Uni short changing students on lessons and advice?

GoldenShadow

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Bizarre comment: it is so much more difficult to build a career in a university than in teaching!

The behaviour from lecturers that you describe in your post (which is otherwise spot-on) was not acceptable, but results from the way their work is assessed and rewarded, rather than intrinsic ability.

No, honestly! If you knew who I was talking about you would know where I was coming from

It was the lecturers who refused to share what they had if a small percentage of students were disengaged that were usually the better ones. Just fed up of the uni doing nothing and security refusing to remove problem students.

A lot of my lecturers were hourly paid, and all the salaried lecturers would hint very heavily that if you were hourly paid you were rubbish. I had two lecturers who were dismissed whilst teaching my year group. They had been at the uni forever but no one ever got a good mark with them and there were constant and numerous complaints. They had never done anything but lecture, hence the opinion that it was probably because no one wanted them!

I had one lecturer who had just finished his BA in Tourism and was starting his Masters. He had no actual lecturing or tutoring qualifications at all, but was still a lecturer, lecturing students part time with no one officially supervising him. My uni willingly seemed to let most people have a stab at it if they wanted to.

I went to Aston Business School to begin with and dropped out and came to ARU. Aston's lecturers were worlds apart from the vast majority at Anglia Ruskin

laurel7172

He's leaving it quite late. My daughter was unhappy with her course and she has had her transfer sorted for quite a while.

I don't know how much it helped (you'd have to ask DD!), but my input was that in life it's generally better to run to than to run from and that there's no shame in quitting as long as it's part of a plan.

She did everything herself and I'm immensely proud of her I haven't forgotten the wobbly months-we did have them-but she pulled through, and so will your son. He just needs to work out what his goal is and take it from there.

[Deleted User]

laurel7172 wrote: »

He's leaving it quite late. My daughter was unhappy with her course and she has had her transfer sorted for quite a while.

I don't know how much it helped (you'd have to ask DD!), but my input was that in life it's generally better to run to than to run from and that there's no shame in quitting as long as it's part of a plan.

She did everything herself and I'm immensely proud of her I haven't forgotten the wobbly months-we did have them-but she pulled through, and so will your son. He just needs to work out what his goal is and take it from there.

Good for her. I think the difference is she knew what she wanted to do and he is uncertain having built this up for so long as the right thing to do. If he knew he wanted to do say Georgraphy it would be one less problem unless the tutors were as bad in that area as well ...

[Deleted User]

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Bizarre comment: it is so much more difficult to build a career in a university than in teaching!

The behaviour from lecturers that you describe in your post (which is otherwise spot-on) was not acceptable, but results from the way their work is assessed and rewarded, rather than intrinsic ability.

I think Golden Shadow has hit the nail on the head as far as my boy's experiences go. I don't know why it should be so bad but it is. His experience is that the tutor's don't care and they don't give half decent lectures.

prowla

The amount of contact time at Uni varies by subject; some just require tutorials and a lot of time in the library, whereas others require a lot of lectures and labs.

I did an engineering degree in the 80s and I had a quite full timetable, whereas other people I knew did other subjects where they only had a few hours a week.

At Uni you need to determine your own level of work and you may not get such a structured regime to work to as at school.

It's even worse when you go out to work; you have to think for yourself all of the time!

As far as lecturers go, they are lecturers, not teachers; many of them will be working on research, publishing papers, obtaining funding, and so-on.

Viberduo

GoldenShadow wrote: »

Firstly, university is not like secondary school. You aren't given pointers on what you can achieve and spoon fed so that achieve it. It is much more up to the individual. Universities generally have personal tutors that students can seek advice from, but I never found them much help to be honest. It was rare they ever knew you well enough to advise on anything.

What degree is he doing? I did Business Management. Year one I had 12 hours, years two and three I had 8 hours per week. That isn't a lot, but I always felt I was paying more for the right to take the exams/coursework than for the actual tuition. If lecturers go on strike you don't get a reduction in the fees you pay. My lecturers would forget to turn up or leave early because they had somewhere to be or disliked the seminar group they were teaching. I would try not to think of it in terms of the hours of tuition taught, its more the resources and everything available for the money, as extortionate as 9K seems.

I totally disagree with you, if university was all down to the student then what is the point of having a university ranking system since you could in theory do almost all the work at home all university then becomes is you paying to join a group and then reliant on people liking you to do group work.

The problem with university is you get marked dependant on the markers own policitcal views and opinions, I spent a year part time at university and one lecturer marked everyone who had a different politcal view as either fail or barely get a D or C, if you shared her views worked hard but were a bit lazy you got a B- but work hard and put a lot of correct work in that they dont agree with get a D, I know people who failed dissertations with her who got them remarked and got C+'s on average sometimes even higher.

GoldenShadow

Viberduo wrote: »

I totally disagree with you, if university was all down to the student then what is the point of having a university ranking system since you could in theory do almost all the work at home all university then becomes is you paying to join a group and then reliant on people liking you to do group work.

The problem with university is you get marked dependant on the markers own policitcal views and opinions, I spent a year part time at university and one lecturer marked everyone who had a different politcal view as either fail or barely get a D or C, if you shared her views worked hard but were a bit lazy you got a B- but work hard and put a lot of correct work in that they dont agree with get a D, I know people who failed dissertations with her who got them remarked and got C+'s on average sometimes even higher.

I didn't say it was all down to the student. I said it is more up to the individual than secondary school, which is entirely true.

My experience suggests that the better universities have better lecturers. Also that better universities test you more than the worse ones. I went to a very good uni, and then a very bad one, that is how my opinion is formed (and from my friends and their experiences).

What you say in the second paragraph, is why I always made sure to get on well with my lecturers! Sad, but true

bewildered123

OP It's hard to advise as your post is very vague about what the difficulties actually are. Can you say a little about what it is he's unhappy about? Is he failing modules?

dizzie

prowla wrote: »

The amount of contact time at Uni varies by subject; some just require tutorials and a lot of time in the library, whereas others require a lot of lectures and labs.

I did an engineering degree in the 80s and I had a quite full timetable, whereas other people I knew did other subjects where they only had a few hours a week.

At Uni you need to determine your own level of work and you may not get such a structured regime to work to as at school.

It's even worse when you go out to work; you have to think for yourself all of the time!

As far as lecturers go, they are lecturers, not teachers; many of them will be working on research, publishing papers, obtaining funding, and so-on.

I agree that you have to think for yourself all of the time when you go out to work....but actually:

(i) You are not having to pay £9k per year just to use your own brain.....the reverse is generally true (at least it is if you don't have to work for nothing to get a foothold on the career ladder....but don't get me started on the subject of unpaid internships)

(ii) You are not usually dealing with anything quite as highbrow as your degree studies...so it's a different type of "thinking for yourself"...and actually I dare say that as an engineer, if you can't get your head around a problem, you've probably got someone you can call and ask about it. Sounds like this university student doesn't have anyone who has both the relevant knowledge and the availability/accessibility for him to speak to.

...in short....rather a flawed analogy I think.

...and I do take your point about lecturers having other duties besides lecturing. BUT I still think that £9k a year is an absolute rip off for most courses in terms of what is ACTUALLY being delivered for that money.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Yes. A rip off in a large number of respects at a large number of UK universities.

£1,500 per month for actual attendance, plus enormous rip off additional expense to first year students who are seen as a captive market for shoddy university owned or university sponsored accommodation.

We should be ashamed as a country at the mess which is the English university system in 2014.

And it is all well and good, GoldenDawn, you making value judgements about your own experience, but you can't apply them to the current batch simply because didn't pay anything like the amounts which first years students have just experienced for their money.