Doing a 'Gwynnie'

Crying at award ceremonies is nothing new – in fact a few tears are almost compulsory when accepting an award – and the 66^th annual Golden Globe awards did not let us down on that front.

It was a good year for British films, with Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire winning all of the awards it was nominated for. However, it was Actress Kate Winslet that really stole the limelight. She won best actress for Revolutionary Road and best supporting actress for The Reader, but unfortunately found it difficult when it came to the speeches to get her words out from crying. Winslet apologised to her fellow nominees for winning and asked “Is this really happening?” as she picked up the award for best actress for Revolutionary Road. She explained that she has a habit of not winning, perhaps the reason why she rambled on for so long, four minutes to be exact.

Her tears, however, are not the first but just the latest in a long line of Hollywood’s gushing outbursts at award bashes. Before her, the term ‘doing a Gwynnie’ was associated with a dramatic speech after Gwyneth Paltrow’s outburst in 1999. She was barely able to talk at the Oscars when she wept her way through her best actress speech for Shakespeare in Love. Her emotional monologue saw her thanking as many people as she could remember.

It’s touching when you see someone awarded for something they truly deserve. But after watching a ten minute passionate speech followed by a standing ovation from the crowd you could be forgiven for thinking these actors had found the cure for cancer. 

When you see Muhammad Yunus being awarded a Nobel peace Prize for his efforts to create economic and social development in impoverished areas of the world, an academy award just seems so inconsequential.

By Jemelyn Yadao

Tropical rainforests and sunny skies in Australia, cosmopolitan lifestyle and big city marvel in New York, the vibrant night lights in Tokyo and the mesmerizing colourful sunset in Brazil. These are sceneries that not only postcards but UK students have yet to capture. Former-student, Rick Majithia, talks about Hong Kong where he studied as part of an exchange scheme. “Think beaches, rooftop bars on top of sky scrapers, some of the best shopping in the world and a brilliant nightlife. The culture is different,” he says. “It turned out to be one of the best decisions I had ever made.” But unlike Rick, many UK students are unable to share their experience of studying outside Britain because they missed out.

Although UK develops some of the best graduates in the world, UK graduates are missing out in getting that wider global perspective as they are less likely to study abroad than they used to.

A recent report by the Council for the Industry and Higher Education (CIHE), Global Horizons and the Role of Employers, found that Global businesses are increasingly seeking graduates who have a global awareness with the initiative to study overseas as part of their learning. The study stated that the number of English home students going on European schemes such as The European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERUSMUS) had fallen from 9,500 to 5,500 in the last ten years.

Chriselia De Vries, Study Abroad Officer for Cass Business School London, believes that the report’s claims are true. “The majority of the students I send away tend to be ‘EU’ or Overseas students rather than Home” says De Vries, “We certainly receive many more incoming students from our partner schools than we manage to send out.”

So why are fewer of our home-grown students today passing off a future of security and high pay? Another CIHE report found that the perceived institutional barriers include: unclear institutional strategies, lack of encouragement and inadequate support and funding.

Some students are unaware about funding which could explain why they may be worried about the cost of studying abroad. Clarissa Fairlie, 19, a student from Birmingham University is one of them. “I have no idea how students from my university or course are funded. I just know I can’t afford it,” she says. She is choosing not to study aboard as part of her Tourism Business Management course. “It’s too long, I want to get university over and done with, I feel like I will miss out on things like graduating with my friends. I want to graduate with everyone else. I am aware of the benefits. I would do it if it was for only two weeks but it’s for one year. ”

However, Ivan Hutchins, International Partnerships Manager of City University, is not convinced that funding is an issue or that the number of English home students studying abroad is reducing. He finds courses such as Speech and Language Therapy, Journalism, Business and Economics have shown a notable increase in UK graduates participating in exchanges. “I know this because these departments have staff dedicated to making exchanges work and grow.”

There’s no doubt about it,anorexia kills. So why is it that every day  n girls and boys as young as 8 head down this dangerous and ultimately damaging road?
Reports of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have been around as early as 1689 and it is well reported that 1920′s society women skipped a meal or two to get the popular flat chested boyish “flapper” look of the age and to emulate the stars of the then brand-new silver screen.

In the past eating disorders were often a secretive and lonely affliction with the sufferer having no-one to turn to.Now in the 21st century in a world full of technological advances where no-one is ever more than 20 feet away from a wifi hotspot or their mobiles sufferers have turned to the web for comfort.In recent years there has been a sharp rise in “thinspiration”  and pro-anorexia websites on blogging communities such as Xanga and Livejournal. On these sites girls swap tips on how to avoid hunger pangs,discussion on ”thinspirational” celebrities such as anorexia sufferer Mary Kate Olsen and a pre-pregnancy Nicole Richie and most importantly how to hide their increasingly skeletal figures from their loved ones.

Dominated by images of underweight women and pictures of obese people as “anti-thinspo”  there are also quotes posted to warn anorexics about what could happen if they do not stick to their routines for example  one site featured the “Ana Commandments”- Number 1:Nothing Tastes as good as thin feels.

 An overwhelming number of these websites don’t seem to be run by actual anorexia sufferers more by girls and young women who want to drop a few pounds in order to look “hawt” in their Hollister bikini for their “hawt” Abercrombie-esque boyfriends. Joking aside, many medicla professionals are very concerend about the rise in these groups and that other girls are encouraging others to resist getting the medical attention that they need. Many offer advice and handy hints to users to enable them to dupe their medics and therefore making their jobs even more difficult.

Friday nights are free. Instead of blowing your student loans on over-priced , over-the-top bars you could be keeping all your hard earned cash right in your pocket. Lots of popular London venues have launched free nights ………..

government may benefit financially from overseas students but is it neglecting student in the UK

Overseas students who are cannot afford to study in the UK are still able to benefit from British universities who are exporting their sought-after degrees to hundreds of thousands of overseas students.

According to new figures released from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) nearly 200,000 offshore students studied for qualifications from 112 British universities last year, earning the sector more than £268m in fees.

British universities have long relied on the roughly £2.5bn that overseas students bring when they come to the UK to study, but the new figures reveal for the first time the extent to which students are taking UK higher education qualifications overseas.

With student numbers at home restricted by the government, many British universities are looking to expand their offshore operations to reach a potentially enormous market of students seeking the prestige of a UK degree but without the means to travel abroad.

Liverpool University has set up an alliance with Xian Jiaotong, in China, that awards its degrees. Kalvin Everest, director of academic affairs, said: “The UK system is small in global terms, with very high quality teaching and research. Lots of students will want to come to the UK, but we need to take what we offer to other countries as well. There’s an incredible undersupply of providers given the demand out there in the world.”

The University of London and the Open University have the longest established distance learning courses, and educate the bulk of offshore students – 63,140 of the 166,000 doing English university courses.

The 2007-08 figures show that more than half of offshore students were on distance learning courses (100,360), while 7,090 were at overseas campuses run by British universities. Most of the remaining 89,190 students were studying for qualifications offered by UK institutions in collaboration with foreign partners.

The majority studied undergraduate courses, with just under a third taking postgraduate qualifications.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 students studied for UK qualifications in Greece, Russia, Ireland and Trinidad and Tobago. Four countries – Hong Kong (21,280 students), Singapore (20,845), Malaysia (20,525) and China (10,450) – accounted for 37% of offshore provision between them. This compares with the 45,355 Chinese students and 25,905 Indian students that came to the UK to study in 2007-08.

The British Council estimated that the UK made £500 per student from twinning arrangements, joint programmes and franchises in 2003-04, compared with £2,706 from programmes on overseas campuses and £2,040 for distance-learning programmes.

This raises the question of whether or not the government is focusing its energies on offshore income made by students, whilst neglecting many promising students in the UK an opportunity to further their education.

Since the beginning of last year we have been hearing about the recession and now like the doomed Titanic sailing towards that big iceberg it has finally hit. Economists say that this is the biggest and worst economic crisis to hit us globally since the beginning of the last century and no one is sure when or if it will end.

The first finger of blame was pointed at the Bankers and City boys who had been living it up in the lap of luxury for years claiming extortionate bonuses. However the whole blame cannot be put on them alone, the whole of Western Society got used to a disposable income and was in the grip of a “must have it ,will have it now” credit culture. We have sons of MP’s being given insane, uncalled-for allowances to throw “F*ck off I’m rich” parties, Celebrity Big Brother contestants demanding huge fees to just sit in a house for two weeks,(with the winner Ulrika Jonsson reportedly getting £175,000) while ordinary Joe Bloggs in the street is facing the very real and scary possibility of losing his job ( probably to a foreign worker) and home.

Most of all for 20 somethings like myself it seems very unfair. We are being made to pay for the big mistakes made by generations before us. We were not old enough to reap the rewards of western society’s consumer culture gone mad and now we have to bear the burden too.

I don’t want to hear that in these times of hardship to become a “recessionista” and build a capsule wardrobe of high end basic pieces. (a black t-shirt for £250? That’s half a month’s wages.) . I don’t want to hear that I should invest in stocks so that when they get better I’ll get a nice return.

I want to know that when I graduate I’ll not be heading straight for gumtree.com to find a job cleaning toilets because that’s all there is. But with unemployment rates for young people at a record high this seems more than a grim possibility. People seem to have forgotten about our generation, the ones who will have to bear the brunt of the previous generations’ misguided endeavors. And as most students know when it all hits the fan, unlike Britain’s banks this time our parents will not be able to bail us out.