Oblivious of observation...

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Today is International Students' Day. It is, obviously, an international observance of students: the day originates from the execution without trial of nine students and professors on the 17th of November in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia: during a student demonstration against the ocupation one student, Jan Opletal, was shot. He died later and his funeral procession became another demonstration; this was harshly put down and resulted in drastic measures being taken by the Nazis: all Czech colleges and universities were shut down and more than 1,200 students were arrested and sent to concentration camps, as well as the aforementioned executions. Interesting that the NUS had a demonsration last week and plan another next week but their website , where incidentally, they "Demand Extra", has no mention of the significance of today, in fact it doesn't mention it at all: the European Student's Union do [ESU] (and NUS are members); the ESU, make a big deal of the cuts being made in higher education budgets across Europe; additionally they have a 2011 project with the aim of comparing European funding systems in order to share best practices.

"This decrease has often been replaced by the introduction or increase of tuition fees. These fees have not filled the funding gap, but they have made it more difficult for people to participate in and complete higher education."

Anyway, just a thought. One would have thought that the NUS would have some mention of it...