Government funding for higher education is hard to come by and is won only after universities have spent months polishing their bids for jam jars of money. “Our faculty has been trampling down the grass between the two institutions for decades.” The MIT technocrats also secured a handsome £45m of British taxpayers’ money for the privilege.They couldn’t believe their luck, it is alleged It was as if they had won the Lottery. They were rubbing their hands in glee.”I think it’s an absolute disgrace,” says one senior British university figure, who declined to be named “Gordon Brown was blackmailed MIT is getting an enormous amount of money from this. They’re being given the equivalent of one British university’s annual turnover. They will try to generate business for themselves out of what they develop here. I’m sure they will make a killing.”As one might expect, other universities at the top of the research league are seething that Cambridge has been honoured in this way.

“We have a long-standing relationship with Cambridge,” says Bacow. “He wanted to understand why MIT was so successful in encouraging entrepreneurial activity and innovating speedily from the laboratory into industry; in encouraging students and staff to take their ideas and organise companies around them; and also to create jobs and economic development opportunities for the region.”MIT declined to set up a UK campus but agreed to a collaboration Brown suggested Edinburgh, his Alma Mater But MIT said no, only Cambridge would do. The story has it that Brown, who is impressed by American dynamism and holidays at Cape Cod, asked MIT to set up an outpost in Britain in the hope that some of its go-getting would rub off here.”I got a call from Gordon Brown’s office saying he was interested in meeting with me,” says Lawrence Bacow, MIT’s Chancellor. “There will be no closed deals by the funding council with individual universities,” he said, describing how Hefce operates. “Everything is done in an open manner according to published criteria with the outcomes explained.”The problem with the Cambridge-MIT link-up is that it was conceived behind closed doors, outside the established procedures, on the personal initiative of Gordon Brown. Those arrangements ensure that finite money is fairly distributed, according to rules that everyone understands.In addition, academic paranoia has been fuelled by the mystery surrounding the project – which seems to have resulted from the Chancellor’s desire to ensure there was no leak Very few details have been worked out yet. Finally, the critics wonder why such a huge sum of taxpayers’ money is being thrown at a couple of already successful universities, and whether it is possible to transplant the American go-go-go culture to the Fens and turn British academics into hustlers overnight.At the annual meeting of the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce), the body charged with disbursing government money to the universities, Sir Brian Fender, its chief executive, made clear his displeasure with the project, albeit in code.

British higher education experts dislike the fact that normal funding channels for new projects, requiring competitive bidding, have been bypassed. MIT is go-go-go, run-run-run.”
But reaction from higher education in the UK has been decidedly muted to the attempt by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to ginger up British academe In fact, it has been downright hostile in some quarters. British taxpayers are being ripped off as a result, they say.The talk is of favouritism and cronyism. A number of vice-chancellors, academics and funding officials resent the way Brown appears to have been seduced by the boffins at MIT, America’s East Coast powerhouse for IT and biotechnology, in his drive to improve UK competitiveness. “I think that this exchange plan is excellent,” gushed Professor Richard Hynes, head of the centre for cancer research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when the new £68m link-up between Cambridge University and MIT was announced “They are very different places. He said training in abstract thinking had already raised standards.. The hype was breathless.

“I think that this exchange plan is excellent,” gushed Professor Richard Hynes, head of the centre for cancer research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when the new £68m link-up between Cambridge University and MIT was announced “They are very different places MIT is go-go-go, run-run-run.”

The hype was breathless. It’s very much a problem-solving approach, testing solutions and making predictions.”Peter Garbett, head of science at Sharnbrook Upper School, Bedfordshire, said the school became involved in the project five years ago. In English, children talk about moral values and relationships before reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, while in history they debate the politics of hunger strikes, martyrdom and protest before analysing the tactics of the suffragette movement.John Dryden, the headteacher, said training for teachers was based on practical problem solving, but it also helped staff to give children an understanding of abstract thought. “What we are trying to do is develop critical thinking for the youngsters themselves.

We are teaching children how to learn, so rather than having the teacher as the giver of information we are giving children, through various strategies, the ability to think. By providing challenging, demanding and rigorous education for this age group, I know we can match the improvements we have seen elsewhere in the school system. Our task now is to prepare pupils for the challenges of the world of tomorrow whilst underpinning the progress made at primary level in the basics.”Several schools have been testing initiatives, as part of research by academics at King’s College, London. At Heaton Manor School in Newcastle upon Tyne, children have been learning abstract problemsolving skills to improve lessons in geography, English and history.