Anti-Gaddafi forces say they desperately need helicopters to be sent in to help repel attacks from government forces Commanders in the besieged Libyan rebel enclave of Misrata have complained that Nato has ignored requests for air support during a week of heavy attacks by pro-Gaddafi forces. Government troops launched infantry and artillery attacks on Friday on the western end of the Misrata pocket, inflicting heavy rebel casualties. A Reuters journalist counted 10 bodies in a hospital after three rebel ambulances were destroyed on the road to the front. At Misrata’s Hikma hospital, a steady stream of ambulances brought wounded fighters in from the front. Radio Misrata reported that three Gaddafi tanks had joined infantry on an attack on the front line, but that the rebel positions had not been penetrated. After days of infantry assaults and bombardments in which dozens of rebel fighters have been killed and at least 45 wounded, the Misrata military council says pleas for Nato air support have gone unanswered. “We asked through the operations room in Benghazi for the Apaches [helicopters] to take part in the fight with Gaddafi troops but up to now we did not get any promise,” said Fathi Bashaga, who is responsible for Nato liaison. “What we expect from Nato is the introduction of their Apaches.” Four British Apaches went into action near Brega last weekend , 400 miles east of Misrata, along with French Gazelle attack helicopters. Late on Thursday, Apaches attacked a communications installation and a multiple rocket launcher near Misrata, a Nato spokesman said. French press said the Apaches hit 14 targets. Rebel commanders appeared unaware of the strikes, but officials involved in the Nato campaign say the frustration on the ground reflects tension between what the insurgents want to do and the mandate laid out by the UN. “Nato nations are in Libya to protect civilians. The rebels have proved themselves to be very courageous but we are not there to act as their air force,” said one. Officials say they are concerned about creating a situation where civilians are caught up in chaotic fighting between rebels and Gaddafi’s forces. This has been heightened by fears of a lack of co-ordination between rebels on the front line and Nato commanders, who are responsible for approving air strikes. “It’s getting better, but it’s not perfect,” said the source. Rebel calls for Nato air support have grown stronger as Misrata has come under the heaviest attacks since mid-April, when rebels secured the city from pro-Gaddafi forces. There have been heavy daily bombardments with mortars and Grad rockets, along with two major infantry attacks. Volleys of grad rockets were landing to the west of the city on Friday. “Gaddafi troops tried again to enter Misrata from three sides, the south, the west, the east,” said Misrata army spokesman Ibrahim Betalmal. “We ask Allah to be merciful to the martyrs who fell to the Gaddafi troops.” Privately, rebel commanders say they are baffled with the non-appearance of the Apaches, saying conditions are ideal for their use against Gaddafi’s infantry as troops attack in the open. Witnesses to a dawn attack on the eastern edge of the pocket told the Guardian that Gaddafi troops came across two miles of flat open grassland between the front lines in pickup trucks with their lights on, a seemingly obvious target for air power. That attack was beaten off by rebel units, as was an infantry assault on the western end of the pocket around Dafniya, but Betalmal said rebel forces were bracing for a third offensive. “We have information that several thousand Gaddafi troops are gathered, probably they will attack from seven sides,” he said, possibly referring to highways leading into the pocket. Rebel troops have begun building fortifications along their front line, constructing networks of trenches, bunkers and shipping containers filled with sand. Aggressive rebel patrolling has brought back a steady haul of prisoners, including three female soldiers, who Betalmal said were captured on the western front line. “As our fighters are good-natured, we released them,” he said. While the daily bombardments on the city are taking a steady toll, rebel fighters are outwardly confident they can hold their lines, saying Gaddafi’s infantry appear demoralised and unwilling to press home attacks. “Our fighters managed to inflict so many casualties among the Gaddafi soldiers,” said Betalmal. “We gained so many weapons and ammunition from them after they fled the battlefield.” A Nato spokesman said it was not clear whether Gaddafi’s forces west of Misrata were capable of mounting a major offensive against the city. The front lines west of the city, said Wing Commander Mike Bracken, spokesman in Naples for the Nato Libya mission, were “volatile and unstable,” but it was “unconfirmed” whether the regime troops could muster “the capability to launch a largescale attack”. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Africa Nato guardian.co.uk
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Follow our live blog as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting Sarah Palin emails with your help 12.40pm ET / 5.40pm BST: Rachel Weiner, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tweeted a photograph of a stack of boxes in Juneau. Inside these boxes may be Sarah Palin’s email trail. 12.30pm ET / 5.30pm BST: Mother Jones’s David Corn has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian explaining his role in the legal background to the release of Sarah Palin’s emails: As journalists scurried to Alaska and searched for any titbit, I headed to the website for the Alaska state government and discovered the state had a decent open records law. A week after Palin hit the headlines, I sent a request to the governor’s office on behalf of Mother Jones, my magazine, asking for all “emails written by her, emails sent to her, and emails cc-ed to her”. The state had previously released emails from her office in response to narrow requests – though it had withheld a lot of material under questionable justifications. Still, I was not sure that this request, which covered a lot of records, could be processed before the November election. Other media outfits in subsequent weeks submitted related requests for particular emails, such as all of Palin’s emails to and from her husband. But I had been the one to ask for the whole pile. 12.20pm ET / 5.20pm BST: The Guardian is only one of the many media organisations in Juneau today. The Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones and others are in town waiting to get the Palin email dump – and they all have plans to release them to the public in one form or another. 12 noon ET / 5pm BST: So what are we expecting to find in the Sarah Palin email dump? What’s being published are emails from Palin’s term as governor of Alaska: starting in January 2007 through to her resignation in July 2009. Expect lots of detail about internal Alaska state politics, not to mention Palin’s unhappy “Troopergate” affair . There’s also the negotiations over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which Palin often mentions as her biggest success as governor. But most interest will initially focus on the period when John McCain nominated her to be his presidential running mate in 2008. But who knows what else is in there? It’s the Alaska gold rush of 2011 : after a tortuous process, thousands of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaskan governor are released publically today – and the hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails begins. Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help. Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, will be combing through thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read. And Ian Katz explains how the Guardian plans to post the entire cache of emails , allowing readers to take part by reading through them: Given the size of the cache, we reckon the collective eyes of thousands of you will find the juicy bits more quickly, so we’ll be publishing the raw mails on our website as quickly as we can and asking you to tell us which ones are interesting and why. They’ll be pretty rough and ready – no headlines or details of what they’re about – but we hope you’ll help us by using our simple system to tag them according to what subjects they cover, and how interesting they are. We’d love it if you’d alert our editors, via a button on each email, or Tweet us at @gdnpalin , about any emails that you think our reporters should be examining. Remember that each numbered document represents a single page, so you have to click to previous and subsequent pages to see a full email. Now, as Ms Palin once exhorted: “Drill, baby, drill!” Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin . And of course we’ll be following all the latest developments from the US media and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I’ll be tweeting at @RichardA . Sarah Palin emails Sarah Palin Alaska US politics United States Republicans Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Follow our live blog as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting Sarah Palin emails with your help 12.40pm ET / 5.40pm BST: Rachel Weiner, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tweeted a photograph of a stack of boxes in Juneau. Inside these boxes may be Sarah Palin’s email trail. 12.30pm ET / 5.30pm BST: Mother Jones’s David Corn has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian explaining his role in the legal background to the release of Sarah Palin’s emails: As journalists scurried to Alaska and searched for any titbit, I headed to the website for the Alaska state government and discovered the state had a decent open records law. A week after Palin hit the headlines, I sent a request to the governor’s office on behalf of Mother Jones, my magazine, asking for all “emails written by her, emails sent to her, and emails cc-ed to her”. The state had previously released emails from her office in response to narrow requests – though it had withheld a lot of material under questionable justifications. Still, I was not sure that this request, which covered a lot of records, could be processed before the November election. Other media outfits in subsequent weeks submitted related requests for particular emails, such as all of Palin’s emails to and from her husband. But I had been the one to ask for the whole pile. 12.20pm ET / 5.20pm BST: The Guardian is only one of the many media organisations in Juneau today. The Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones and others are in town waiting to get the Palin email dump – and they all have plans to release them to the public in one form or another. 12 noon ET / 5pm BST: So what are we expecting to find in the Sarah Palin email dump? What’s being published are emails from Palin’s term as governor of Alaska: starting in January 2007 through to her resignation in July 2009. Expect lots of detail about internal Alaska state politics, not to mention Palin’s unhappy “Troopergate” affair . There’s also the negotiations over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which Palin often mentions as her biggest success as governor. But most interest will initially focus on the period when John McCain nominated her to be his presidential running mate in 2008. But who knows what else is in there? It’s the Alaska gold rush of 2011 : after a tortuous process, thousands of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaskan governor are released publically today – and the hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails begins. Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help. Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, will be combing through thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read. And Ian Katz explains how the Guardian plans to post the entire cache of emails , allowing readers to take part by reading through them: Given the size of the cache, we reckon the collective eyes of thousands of you will find the juicy bits more quickly, so we’ll be publishing the raw mails on our website as quickly as we can and asking you to tell us which ones are interesting and why. They’ll be pretty rough and ready – no headlines or details of what they’re about – but we hope you’ll help us by using our simple system to tag them according to what subjects they cover, and how interesting they are. We’d love it if you’d alert our editors, via a button on each email, or Tweet us at @gdnpalin , about any emails that you think our reporters should be examining. Remember that each numbered document represents a single page, so you have to click to previous and subsequent pages to see a full email. Now, as Ms Palin once exhorted: “Drill, baby, drill!” Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin . And of course we’ll be following all the latest developments from the US media and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I’ll be tweeting at @RichardA . Sarah Palin emails Sarah Palin Alaska US politics United States Republicans Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Follow our live blog as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting Sarah Palin emails with your help 12.40pm ET / 5.40pm BST: Rachel Weiner, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tweeted a photograph of a stack of boxes in Juneau. Inside these boxes may be Sarah Palin’s email trail. 12.30pm ET / 5.30pm BST: Mother Jones’s David Corn has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian explaining his role in the legal background to the release of Sarah Palin’s emails: As journalists scurried to Alaska and searched for any titbit, I headed to the website for the Alaska state government and discovered the state had a decent open records law. A week after Palin hit the headlines, I sent a request to the governor’s office on behalf of Mother Jones, my magazine, asking for all “emails written by her, emails sent to her, and emails cc-ed to her”. The state had previously released emails from her office in response to narrow requests – though it had withheld a lot of material under questionable justifications. Still, I was not sure that this request, which covered a lot of records, could be processed before the November election. Other media outfits in subsequent weeks submitted related requests for particular emails, such as all of Palin’s emails to and from her husband. But I had been the one to ask for the whole pile. 12.20pm ET / 5.20pm BST: The Guardian is only one of the many media organisations in Juneau today. The Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones and others are in town waiting to get the Palin email dump – and they all have plans to release them to the public in one form or another. 12 noon ET / 5pm BST: So what are we expecting to find in the Sarah Palin email dump? What’s being published are emails from Palin’s term as governor of Alaska: starting in January 2007 through to her resignation in July 2009. Expect lots of detail about internal Alaska state politics, not to mention Palin’s unhappy “Troopergate” affair . There’s also the negotiations over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which Palin often mentions as her biggest success as governor. But most interest will initially focus on the period when John McCain nominated her to be his presidential running mate in 2008. But who knows what else is in there? It’s the Alaska gold rush of 2011 : after a tortuous process, thousands of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaskan governor are released publically today – and the hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails begins. Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help. Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, will be combing through thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read. And Ian Katz explains how the Guardian plans to post the entire cache of emails , allowing readers to take part by reading through them: Given the size of the cache, we reckon the collective eyes of thousands of you will find the juicy bits more quickly, so we’ll be publishing the raw mails on our website as quickly as we can and asking you to tell us which ones are interesting and why. They’ll be pretty rough and ready – no headlines or details of what they’re about – but we hope you’ll help us by using our simple system to tag them according to what subjects they cover, and how interesting they are. We’d love it if you’d alert our editors, via a button on each email, or Tweet us at @gdnpalin , about any emails that you think our reporters should be examining. Remember that each numbered document represents a single page, so you have to click to previous and subsequent pages to see a full email. Now, as Ms Palin once exhorted: “Drill, baby, drill!” Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin . And of course we’ll be following all the latest developments from the US media and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I’ll be tweeting at @RichardA . Sarah Palin emails Sarah Palin Alaska US politics United States Republicans Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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European commission president José Manuel Barroso says country should join in 2013 after six years of negotiations Croatia took its biggest step towards joining the EU as its 28th member state on Friday when the European commission said it was ready to close six years of negotiations. In a statement awaited with both hope and fear in Zagreb, José Manuel Barroso, the commission’s president, said Croatia should join the EU in July 2013. Stefan Fuele, the commissioner for enlargement in charge of the negotiations with Zagreb, said he was confident that all EU governments would support the recommendations. Britain, along with the Netherlands, has been the most reluctant EU country to give the green light to Croatia. Jadranka Kosor, the Croatian prime minister, made her first visit to Downing Street on Friday, reflecting her anxiety about UK opposition, but emerged from a meeting with David Cameron confident that the UK government would not veto entry. Membership negotiations for the small country of 4.5 million people have been troubled, lasting six years and taking longer than those for all of the eight former communist central European countries that joineden masse in 2004. The lengthy process reflected deep weariness across Europe over EU expansion, suggesting that the other five countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as Albania, face a long slog to get in, despite promises to the Balkans from Brussels. For years, Croatia was also handicapped by its refusal to locate and hand over war crimes suspects for trial at the special tribunal in The Hague and a territorial waters dispute in the Adriatic with its neighbour Slovenia, which blocked negotiations for a year. The 27 governments of the EU still have to endorse Friday’s commission proposal, meaning that the British or the Dutch could yet delay agreement. An accession treaty then has to be agreed and signed by the end of the year, subjected to a referendum in Croatia and ratified by 27 parliaments. Battling widespread corruption, especially among the judiciary, courts, police and political elite in Zagreb, has been the biggest challenge for the Kosor government, with the EU setting tougher standards for entry because of blunders made on Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007. The EU shifted the goalposts at the last minute – at the insistence of the British, the French, and the Dutch – to demand a new process of monitoring Croatia’s compliance with its EU commitments over the next two years. If things go smoothly, Croatia’s entry will be hailed as a breakthrough, paving the way for the rest of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU less than two decades after the wars of the 1990s. But growing euroscepticism, populism, and nationalism across much of Europe could jeopardise such hopes. Croatia European Union Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …European commission president José Manuel Barroso says country should join in 2013 after six years of negotiations Croatia took its biggest step towards joining the EU as its 28th member state on Friday when the European commission said it was ready to close six years of negotiations. In a statement awaited with both hope and fear in Zagreb, José Manuel Barroso, the commission’s president, said Croatia should join the EU in July 2013. Stefan Fuele, the commissioner for enlargement in charge of the negotiations with Zagreb, said he was confident that all EU governments would support the recommendations. Britain, along with the Netherlands, has been the most reluctant EU country to give the green light to Croatia. Jadranka Kosor, the Croatian prime minister, made her first visit to Downing Street on Friday, reflecting her anxiety about UK opposition, but emerged from a meeting with David Cameron confident that the UK government would not veto entry. Membership negotiations for the small country of 4.5 million people have been troubled, lasting six years and taking longer than those for all of the eight former communist central European countries that joineden masse in 2004. The lengthy process reflected deep weariness across Europe over EU expansion, suggesting that the other five countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as Albania, face a long slog to get in, despite promises to the Balkans from Brussels. For years, Croatia was also handicapped by its refusal to locate and hand over war crimes suspects for trial at the special tribunal in The Hague and a territorial waters dispute in the Adriatic with its neighbour Slovenia, which blocked negotiations for a year. The 27 governments of the EU still have to endorse Friday’s commission proposal, meaning that the British or the Dutch could yet delay agreement. An accession treaty then has to be agreed and signed by the end of the year, subjected to a referendum in Croatia and ratified by 27 parliaments. Battling widespread corruption, especially among the judiciary, courts, police and political elite in Zagreb, has been the biggest challenge for the Kosor government, with the EU setting tougher standards for entry because of blunders made on Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007. The EU shifted the goalposts at the last minute – at the insistence of the British, the French, and the Dutch – to demand a new process of monitoring Croatia’s compliance with its EU commitments over the next two years. If things go smoothly, Croatia’s entry will be hailed as a breakthrough, paving the way for the rest of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU less than two decades after the wars of the 1990s. But growing euroscepticism, populism, and nationalism across much of Europe could jeopardise such hopes. Croatia European Union Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …CNN Poll: Americans Worried About A Depression. When Will President Obama Have His ‘Aha!’ Moment?
June 10, 2011 No CommentPeople are openly using the “D” word , yet the president and his pal Tim Geithner still seem to think there’s going to be a second Obama term if they only make the bankers happy. Go figure: Some economists might be worried about a double-dip recession, but a large number of Americans have an even worse scenario in mind. Approximately 48 percent of Americans say they think that a Great Depression is either very or somewhat likely to occur within the year , according to a CNN Opinion Research Poll, the highest percentage of respondents that have stated that level of certainty since CNN first started asking the question in October 2008. Respondents’ fear that they would soon become unemployed also spiked to an all-time high of 30 percent. That stands in contrast another post-recession low: the 18 percent that said they either recently became unemployed or are related to someone who recently became unemployed. The seeming contradiction might be explained by the average length of unemployment now hitting an all-time high, as The New York Times recently reported.
Continue reading …MSNBC’s Matthews Doesn’t Seem to Understand British Were Coming for Colonists’ Weapons at Lexington, Concord
June 10, 2011 No Comment“Shouldn't presidential candidates and prospective candidates have a firm grasp of American history?” Chris Matthews rhetorically asked on the June 9 “Hardball” before lamenting that Sarah Palin had a penchant for being “painfully wrong” on the subject, citing her recent inartful explanation of the famed midnight ride of Paul Revere. Yet it seems Matthews may have no idea why the British regulars were marching on Lexington and Concord in the first place, as the “Hardball” host scoffed yesterday at Palin making an “NRA ad” out of the historical ride. “Here she is with her follow-up defending her false vision of history, and turning Revere's ride into a National Rifle Association TV commercial,” Matthews scoffed as introduced a clip of Palin from the June 5 “Fox News Sunday,” in which the former Alaska governor noted that Revere warned the British when captured “you're not going to succeed, you're not going to take American arms.” Matthews may scoff Palin making Revere a hero of Second Amendment adherents and gun rights advocates, but in doing so one has to wonder what exactly he thinks the British regulars were coming for in their April 18, 1775 march on Lexington and Concord. So here's a little history lesson for Matthews courtesy of the National Park Service (emphasis mine): What was the reason for the British expedition to Concord? On the evening of April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage sent approximately 700 British soldiers out to Concord (about 18 miles distant) to seize and destroy military stores and equipment known to be stockpiled in the town . His orders to Lt. Col. Smith, the British officer who was to lead the expedition, were as follows: Sir: Having received intelligence, that a quantity of Ammunition, Provision, Artillery, Tents and small arms, have been collected at Concord, for the Avowed Purpose of raising and supporting a Rebellion against His Majesty, you will march with the Corps of Grenadiers and Light Infantry, put under your command, with the utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all Artillery, Ammunition, Provision, Tents, Small Arms, and all military stores whatever. But you will take care that the Soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants, or hurt private property. Under great pressure from his superiors in England to bring Massachusetts back under control of the “lawful government,” General Gage sent the troops to Concord in the hopes that by doing so, he could convince the colonists to back down, and thus avoid an armed rebellion. General Gage also believed that seizing stockpiles of weapons was not only a military necessity, but also his prerogative as governor of the colony. The colonists actively disagreed. Matthews not understanding why Palin would take a pro-gun rights argument out of the march on Concord, Mass., is arguably much worse than Palin's Revere ride flub or Rep. Michele Bachmann erroneously stating Lexington and Concord were in New Hampshire, another gaffe which Matthews has mercilessly hounded .
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Student based in Italy ‘planned spectacular attack on Libyan embassy in Rome’ A Libyan student leader loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been arrested in Italy, accused of planning to assassinate the Libyan rebels’ leading international representative and lead an attack on Libya’s embassy in Rome. Court documents released after the arrests of three men identified the intended victim of the plot as Abdel Rahman Shalgam, a former foreign minister who headed the Transitional National Council’s delegation to this week’s meeting of the Libyan contact group in Abu Dhabi. Shalgam, who was Gaddafi’s foreign minister from 2000 until 2009 and subsequently his ambassador to the UN, defected to the rebels on 25 February. The alleged mastermind of the plot to kill him is Nuri Ahusain, the head of the Libyan students’ union in Italy, who was arrested at his home in Perugia by anti-terrorist police on Thursday. Two other Libyans, aged 21 and 33, were detained in an earlier raid. The investigation is still in progress, and about 10 other people are understood to be suspects. Some details remain unclear, but the warrant for Ahusain’s arrest, issued by a judge in Perugia, said the student leader had made clear his “murderous intentions” towards Shalgam in a phone conversation on 29 May, unaware that police were listening in. He allegedly repeated his plan to kill the diplomat in another phone call the following day. The content of this second call indicated that the order for an attack on the Libyan embassy in Rome had come from Tripoli. Shalgam had arrived in the Italian capital a few days earlier. On 30 May, he appeared at a press conference at the embassy alongside eight Libyan army officers who announced their defection and said they were part of a group of up to 120 members of the military who had defected. The ambassador in Rome has also abandoned Gaddafi, and his embassy now flies the rebels’ red, black and green flag. Italian police followed Ahusain and two other men when they travelled to Rome on a suspected reconnaissance mission. The warrant for Ahusain said the plan foiled by police involved “storming the building in Rome that houses the current transitional Libyan government in Benghazi with the aim of driving out the present diplomatic representative”. Police said the attack was to have been carried out by Libyan students loyal to the regime, together with Algerian mercenaries recruited in Naples. Libya Middle East Muammar Gaddafi Italy Europe Arab and Middle East unrest John Hooper guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Universities asked to replace old degree classifications with new grading system
June 10, 2011 No Comment
Pilot scheme provides detailed reports of students’ abilities including module results and extra curricular achievements Every university in the country will be asked to adopt a new detailed electronic record of a student’s achievement to replace the “blunt instrument” of the traditional first, second or third-class honours degrees. The new higher education achievement report (HEAR), which gives an in-depth portrayal of students’ abilities, will be rolled out nationally from next autumn after being trialled at 27 universities this year. Robert Burgess, vice-chancellor of Leicester University and head of a steering group that has co-ordinated the new approach to measuring student performance, said the ambition was to replace the current “crude classification system”. Every university is being asked to take up the new system from next year to meet students’ expectations of a better service in exchange for higher fees, Burgess said. The two systems are due to run in parallel, but the expectation is that firsts and seconds will be phased out once employers become used to the richer information available in the new report. Describing the pilots, Burgess said: “We are producing information that drills down to modular level and indeed indicates whether a student does better at timed examinations, projects, dissertations, all those type of things. “The other thing is that the HEAR also records students’ achievements in extra-curricular activities – a student who has represented the university in terms of sport or perhaps been conductor of the university orchestra.” The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) warned last year that firms had raised the bar on degrees amid fierce competition for graduate jobs, and graduates with a 2:2 or worse faced being filtered out by automated applications. While the graduate job market went on to improve during the year, with a surge in recruitment in the closing months of 2010, a survey for the AGR illustrated how sharply employers were discriminating on the basis of degrees. The poll found that nearly 78% were insisting on a 2:1. Universities including Leicester that have piloted the new system will award the first HEARs to graduates this summer. Burgess said that the “template is in place” for every institution to take up the scheme next year. Other universities that are already taking part in trials of the system include Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth and St Andrew’s. He said: “The intention is to propose to the sector, as from October 2012, that all students entering higher education institutions will get the opportunity to achieve a HEAR having worked with it through a three-year period.” The intention is to make the HEAR available to employers (with the student’s consent) before he or she graduates so it can be used in early job applications. Burgess said that over time, the detailed information available in the new record would make the traditional categories look “pretty much like blunt instruments”. “The summary — first, 2:1 and so on — is just that, a summary, it doesn’t give the richness of the experience. “In a situation where students are paying [higher] fees they’re going to expect a much more detailed evaluation of their performance and a detailed evaluation that can be given to employers and can be used in order to help them in their careers.” The vice-chancellor said that employers would be able to use the HEAR to match jobs with graduates on the basis of relevant skills. “If you’re choosing an employee on the basis they’ve got a 2:1 — how do you know what they’re really good at, were they really good in timed examinations? If that’s the only thing they’re good at, that’s not necessarily going to be a skill you really require.” Next year’s admissions round, when two-thirds of English universities are seeking to charge the maximum fee, will also see a more systematic use of background information in assessing candidates for places on degree courses. For the first time, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) will provide universities with data on the GCSE and A-level performance of a candidate’s school, as well as figures for the percentage of pupils on free school meals at the applicant’s school. While some institutions already gather their own contextual data, others do not use any additional data when assessing candidates. Burgess, who is chairman of UCAS, urged universities to be cautious in the use of such data when selecting candidates. He told the Guardian: “Using contextual data in respect of selection is somewhat problematic. It may be seen as unfair if it looks like it is giving some students a helping hand in selection. “It is not as straightforward as some might think. A student might live in a desirable area, but their parents may not have professional jobs. Or they may have gone to independent school, but their parents have been working horrendous overtime hours to be able to pay for that.” The Office for Fair Access (Offa) is currently vetting universities’ plans to charge higher fees. In its submission to Offa, Cambridge has said that its “minimum objective” is simply to maintain the status quo in terms of its state school intake, because of the uncertainty over whether a fee rise will deter some applicants. Higher education Students Graduation Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
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