In other countries, President Bush has a mandate from 21% of voters. The Iraqi parliament from 27% of voters, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a staggering 36% of voters.

What gives?

Surprisingly, one of those quiet places was La Caravelle, a 1,600 apartment, social housing project in Villeneuve la Garenne, an estate in the 92nd departement with a history of youth violence, car burning and other vandalism. What made La Caravelle different?

Two weeks before the rioting began, La Caravelle had been officially opened. But not for the first time. La Caravelle used to be a high-rise, crime-ridden manifestation of Le Corbusier’s ideal Radiant City. After years of decline, the city had invested in a massive redesign, which culminated in the official opening just before the riots. Buildings had been literally split in two, with open spaces landscaped with park “demand goods” like basketball courts, and the buildings themselves were refurbished with larger windows overlooking public space creating a system of mutual surveillance. Throughout the riots, the only sign of violence in this housing project, for all its previously incendiary history, was a dustbin that was set on fire and which residents quickly put out.

It just goes to show that design really does make a tangible impact on our lives, and that when you get it wrong, there can be dire consequences. Housing design has surfaced in public discourse this year for a variety of reasons. First, the release of Alain de Botton’s book “Architecture and Happiness” and its complementary TV programme “The Perfect Home”, second, the opening of this summer’s blockbuster exhibition “Modernism” at the V&A, and third, the national furore over the Housing Market Renewal Initiative.

I’ll start with the last. The newly emasculated* Deputy Prime Minister is buying up largely empty, decaying properties in declining areas and, depending on local economic circumstance, either tearing down or refurbishing them. Despite the relatively cautious plans for demolition itself, it’s that word that has caught the public imagination and brought people out in droves to protest.

The reality is: we don’t demolish enough in the UK. We only pull down 20,000 properties a year, and build about five times that. At this rate, every new home will have to last something like 1300 years. What people are objecting to, it seems, is not demolition in and of itself, but demolition of Victorian houses, when all new build houses look like they came from toytown and noddy and bigears will be along any minute to take up residence to begin their new life together, now that civil partnerships are legal.

One of the questions that Alain de Botton is trying to answer is why all volume housebuilders are fixated on these kind of chocolate box architectural styles. What developers say is that there is a demand for it, but considering how dangerously undersupplied the UK housing market is, people will pay an average of five times their salary for anything with three bedrooms less than two hours from London, no matter how tiny or twee.

Cursory surveys would seem to confirm this view: people want a detached house with a bit of garden and housebuilders argue that these pastiche designs are the most cost effective way to achieve that. De Botton himself asks a pair of prospective housebuyers in a new development what they want in a house and they answer: “made of brick, nice double glazed windows, a chimney, and a bit of garden.” But when he takes them to Holland to see a very modern, very affordable housing development by a pair of British architects, after their initial shock, they begin to wonder where they could find such bright, open, modern homes in the UK at a similar price.

As the UK is obviously gripped with a national fervor for interior design, de Botton finds it astonishing that we are so incurious and undemanding about architecture. De Botton argues that one of the reasons people don’t demand high quality, well-design modern architecture as standard is because developers refuse to build it.

Britain’s developers feel they have a very good reason not to offer modern architecture, as they recognise that the public underwent something approaching a national trauma in the 1960’s under the thumb of some particularly bad utopian ideals of Radiant Cities. The public’s view of modern buildings in this country can be epitomised in Poulson. He was the most prolific and productive architect of the time. He was also a shady crook who won tenders on the basis of the holidays he gave public officials and whose eyesores (at least, the ones that haven’t fallen down yet) beset the country still to an alarming degree, reminding us not to mess with “modern” again.

De Botton argues that until we get away from the negative emotional associations we have with “modernism”, Britain’s natural enthusiasm for innovative design shan’t resurface, and he posits the need for national public education about architecture.

There is some evidence that this national therapy is underway already. Programmes like “Restoration” and “Demolition” show how many people feel they can discern what makes a good building, and “Grand designs” showcases people who refuse to accept thet tat that housebuilders offer. And, of course, this summer’s ‘must see’ exhibition here in London is the V&A’s “Modernism.”

The show traces modernism from its origins on paper as a utopian socialist ideal, obsessed with new technology, mass production and machinery, to the currency that its philosophy gained in planning and design circles. We see drawings of Le Corbusier’s original concept for the Radiant City, and photographs of his later housing projects.

Notably, much of the architecture showcased here is celebrated not as peopled places, as habitats**, but as newly built, yet to be unoccupied, shells. It acknowledges that often these buildings failed to function. De Botton also tells us in his book that Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie was so leaky that the owners’ son nearly died from pneumonia and their legal proceedings against the architect only ended with the onset of world war.

But the V&A shows beautiful photographs and models of the buildings, empty of people and furniture and objects that make a house into a home. In short, where the show celebrates modernist architecture is for its value not as homes, but as art.

On the non-architectural front, we are shown how modernism actually infiltrates our every day lives already, with items like ashtrays, anglepoise lamps and teapots from the 20’s and 30’s looking as bang up to date as the first ever fitted kitchen, saved from a housing project in Frankfurt. Although built in 1926, this kitchen, give or take a smeg fridge, could be in the house of any design-conscious Briton. My teutonic companion mentioned that the distinctive shovel-shaped drawers for flour and sugar were in high demand in Germany still.

These objects were useful and beautiful then and are useful and beautiful today. The impression that they conspire to produce in us is that modernism succeeds as a style, not as an ideal. Where modernism went wrong was when designers and architects were blinded by their utopias, and were unable to listen to what the people who were going to use their designs wanted. Where we recognise modernism in our everyday lives is where the style reflects the function we want to put it to.

The show rehabilitates modern architecture by promising that it doesn’t mean high-rise blocks based on fallacious social ideals about how we should live. It dangles before our eyes the possibility that, done right, designed for how we do actually live, modern architecture can be inspiring in a way that current new build housing design isn’t. And if you’re worried about history repeating itself, and utopian, Prescottian ideas about how we ought to live sullying the vision of art for living in, this exhibition also firmly places those ideas in the best place for them: in a museum.

* Not that, according to the Sun, there was much there to be missed, if you get my drift.

** Habitat is, ironically, the sponsor.

However uninterested we are, we certainly cannot say we are disinterested. As the comments on Jonathan Pearce’s piece at Samizdata highlight, this is, in the minds of many, about disaffected Muslim youths, feeling alienated from the authorities and economy of their native country. That sort of thing would never happen in Britain though. Right?

I was listening to the French news on the radio today and the reporter revealed that a further 500 cars were torched last night, bringing this year’s total so far in the Ile-de France area to 28,000 “vehicules incendies.” It might be particularly hot in these banlieux (suburb is a dirty word in French) right now, but if that figure tells us anything, it is that this kind of violence and vandalism is not unusual.

At the absolute heart of the problem is the 100-year old policy of “laicite” where the state and religion are officially separate. No bad thing, but France takes their committment to integration to the extreme that they do not keep figures on ethnicity or faith. Once someone is French, so the theory goes, there are French. Fini.

Of course, this means there aren’t figures on racial discrimination in social housing, or on religious discrimination in employment, and so on. When the unemployment rate for under 25s is estimated at 50% 22%* and minorities from immigrant families tend to live like immigrants in giant housing projects in the suburbs, you can imagine that they might feel somewhat ignored and marginalised by their own country.

A friend of mine, native French citizen, educated in France, was talking with me about French grammar. At one point, he rolled his eyes, gave that quinessentially Gallic shrug and said “what do I know though, hein? I am just a beur.” This is the verlan word for Arabe, used as a slur by whites, and considered perfectly acceptable by everyone. The willingness to accept that kind of racism is, I believe, an indirect and terrible effect of the bline eye to racial and religious differences laid down in law by laicite.

For example, the so-called headscarf ban, widely cited as one of the propellants of discontent within Muslim communities in France, is actually part of a court ruling on the ban of all religious insignia on school grounds, on the grounds that as state buildings for education, they must be kept free of symbols which could be interpreted as glorifying religion, any religion. Crucifixes and rosaries are removed too. But that’s not how it feels in the banlieux. Although a blanket ruling, it seems like no ruling was thought by political elites to be required until the religious insignia on display were non-Christian.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy quite rightly says that the minute you start shooting police you are no longer disaffected youths but rather thugs. The riots should not be tolerated and must be put down, and the CRS, despite their fearsome reputation for brutality (perhaps because of it) will do just that. But what Sarkozy also believes, and argues for strongly, is the rejection of laicite as an official policy as a means to helping France help its Muslim population to integrate, without ignoring their own customs. He wants to see French Islamic schools, as well as Catholic schools, in an attempt to negate the need for foreign teachers, often from extremist countries, preaching against the host country of their congregation.

I don’t know all the facts of the situation, nobody does, especially not the police, nor, do I believe do the rioters themselves. But if this is integration in the name of equality, you can keep it.

*INSEE figures for 2004 And not as high as Poland or Slovakia. Feeling a bit sheepish about the 50% figure…. must have read it somewhere and not checked.

The second series of the sit-com-doc started last week. I’ve been an admirer of Armando Iannucci since his Friday Night Armistice days, but I missed most of the first series due to living in France and my Dad’s inability to work the video recorder, but I’ve caught most of it on repeats that trailed the launch of this second series.

There’s no overarching plotline as such to make me confused, and the characters follow the Yes Minister recipe for success (bumbling minister, weedy deputy staff, bullying advisor) but the civil service is notably absent, to be replaced by the ‘communications’ team. The bully in this case is a vituperous Scot who turns the air blue, modelled on no-one in particular, honest. They govern by focus group and press conference, and generally make a hash of things. The camera’s shaky, characters whisper inaudibly together in corners and when the situation gets TOO embarrassing they hold their palm over the lens of the fictional documentary crew and say “look, can you turn that off now please?”

Contrast recent American political fiction: the West Wing took a chance when it first launched. It would be funny, yes, but not a comedy. It would dramatise the everyday machinations of government, including the dull stuff, like getting enough votes for a farming appropriations bill. It wouldn’t talk down to its audience, with characters speaking at a speed that left the roadrunner breathless and unsubtitled Latin rants forming the emotional climax of one memorable episode.

Sure, it might not be realistic, but it was bloody good, and Jed Bartlett was the Nobel President us mushy liberals wished we had, inspiring bumper stickers that read “Don’t blame me, I voted for Bartlett.” It took political entertainment in a new direction: utopia. More recently, the launch of Commander in Chief in the US has seen the first female, first Independent President in the lovely form of Geena Davis blur the line of hope and reality, with a group of campaigners paying for “Condi Rice for President” ads during the pilot episode.

But West Wing has jumped the shark. Martin Sheen’s prolific public campaigning for lefty causes and Aaron Sorkin’s much publicised cocaine habit made advertisers, eager to appeal to middle (right-wing) America edgy. In an attempt to keep the ratings high enough to allay these fears, makers fired Sorkin and began the erosion of the best thing to hit telly since Technicolor. The script began to delve into characters’ personal lives and ‘backstories’, there were guest appearances from ‘celebrities’ and stories were ‘ripped from the headlines.’ Each episode had to contain a major international crisis to make it ‘sexy.’

The sixth series of West Wing started on new channel More4 last week to much fanfare with a double bill and a hastily cobbled together talking heads docucommentary. My hope did not live up to reality. I’ve seen three episodes now, and all of them employ really shoddy, lazy storytelling techniques, such as crossfading montages set to whiney acoustic music and flashbacks. There’s a scene where Jed shuts the door of the Office of O on Leo, his Chief of Staff, and, just to make sure that the audience gets the emotional rejection of that gesture, they repeat the shot three times, a little closer up each time. Bang. Bang. Bang. Like me with my head on the desk.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still the best show on TV. The scriptwriting still sparkles at times, with throwaway lines such as Toby’s “He’s already got a Nobel Prize, what does he need another one for? Bookends?” making me giggle and Press Secretary CJ Cregg’s banter with Brock of the NYT giving me the frisson that entire episodes used to inspire in me. But whereas before watching the West Wing was a near-religious transformational experience, such as I imagine devout Catholics feel during the eucharist, now it’s just telly. Good telly. But just telly.

The problem is, I have started to doubt my faith in West Wing because the show’s creators have lost their faith in me. In episode three, the scriptwriters dropped in a little line about ‘going into a Presidential election year’ and just like that expected the audience to swallow the disappearance of an entire year of time. They only got re-elected last season…

The lapsed Catholic Stephen Dedalus, of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, refused to confess and be absolved just to please his mother on the grounds that he no longer believed in the power of the Church. His friend Cranmer points out that if the rituals meant nothing to him he would perform them to make his mother happy: as it is, his continued awe and residual belief in the Church is demonstrated by his reluctance to profane it by taking the eucharist in bad faith.

I am no Stephen Dedalus, but I am an apostate of the Church of West Wing. This is a show that now underestimates its audience, and that’s the biggest disappointment of all. Now, if someone invites me to go out on a Friday night, I’ll think twice before doubtfully worshipping at the profane altar of the much corrupted, much diminished, West Wing.

As a recently returned expat from first America and then France, I can tell you that blogging makes life a lot easier for those of us lucky to live abroad. It’s an easy way to share news and photos with family and friends, and a good forum in which to air our frustrations with our adopted nation without unduly offending the natives. Expat bloggers are generally also trying to get to grips with the peculiarities of culture and politics of their environment.

Some infamous bloggers are expats: Tim Ireland’s an Aussie and Armin Grewe’s from Germany but they blog from and about England. The limeys abroad are pretty good too: Tim Worstall in Portugal, Zoe in Belgium, Third Avenue in New York, Neil in Germany, Francis in France. Expats can make the best bloggers, because they spend their lives comparing and analysing cultures and sometimes this yields extraordinary insights.

Since expat bloggers tend to link to and mention bloggers in their host country, I thought we’d get around the world a little faster if we relied upon the nifty little flags next to blogs on Armin Grewe’s webring for expat bloggers, The Ministry of Propaganda. I am going to hop around my six blogs via the novel method of choosing a blogger based on the host nation of the previous blogger. It’s like the Kevin Bacon game.

Let’s start with Greg Altreuter who’s a yank living down under. Southern Cross Words has an excellent piece on Australian anti-terror legislation which makes me start banging my head in frustration at the english-speaking world’s determination to wander down the merry path to fascism.

Suze Abroad is an Australian girl who married a Dutchman and lives with him in Utrecht. She’s very vocal and perspicacious on the myth of Dutch tolerance, and discusses frequently her dislike of the overt and growing racism in the Netherlands. I used to work for a Dutch company, and I was shocked to hear that my colleagues would be stopped in the street and told to go home because they didn’t speak Dutch. Not even French people are that rude.

The China Herald is a blog written by Dutch journalist Fons Tuinstra. He is apparently censored in China, living between Shanghai and Brussels and take a special interest in all things techie over there, as a self described “internet entrepreneur.” More newsy than your average expat blog, fewer cute cultural difference stories.

“Richey”, living in London, blogs at the Dustless Workshop. An interesting post on the impending chinese v. disney culture clash is worth a look, where he draws a comparison with the Clinton sex scandals. “Chinese society OTOH preaches morality above everything, a good person is better than a clever person…A Chinese person will question Clinton’s ability as a president because of his immoral deeds…Basically, us Chinese link Disney’s business conducts with their moralities, hence we hear talks in and out of HK of boycotting Disney”

On to the quintessential Englishman in New York, not our own, dear Third Avenue, but Paul Berger from Leeds, a man with a nice eye for photography and a freelance writer living in the overlarge fruit. He has a very nice post about existentially disurbing cinema marquee parodies made by people anagramming the letters around.

Next up is Scott Abel’s Baltic Blog, primarily, it seems concerned with military history and happenings in the area. As Scott himself puts it “Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — So far from God, so close to the Russian Federation. A decade of independence and loving it! The latest word from 800-year-old Tallinn; medieval but wired.” The archives go back to 2002, so this guy has much to be discovered. He seems to live in Estonia and waxes lyrical about the flat tax, comparing it to the “byzantine” US system. I tell you Scott, try doing the ones especially for foreigners, forget byzantine, they’re ptolemaic in their complexity.

Since there aren’t that many Estonians out there blogging in English from abroad, and I;ve reached my full quotient of six, I’ll stop there. I do, however, want to recommend a couple of sites if you wish to delve further into this magical world: Ministry of Propaganda I’ve mentioned, but check out Expat Blog and Expat Express as well as group blog Lost in Transit . Happy travels.

Last night’s launch of More4, with its eye-roll-inducing branding that I suppose the marketing men thought was “risque” “quirky” and “zany,” reaffirmed my thankfulness for digital. For a start, there was a joke on the “Daily Show” (heretoafter remonikered the “Day After Show,” as it is yesterday’s American edition) that, I am sure, I alone among the millions of Britons tuned in ‘got.’ What I was waiting for, however, was the “controversial” (read “quirky,” “risque” and “zany”) comedy drama “A Very Social Secretary.”

Without trying to step on Nick’s toes, he doesn’t seem to have digital, so I am going to attempt a review.

We all know the story: hardline Home Secretary humps honey from the Hamptons, fathers baby of said hussy, fasttracks said baby’s nanny’s passport, then says mean things about Cabinet colleagues in public and is summarily sacked for the latter crime shortly before the election, only to be handed another department the morning after the “historic win” and proceeds to go publicly doolally, making policy pronouncements in Blair’s absence that directly contradict the second-in-command, John ‘where’s my tea?’ Prescott. Watch this space for Blunkett showing up in public in slippers.

What was good about the show was not the storyline, because we knew it. It wasn’t the impressions of major political figures, because Rory Bremner can do better. It wasn’t the script, where the pacing was off, nor the acting, which was wooden, the sets or the music. In fact, none of the things that normally makes telly good were actually that great.

What was good, however, was when you realised how close to life this ‘comedy’ was. Carole Caplin calls Tony “Toblerone,” and applies Cherie’s lipstick for her. Cherie instructs Tony to stop picking up the children’s toys from the floor: “Why?” bleat Toberlone, “because we’ve got a photo shoot later” says Cherie, and Tony empties the lego box back out onto the carpet.

When Tony objects to the affair with Kimberly Quinn by saying “She’s a married woman with close ties to the right-wing press” Blunkett replies “we’ve got close ties to the right-wing press.” When Blunkett insists “it’s not an affair, we’re in love” Robert Lindsay, playing Blair, makes the most marvellous grimace for about ten seconds, then physically shows himself mastering his facial expression into that horrible smile and says “oh David, I’m so happy for you” in a strangled little voice.

Bernard Hill’s Blunkett was, even I admit, a trifle unkind. The constant jerking, the drooly cliched affection for a heartless have-it-all Yank, the way he would ask “Is there someone else in the room?” as Alex Jenning’s superb Alastair Campbell lurked in the background, silently, made him seem more of a fool than a villain. We were told that Tony only kept him around because he had “a hotline to the common man.” His jokes fall leadenly on fake laughter, his taste in food is more baked beans than goats cheese and red onion jam ciabatta, he prefers kagoules to birkin bags and has trouble getting his aides to take his dog out for a piss.

When she chews up Kimberly’s £11,000 Hermes handbag, he says he’ll get Kimbo a new one. “Do you even know how much these things cost?” she shrieks. “How much is it, £800? £900? More?? Good God, over a £1,000 for a handbag! I haven’t lived… It can’t be £1,200???” He’s portrayed as unwordly, uncouth, uncultured and disabled in mind as well as body.

So, pretty bloody accurate portrayal then. Compare and contrast

From last night: “you’re not disabled, you’ve got chronic back pain because you eat too much. Disability means fighting back, overcoming the odds, not sitting around living off handouts. How d’you think I got to be Home Secretary?”

Via Chicken Yoghurt: “If people… re-associate with the world of work, suddenly they come alive again. That will overcome depression and stress a lot more than people sitting at home watching daytime television.”

So when I say I found this show ‘entertaining,’ it is in the same way that I find car crashes entertaining. Very ‘gritty’ ‘real-life’ drama. Or, say, the way reality TV shows where someone’s family falls apart because his wife had an affair with a major politician and bore his child are ‘entertaining.’ Oh wait, that really happened.

Oh, and their Boris Johnson was rubbish. I bet the real one would have done it for a small fee. Probably needs the money. Not everyone can walk in and out of a Cabinet post like it was a magazine publisher’s bedroom you know.

The Porto Alegre example is cited time and again as an example of the poorest, most needy, most disconnected from government turning out in droves to make change in their lives and their relationship to government.

A caveat should be made that the main reason PB worked so well in Porto Alegre was that the municipal government made very clear that there were only a few specific areas, things which could be realised within one year, where citizens could propose changes.

However, this setting of the boundaries at the beginning, coupled with a commitment to follow through what the assemblies recommended, meant that people felt the process was meaningful. This is the key to any consultative or particpatory exercise: expectations can’t be raised too high, nor can authorities choose to ignore and not follow through. Otherwise disillisionment with the initial process will make any further experimentation impossible: people must trust the process.

I know you’re already an active citizen, dear reader, so why not sign up to help out? They need guinea pigs to pretend to be citizens for a dry-run on October 8th, and then stewards for October 23rd, when the real deal will occur with 300 randomly selected and specially invited* residents of Harrow gathering at Harrow Leisure Centre. Go on, sign up You even get a free lunch.

*Those of you who read Case Study 5.7 in “Beyond the Ballot” will see why sortition and invitation are so much more effective than “open” events, overcoming apathy, making citizens feel wanted, and avoiding the self-selecting middle class “usual suspects” who dominate community life usually, as well as increasing the chances of bringing out “hard to reach” groups, such as the disabled, young and older people, as well as BMEs.

Here’s their welcome note:

“Welcome to our consultation on the Future of Democracy. This consultation is being run on behalf of the POWER Inquiry Commission, and has been set up to explore practical ideas of how political participation could be increased and deepened in Britain. Input into the POWER Inquiry will be part of a process that will change British democracy for the better.

Issues covered in this consultation include:
– the role of the media in political involvement
– the idea of devolving power, and making democracy more “localised”
– the role of political parties and party activism
– ideas of creating a more participative democracy

This consultation is made up of 7 questions, all of which are optional, and to get the most out of it we suggest you donate at least 10 minutes of your time.”

It’s not just a survey, they ask you to enter your well-considered opinion (or hastily contrived opinion, whatever floats your boat, we ARE bloggers after all…) and may Change The Way We Do Government.

It says it closed a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still up and running and the organisers are still encouraging people to take part.

Go stick it to the Man.

I was thinking about the 2002 class gift to my university. I began musing about the history and current political climate facing UNC-Chapel Hill, its fifteen sister universities in North Carolina, and, by extension, state-run university systems in other countries, such as Britain, say. I began to wonder what we could learn, what is “best practice.”

At U.S. universities the graduating class gets together and gives something to the school to remember them by. Obviously, at a behemoth school like Carolina, this means someone has to coordinate around 3,000 people into submitting suggestions, reading them, voting for one, raising the money for it, and getting it made, setup, and maintained. Some are physical, like this one, some are nebulous, like an endowment for a travel scholarship, all are expensive, costing around $30,000 and did I mention funded entirely by students’ donations?

2002’s gift, “The Unsung Founders’ Memoiral,” is designed to be a piece of living sculpture, a stone table and chairs in one of the two main quads, the table is supported by 300 human figures, representing the slaves that built the university, starting with that cornerstone of Old East (still standing, currently a dorm) on October 12th, 1793.

Chartered in 1789, the same year that the French stormed the Bastille, Chapel Hill is arguably the U.S.’s first public (state) university. The first student, Hinton James, walked from Wilmington, a three-hour drive away on the coast, to start classes on February 12th, 1795. In the state constitution, drafted in 1776, the founding fathers of North Carolina proclaimed that as soon as possible “one or more universities” should be founded so that “all useful learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted.” It further stated that an education at such a university ought to be state-supported and “free as practicable.”

Two hundred years after the laying of that cornerstone, Chancellor James Moeser, affectionately referred to by all as “The Meeze,” reaffirmed that connection with the state by creating the “Carolina Covenant,” a committment to all students from all families earning up to 150% of the poverty line that they would graduate from university debt free.

This concept is revolutionary in academic administration in the US: debt-free. Carolina was already the envy of many financial aid departments across the country for being able to state that it met “100% of stated financial need.” In admin-speak, this means that if you qualified as needing help under FAFSA guidelines, the University would put together a package of low interest loans, grants and work/study that would meet all your educational expenses. Other universities talk about “the gap” where they have to tell some students that they have to find that extra tuition themselves, and some universities pride themselves that that gap is “only” 5% of tuition. When tuition can be $38,000 a year, that doesn’t feel like “only” $1,900.

Carolina met 100% of need, and topped it. The Carolina Covenant means that, if you’re from a two-parent family earning less than $40,000 a year ($28,000 for single-parent families), your financial aid package will not include loans. In 2002, the average public school student left university with a student loan debt of $17,000. Fees are non-negotiable. Books are a monopolistic racket. The dorm will come in at $2500 a semester, and your meal plan at $500. College is not cheap.

Tuition in the U.S. is the same regardless of your parents’ income. That might determine how much help the federal government offers you, but universities set their own prices, and they are not all the same. Within a state-school system, for example, the UNC system, the 16 universities range in quality and price, with Carolina, as the flagship, being the most expensive and most prestigious, at $3,205 a year for in-state students and $16,303 for those from out of state.

The state government, the NC General Assembly, sets the budget. It mandates the massive differential between the in-state and out-of-state tuition gap. It can determine tuition increases and hiring freezes on top of policy set on campus. The General Assembly says how many students may be from out of state (18%) and how many should come from each North Carolian county: a quota based on population, designed to ensure the university represents all the people from across the state.

There is a lot of back and forth between Raleigh and Chapel Hill about which takes precedence, and deal-making about who compromises what. Chapel Hill is on a campaign to be ranked the number one public university in the U.S., and so wants more out of state students (they have higher SATs and higher graduating salaries than native North Carolinians) and to use undergraduate education as a cash cow to fund cutting edge graduate research programmes. The General Assembly wants to keep its promises to the taxpayers and the state of North Carolina, set out in the 1776 Constitution, especially “free as practicable.”

The Carolina Covenant satisfies both. The first intake was in Fall of 2004. 345 students qualified. One year on, a jump in enrollments from lower-income families is expected, as Chapel Hill, the most expensive school in the UNC system, suddenly becomes affordable to the state’s poorest families. This programme has been adopted by many universities since, including Harvard, who claim that they thought of it first. (But they didn’t.)

It hinges on a federal government policy called “work-study.” Work-study is typically an underused resource at universities. Basically, each university has an allowance of cash set aside by the federal government which can be received in exchange for proof of hours worked by students on campus. Before the Carolina Covenant, the University was underusing this fund to the tune of $2 million.

Typically at Carolina, these work/study jobs were of the filing/mopping/sitting at a reception desk variety, but with an expected sudden influx of work-study student employees, expected to grow to a workforce of at least 1400 students by Fall of 2008, and with state budget cuts and hiring freezes leaving positions empty and departments understaffed across the campus, the administration began to re-think how they used student employees and look around for a solution.

The Morehead Planetarium, on the same quad as the Unsung Founders’ Memorial, had 12 full-time employees and 70 student employees when I left. The full-time employees directed and kept everything ticking over, planned and managed, but it was the students who were the front line. It was them giving the classes in DNA extraction to visiting school groups, keeping track of the inventory and purchases for the gift shop, writing the press releases, managing the events. They had the best pay-rates on campus that rose as they developed our skills, and the long-term student employees managed other students. The university got very interested in this as a model for the Carolina Covenant…

Suddenly, these students from low-income backgrounds are being given jobs that teach them practical, professional skills, at the same time as they work towards their degree. They are building their CVs, and paying for school. Better yet, they are learning how the university they will call mother (“alma mater”) for the rest of their lives works. That’s why Carolina students raise between $20,000 and $40,000 for a class gift every year. Because they feel they belong to the university and it belongs to them. Better than any McJob out there.

I tell you all of this not because I believe this is an ideal system. The state raises tuition and cuts the budget without a marked improvement in anything on campus. Students still graduate with massive debt. 150% of the poverty level still isn’t very much, leaving the middle classes out of the deal, and, even among those who qualify, living expenses are generally put on a credit card, deferred until four years later at massively inflated rates.

My point, however, is this: there is another way to do tuition-based tertiary higher education, Britain. It involves establishing financial aid departments within the universities themselves, price differentials between universities, allowing them to control their costs and support their needy. It involves incentivising students to work on campus, to become involved in their alma maters, by paying for their tuition. It involves decentralisation, self-reliance, self-determination, albeit regulated, and overseen, as a state university should be. Above all, it involves a committment to the people who pay for the university through their taxes. A committment to enable them after university, not disable them by tying their hands with debt.

I don’t know enough yet about British higher education to offer a solution, but just talking to someone who went to Glasgow University in the early 90s and someone who went in the early noughties convinced me that something went wrong with the switch to tuition. I’m just offering a few suggestions for what that might be.

A few excerpts after the jump for your perusal and approval. Feel free to add your own submissions in the comments and we’ll highlight the best.

Aaronovitch
1. n. Legendary figure, probably mythical/god-like, believed to have been worshipped by sections of the First Great Blogger Cult. Fragments of data that remain from the Great Wiping of Hard Drive indicate that he may have been connected with, or worshipped during, the purge of the Guardianistas (see below)

Blair
1. n. Playground insult, used to denote either anyone keen to go along with anyone seen to have power, cf. teacher’s pet
2. n. Liar.
Etymology: derived from an obscure politician from the late 20th/early 21st century

Blunkett
1. v. To have sexual intercourse. e.g. I gave the missus a right good blunketting last night
Etymology: earliest cited use ca. 2010 This ID card system is blunketted.

Capitalism
1. n archaic A now-defunct economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
2. n. modernAn economic system in which the government blames the poor. Antonym: Socialism

Celebrity
1. n. A person whom it is legal to hunt with dogs.
2. n.One of those responsible for the Great Dumbing Down
3. n. A famous person archaic, rarely used

Centrist
1. n. A person sharing the opinions of the word’s user.Antonym: Fascist

Chav
1. n. One possessed of great style and elegance
2. adj. Upper middle class.

Citizenship
1. n. A formal statement of duties owed to the government

Conscience
1. n. A little voice in your head that tells you someone might be watching. See alsoSurveillance

Duncansmith
1. n. A useless object
Etymology: obscure, forgotten, and unknown

E-
1. n. Popular 20th-century narcotic among geeks, nerds and internetizens. Thought to make time pass with dazzling speed. With long-term use users become anti-social, have trouble articulating words, and lose interest in reality

Educate
1. v. To instruct persons, especially the young, in the preparation of fast food.

Fascist
1 n. A person whose views the speaker disagrees with. Antonym:Centrist

Free
1. adj. Unconstrained, ungoverned
2. adj. Sold for profit, expensive

Freedom
1. n. A wholly owned subsidiary of the MicroSonYamahAOL Corporation.

Free market
1. n. A mythical utopia

Galloway
1. v. To provide one’s own rope for one’s political suicide through the medium of asinine public pronouncements.

Guardianista
1. n. Derogatory term for a person with stereotypical left-wing political opinions
Etymology: Late 20th century: From the defunct British newspaper, the Guardian, closed down (or, rather, was blunketted) during the purges of 2010.

Hain
1. v. To talk to an interviewer as though they’re a congenital idiot while simultaneously believing yourself to be the most suave and sophisticated person in the room.
2. v. To fervently defend an opinion your younger self would have found repellent.

Hewitt
1. v. To speak in a patronising manner, as if repeatedly explaining to a brain-damaged child why he can’t have an ice cream.

Identity
1. n. Any kind of government property.

Intelligence failure
1. n. A malady experienced by journalists and meeja when they ask figures of authority whether an event was caused by a “failure of intelligence”

Johnson
1. v. To act in a bumbling manner to confuse opponents.
2. n. Penis slang, American

Lesbian outreach worker
1. n. Any government project that is not strictly life or death necessary
2. adj. Metonymic symbol of any waste of money in the public sector.

Liberalism
1. n. Now-defunct 19th/20th century Protestant Christian heresy.
2. n. Logic, a.k.a. Reductio Ad Absurdum.

Moonbattery
1.n. Law. The unlawful and unwanted mental attack of one person by another, with the intention of bringing about a harmful or offensive conversion to liberal politics.

Murdochy
1. n. Something which seems to have a sinister deeper purpose that no one can quite work out.
2. v. To act in a doggedly mercantalist manner.
3. adj. Shitty.

Polly
1. n. Political Science. The unit of agitated, hand-wringing column inches required to motivate one MP to vote for one extra unit of State Intervention.
2. adj. Massaging of statistics to make broad, economically illiterate conclusions based on small data samples. e.g. That’s a very polly article

Postal
1. v. To go incredibly slowly.
2. adj. Lost, stolen or damaged.

Prescott
1. v. To announcement, that is, in public, as you will see, a statement will be has been made, that grammar will not, has not,
followed been and short sense, knowing full well, and I repeat, what you mean
2. n. A statement like 1. above

Privacy
1. adj. To describe any anti social behavior
2. n. A small hut used by criminals to keep their stash and make their nefarious plans

Reality
1. n. That which is artificial, deceptive.

Socialism
1. n. archaicA now-defunct economic system in which the means of production and distribution are publicly or state-owned and development is, well, stragnant. Or made up.
2. n. modernAn economic system in which the poor blame the government.

Steyn
1. n. A printing error, common in early 21st century news media, that obliterated all sense and reason within the area it affected, replacing it with random words and threats against large groupings. e.g There’s a great steyn in the Telegraph today

Surveillance
1. adj. openness, transparency

Truth
1.n. A popular murdochy newspaper
2.n. Not correct. See: reality

Weblog
1. n. An online scrapbook where teenagers can post their innermost thoughts.
2. v. To masturbate publicly.

Contributors: Andrew, Blimpish, Jamie K, Jim Bliss, Jim Gleeson, Jarndyce, Justin McKeating, Katie Bartleby, Nick Barlow, Nosemonkey, Phil Edwards, Phil Hunt, Stuart Dickson