutherford took him down to the "biggest room we have" - big in linear dimensions and higher than any other room in the laboratory. Fleming, that he might go to Cambridge and try to produce disintegrations with particles accelerated to 300kV or more in a vacuum-discharge tube.He made his application to Sir Ernest Rutherford and to his surprise was invited to meet the great man on 29 March 1926 at the Cavendish. Coolidge, of the General Electric Company of America, generating a voltage of 300,000 volts and applying these to an X-ray tube; and, as he had some experience of high-voltage work in the Metro-Vick Company, he suggested to the Director, A.P.M. Ellis from the Cavendish on the transmutation experiments of Rutherford and James Chadwick: these involved the alpha-particle that was the nucleus of a helium atom travelling with an extremely high velocity - one which when it left a radium atom could only be equalled if it were to be accelerated through an electric potential of about eight million volts.Rutherford and Chadwick had succeeded in disintegrating several other elements and the idea became well established that nuclei of the heavier elements were probably composed of those of hydrogen and helium particles, together with particles having no electric charge, neutrons.After the lecture Allibone went up to Ellis and asked about the possibility of getting a postgraduate scholarship to Cambridge Allibone had already learnt about W.D. After attending the Central School in Sheffield, he went to Sheffield University, becoming a Linley Scholar. And thence to Caius College, Cambridge, where he attained first class Honours in Physics and came to the notice of the great men of Cambridge physics.Awarded a Metropolitan-Vickers scholarship to work on the preparation of metallic zirconium and its alloys in Sheffield University, in November 1925 Allibone went to a lecture by C.D. A biographer of Sir John Cockroft, he was said to be the bridge between these two giants, who heartily disliked one another.Thomas Edward Allibone was born in Sheffield in 1903 of a steel-making family. Allibone can claim to have been the last remaining scientific colleague to have worked with Sir Ernest Rutherford.Allibone was already in his mature heyday when I saw a lot of him in his capacity as Chief Scientific Officer of the Central Electricity Generating Board, sweeping into hearings of the Public Accounts Committee with Sir Christopher Hinton, later Lord Hinton of Bankside OM, the CEGB Chairman. Or it could go on the under-fives - to put them in a position to do well later Isn't the latter group a lot more deserving?. Fifty-five years have passed since he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society; 77 years since he first made significant contributions as a Wollaston Scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to the work of the Cavendish Laboratory.
The money could be spent on the education of those who have done well at school and are going to do better in life than non-graduates. Isn't the latter group a lot more deserving? As the battle over top-up fees re-ignites, it is worth going back to first principles. Most opponents believe that the taxpayer should pick up the tab for higher education. Tony Blair believes that graduates should pay more after they have finished their degrees and are earning enough money to pay back the cost The question is, what should taxpayers' money be spent on We have a choice. As the battle over top-up fees re-ignites, what should taxpayers' money be spent on? The money could be spent on the education of those who have done well at school and are going to do better in life than non-graduates, or it could go on the under-fives - to put them in a position to do well later. Only then will higher education shake off the tin handcuffs of government funding.Politicians should not be allowed to set the price of higher education. They are not qualified to do it, and will always be overly influenced by the self interest of middle-class parents. That is why Britain needs truly independent universities.education independent.co.ukThe writer is a professor of economics at Warwick University. Many of these MPs really believe, without knowing it, that we should have scholarships for deserving young people; unfortunately, these politicians do not think through the logic, and so plump, wrongly, for the idea that we should have no fees at all.My view is that these kinds of discussions will go on, unhappily and unresolved, in Britain until we are bolder, and allow at least some of our universities to be independent of the state. Moral cowardice and lack of straight thinking have got us into this mess. If I buy using a loan, I will pay about £3,000 a year over three years. What is wrong with that? Yet a recent national-newspaper poll of MPs found that the majority of those questioned would vote against university fees of £3,000 a year. |
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