Ilocano wrote:
Uzique, list these so called rare scholarships. No way and no how in part funded by Industry foundations?
Safety net. So, you are telling me your upbringing, family environment, etc had no bearing to what you have accomplished so far? So, if you were raised in a single parent family that lived paycheck to paycheck, sharing a single room with a half dozen other siblings, afforded only the learning materials that the educational system gave you, without all the contacts of your social standing, that you would be where you are now?
all of my scholarships have been internal. i won an MA scholarship, one of two annual funded-place MA scholarships given out across the entire humanities faculty at my university, which covered my entire tuition fees for a year. an 'excellence scholarship'. not funded by industry: allocated to the humanities faculty by internal university funds, and offered to promising postgraduate applicants (2 in my year; 1 this current 2012/2013 year, across a postgraduate humanities faculty consisting of 750+ students). i won a departmental prize for best undergraduate thesis, which gave me another decent lump sum. departmental prizes are, unsurprisingly, internal, and the money itself normally comes from very rich alumni who die and/or decide to set-up a little fund in their name. there are several prizes given each year; the one i won is the nominal 'main' one, with the biggest cash prize. again, no industry. no reliance on 'business' and its innate wisdom. think about it: what 'industry' exists to fund humanities? what 'industry' has an interest in arts and humanities? this isn't big energy or big pharm: this is big books.
my PhD will be funded through a mixture of arts/humanities research council funding (the official centralised body that funds doctoral level research in the UK), and most of that money will have come from the yearly government budget-allocation. thus it is taxpayers' money, and not 'big business' or 'trickle down wealth from the amazing CEO 1%', as you think. this is not america. our funding is for public/state institutions, and it comes from the public purse. not much, i hasten to add: oxford has 4 funded PhD places in its english department (considered probably the best english department in the world) per year. it receives 1400+ applications. about 40 other funded-places will be going via, again, internal-funding means, as outlined above for my alma mater's example. oxford is a rich place, with one of the largest endowments of any uk university, hence around 40 places (considered very very high, relative to other universities' ability to fund).
no business. all earned through excellence and distinction. all awarded by merit. you are chasing the wrong route of argument.
did my 'family background' help me? not really. nobody in my family has ever pursued an arts/humanities degree. nobody in my family particularly cares for philosophy or literature. they are well-educated, well-cultured people, but their provenance is the high-professions (note: no engineers or mba alums, so don't get freudian on me). i cultivated my own taste in reading and literature from a very young age, and pretty much self-taught myself. an autodidact, if you will. perhaps i was 'helped' by being from a pretty wealthy background, so i could afford to buy the books, rather than go to a public library. however i don't really think background is at all important in how intelligent or cultured someone can be. not everyone that graduates with top honours does so because they are posh kids. conversely, posh kids who go to 'better' pre-university schools often find that when they are at university they struggle immensely: the support-system and babysitting-system of private school education is gone. individual study skills and individual talent becomes scarce. also i was raised in a 'single parent' home. my parents divorced when i was 4. it's safe to say my mum didn't sit me down to read moby dick together after a gruelling 12 hour day. so what does background have to do with anything? you are prevaricating.
FYI in my experience of academia, the people that generally rise to the top and get the highest marks and the win the prizes are the working-class heroes that have a serious work ethic. there is little to no correlation between background and university performance. going to a good school may help you slip into a 'top' university easier than a disadvantaged kid, but the environment is still intensely demanding, and the posh coasters that have 'had it easy' quickly slip to the bottom (and often drop out). what you do not have at uk universities so much now is the 'old boys network' that will pass a flunking kid because of family connections (though i am led to believe this still happens at ivy league schools). another thing you do not have is the sporting jocks that are being nudged through their classes because of their sporting scholarship. so perhaps consider your remarks a little more.
Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-24 14:50:20)
