University Challenged

[greencalx]

I don't think so – I think there's been increases across the board the last two years, in part due to teacher-assessed grades, and in part because there's been fuck all else to do. With exams returning and a labour shortage, maybe the pendulum will swing this year??

[Poobum]

@
I think there's another dimension beyond "paying a fee to get a degree". The idea of learning something new (and probably difficult) because you enjoy it has largely gone out of the window (if it was ever there to begin with beyond weirdos like me). It's very much about getting the best degree you can, by whatever means, because that's what you need to get on with life. I understand exactly why people think this and how it has occurred, but it doesn't fill me with huge amounts of pleasure.

Yes, a complaint I've heard people say far too often is "why are we doing this?" Heaven forbid an animal scientist do anything animal science. Going back to my Research Skills lecturer, she did brilliantly to disguise her exasperation when a bunch of students genuinely asked if they could replace the entire core aspect of data analysis, as in the main learning outcome, with a literature review. Why, when I assume you want to work with animals and improve their welfare, you would want to avoid learning your most useful tools in testing outcomes I ain't got a clue.

There is a divide between, and this is a generalization, us older folk who have actually worked out what we wanna do in life, foreign students coming in knowing exactly why they're here, and the substantial amount for who university is a thing you do, and Animal Bio sounds fun. It is indeed fun, but the fun animal stuff is backed up by a lot of technical knowledge and academic theory. Also, I think there is an absolute reluctance to fail in a lot of them, which I'm absolutely empathetic with, I need to return to feedback a few days after I've got it to regain objectivity. What this means is they just don't engage, submit no formatives, complain like hell, and turn up in group chats in absolute panic. Considering these same people then give horrible feedback on the course, I have tremendous respect for lecturers dealing with it. Have no idea what could be done differently, I just naively hope that people getting fed back to can judge it for what it is.

[greencalx]

I'm about as good at disguising my irritation in class as I am on here.

I'm not entirely sure there's been a huge change in mentality since I was a student. My own experience is skewed by the fact that - then as now - students are quite good at hanging out with people with a similar outlook. In my final year I shared with a bunch, including a couple from the same course, who were happy to talk about the more esoteric parts of our studies until late at night, trying to figure out what it all meant. (With little success, naturally, but it was fun anyway). I expect that put us firmly in the weirdo category.

In my first year tutor group, which was a random assembly, there was a quiet-ish student who went abroad for a year (like me) and came back with vigour and enthusiasm in the final year and did pretty well in the end. This is a pattern I've seen a lot in our students - they tend to mature around third year, and either throw themselves into it, or realise this is not what they really want to do, and plan the fastest path to leave with a decent grade and move on to the next part of their life. Year abroad students tend to come back full of appreciation for all the little things we do to make their lives a bit easier.

Another member of my tutor group started off bright-eyed and bushy tailed, but I think sensed quite quickly that they were out of their depth. A few weeks in, they put together a questionnaire and circulated it to the class. I was particularly confused by the question: "Now we have reached the end of (first, quite challenging, topic) do you feel you are on top of it?" I didn't - but that was because I'd not yet had time to study it properly. I was surprised that someone would believe that by mere dint of showing up to the lectures they would walk out of the door equipped with deep knowledge and expertise, rather than a sense of what they need to work on in their own time. These days I get complaints about not doing "proper teaching", and I'm a bit mystified as to what this is supposed to mean (although I have some unflattering conjectures). Maybe I'm unusually thick and have always had to spend a lot of time on my own figuring out what a teacher was going on about - at school as well as at uni. Maybe some schools have teachers who manage to create knowledge and experience directly in their pupils' minds.

The final member of my group was late for everything, and whenever the discussion turned to some aspect of the course content, he tended to shrug and say "I didn't do that at school". The tutor replied with something like "Y'know at some point in your university education you might expect to encounter something you didn't do at school". At the time (not sure if this is still true) it was often said that first year at uni was mostly repetition of what you'd done at school, so maybe that is where this is coming from - although this very much wasn't my experience. Pretty much everything was new for me, and initially that scared the crap out of me, particularly when there were people strutting confidently about saying that they already knew this stuff. Turned out they didn't really, and the 'proper' A Level textbook I panic-bought in week one to shore up my basic knowledge remained unread for the whole degree. As a result of this experience I strongly advise students not to buy textbooks unless they know they are going to use them.

What is different is the number of students going to university, and perhaps the balance between the different types has shifted somewhat. We provide way more in the way of resources that I ever got - back then, if you missed a lecture you needed to borrow a mate's notes, or go to the library and (at your own expense) photocopy the single set of lecture notes that was kept behind the counter. These days we provide full sets of notes online, which by the end of the course corresponds to many textbooks' worth of material, on the house. In Y1 I had a 1 hour tutorial in my main subject, and a 1 hour examples class in my main subsidiary course. Ours get 3 and 4 hours of those, respectively (albeit in a different, but we think, more useful format). Then there's discussion boards, at least some degree of tolerance to being emailed directly by students, opportunities for weekly feedback, and so on, very little of which existed when I was a student. I think this is all good - I would really like to have had those things and wouldn't want any student to go through what I had to endure in Y2, which was my tutor diligently taking in my work each week with a promise that it would be marked and returned, never to be seen again. None of us had the gumption to complain about this - the tutor was a really nice guy who told us lots of great things, some of them even connected to what we were learning about - but when I see today's generation complaining about, e.g., the font used in lecture notes I do find myself struggling to be sympathetic.

Of course, fees do change the landscape too, but I think these serve mainly to surface behaviour that was already there, rather than promoting that behaviour in the first place.

[A Hat Like That]

In our staff discussions, I always find myself reminding colleagues that we're a rather self-selecting bunch and that our experiences at University are going to be very unlike the average student. I'm one of the youngest in the department and its still 20 years since I sat my Finals.

[A Hat Like That]

I had a moment a few months back when I thought my university was going to force through OpenUni style online courses but I think the return to campus has been rather popular and students really like the contact hours, even if they pick and choose just how they use them.

[A Hat Like That]

I did proper 'old style' teaching in a revision session the other day. Having to block out the board, plan ahead as I wrote, improvise.

It was grand. If I could, I would do that more often.

[greencalx]

With the REF results out today, I'm enjoying the 7-year spectacle of seeing every University promoting their chosen metric as the one that matters. And that also, by sheer coincidence, places them in the top 5.

[A Hat Like That]

We're leading with "a 100% submission of eligible staff" ...

[greencalx]

I liked the bit of spin where we excluded a bunch of people who were better than us by a spurious metric, and placed ourselves third amongst those left.

[drummersaredeaf]

I'm about a month behind on this but a point on scripts going walkies:

A scatty SL gave my GTA mate an envelope of scripts to second mark and he immediately took the forms off the front and wrote AGREE on every single one and left them in her pigeon hole. A few days later she's screaming at him, accusing him of being careless and losing half of them, but he can't tell her she must have lost them because he never even opened the envelope. I presume they turned up under a pile of shit in her office sooner or later, but no apology was forthcoming. Whenever I've been a 'junior' second marker I've always read them, but it's too much bother to challenge a senior member of staff when you're being paid £8 a script and this is unpaid work. I've done it a few times when someone has been chucked into the deep end on a module they don't know or when the module leader has been a bell though. This is the problem of propping universities up on precarious workers. Why would you want to challenge the judgement of someone with a huge ego when you're on a quarter of their wage?

Talking of value for money and entitlement - I'm about to supervise a few distance learning MBA dissertations (hourly paid 😂😂😂) and I'm told they are particularly entitled. Really poor academic standards (referencing investopedia and the like instead of proper sources), zero critical thinking, ignore instructions, write in a report style, and challenge every single mark given despite the above. In these cases I understand it's more that they expect to get career progression directly related to the qualification, but the accommodation they're given is likely to see me tell one they should produce better work if they want better marks. Cash cow for the university though.

[A Hat Like That]

We came about this close to booting a kid off a course because of a missed exam mark.

There's a few colleagues for whom hybrid working is not appropriate. They are also the same colleagues who use it the most.

[Ferris]

Confirmed - masks mandatory for the next semester.

Bit of a surprise because I was assuming we were all going to carry on and pretend covid is over but there you go.

[Alberon]

Ours went to pre-COVID set up after Easter.

All COVID signage is gone and everything is 'normal' again.

[A Hat Like That]

Yeah, about the same here - signage etc all gone over Easter.

[greencalx]

Same.

We already had students asking last year why it was ok for them to go out to busy pubs unmasked but had to put them on to come into a half-empty lecture theatre. Now the Fringe is doing its thing, in many of the same spaces, the question becomes harder to answer.

I won't lie - the prospect of stepping into a room of 250 people who have just arrived from places all round the world makes me slightly nervous, but that was also true pre-covid. The class I teach hospitalised a colleague with the measles.

[Ferris]

Bumping an old thread but only because I want to say it without being a big "broadcast myself" twat.

I just got official notice my thesis was accepted and I've got through a masters program. No great shakes for anyone reading this with their own qualifications I'm sure, but for weirdo ADD/anxiety-riddled me it's a huge deal and I'm over the moon.

Got a bit weepy which I almost never do, really. Delighted. A fucking ton of work though!

Anyway.

[M-CORP]

Bumping an old thread but only because I want to say it without being a big "broadcast myself" twat.

I just got official notice my thesis was accepted and I've got through a masters program. No great shakes for anyone reading this with their own qualifications I'm sure, but for weirdo ADD/anxiety-riddled me it's a huge deal and I'm over the moon.

Got a bit weepy which I almost never do, really. Delighted. A fucking ton of work though!

Anyway.

Just casually clicked on the thread and saw this, wanted to offer my congratulations. Nice one mate :)

[Dex Sawash]

The magic of adhd is you can now discard the entire experience and go back to aimless pottering about.

[BlodwynPig]

Well done Ferris. Monumental. All those years compiling baseball stats has paid off!

[Small Potatoes]

Nice work, Ferris. That's a fantastic achievement.

[A Hat Like That]

Didn't want to make a new thread, don't really want to upstage Ferris.

BUT

nearly 70 of us at my place put up for risk of redundancy. Highlights include the 'case for change' including a dead colleague's data and all the chinese lecturers made to go for their formal meetings on Chinese New Year.

Absolutely dropped a bomb on some departments.

[greencalx]

Are the words "size" and "shape" relevant?

[A Hat Like That]

Are the words "size" and "shape" relevant?

I don't really follow, I'm afraid.

[greencalx]

Ah, no then. I was aware of a University that also seems to be making cuts, and these words seem to appear in the formal name of the programme. So sounds like this sort of thing is going on in more than one place.

[A Hat Like That]

Makes sense. Cheers for clarifying. In my area, at least two other universities are going down the same path.

[Milo]

The University I work for is currently doing a load of consultation stuff which seems like it'll inevitably lead to redundancies.

[Ferris]

Because I've got a few screws loose, I've applied for another masters part time just to keep my brain ticking over. One evening a week, type of thing, some bits of it online, finish it over several years (I'm in no rush). Maybe a PhD to follow at some point depending on how many other screws I shake loose between now and then.

Even from my disconnected academic perch, I've heard rumblings of downsizing among frontline staff and lecturers so this shit does appear to be everywhere. Another local uni's staff just went on strike over pay. It doesn't feel feasible to keep cutting away, especially when senior academic bloat is so rampant*.

_{*my university's senior administrators have grown in number by 173% since 2011, and the salaries for those roles are 184% higher than they were back then. Some very rough estimates means their already not-insignificant salary bill has tripled in 13 years. There's always money for a raise for the lads (especially when they're the ones approving it), but teaching budgets, adjunct staff, and overseas students are getting absolutely hosed.}

Spoiler alert

Also - I don't know why I didn't say it back in May (I do, it's probably because I was pissed and forgot), but thank you for the congrats last year everyone! Hiding behind a spoiler to avoid derailing the thread and focusing it on me, when other people have more interesting and important stuff to talk about than Ferris' What I Done At School.

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