We recently put up posts about female postgraduate engineering students at Brunel University receiving an extra £15,000 p.a. funding solely on account of their gender and to say that people have been incensed by this taxpayer-funded initiative would be an understatement. So we’ve just emailed the following open letter to 121 members of the faculty’s academic staff, and I hope to have the opportunity to make a presentation there in the fullness of time:

131213 open letter sent to 121 members of the academic staff at Brunel University

The £15,000 p.a. grants are a solution to a non-existent problem. If women have to be bribed with an additional £15,000 p.a. to incentivise them to undertake postgraduate studies in a particular field, they clearly don’t want to be doing the courses in the first place. You can be sure the majority of these women, after finishing their studies, either won’t seek work in the field of engineering, or if they do so, they’ll soon quit. What an utter waste of taxpayers’ money.

This is an exercise in pushing water uphill with a stick. You’d think engineers, of all people, would see how stupid that is, wouldn’t you?