Uni short changing students on lessons and advice?

[Deleted User]

I don't want to keep covering the point that uni teaching is different to school. I know that. He knows that. They tell you that at school and when you go and visit. It's kind of missing the point. At the moment I am concerned about a few things detailed in other posts one of which is quality of lecturing, guidance, etc. And I'm really not bothered if they are students/pupils/teachers/lecturers/tutors. I don't care and it's just distracting from the main concerns and ideas that people are having.

I've raised some of the good points made with him and just waiting for him to think about them and come back to me.

dizzie

Hi Beremy - have PM'd you with details about Dutch University system. Have split it into three parts because it was too long. Hope it's helpful....sorry it's so long but I tried to cover everything.

With every best wish to you and your family!

atypical

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

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.

You say it is a "rip off" but the cost of running universities hasn't changed very much. What's changed is who incurs the cost.

There are two separate points which you confuse as one:
a) Universities are overcharging for the service they deliver
b) The state should incur more of the cost of higher education vs the student

I suspect what you actually mean is point b. That's a political decision that can be answered far less definitively than point a.

Even if you think point a is true, how much could universities be overcharging? Even if you assume they are overcharging by 25% that only reduces a student's share of the cost to £6.75k from £9k which I'm sure you'd still think was too high.

And the figures show that universities aren't overcharging. They achieved a surplus of only 4% of income in 2012/13 which most would call prudent planning, not profiteering. They also have to report their costs in a strictly defined way to HEFCE.

dizzie

Atypical,

I think we will both agree that first, some courses cost more to run than others. Medicine and dentistry for example both cost much more than £9,000 to run per undergraduate. The first ethical question is whether students on courses that cost much less than £9,000 to run (e.g. business studies) should subsidise their peers who are on the more resource consuming courses.

The second question is also an ethical one. Tuition fees and maintenance loans are also dependant on parental income. There are problems with this. First, the parents are not under any binding agreement to support their offspring (so bad luck if they have better off but stingey parents) and also if there has been a parental split, students can still access more money and get grants/bursaries if they use the income of the lower earner parent (even if together, parental income is much more than that of another student)

So is it right that some students are subsidising both those on more expensive courses AND their peers who come from a lower income background?

Now there is no doubt that universities are very much businesses nowadays. They are in the business of thinking up courses that might look attractive - even if they know that the undergraduate scene is awash with similar courses and there is therefore perhaps less demand for graduates from those courses. All of these courses are eligible for student loans....and my gut feeling is that this is a vanity thing on behalf of UK Plc. We want to look good and say that 50% of our young people enter higher education....even if we have no real graduate use for many of the graduates that we are producing!

My next point concerns the fact that businesses firmly rooted in the private sector, have to keep looking at ways of working more efficiently and making money go further. This is something that the public sector doesn't do well. Why can't universities pool more resources - offer more literature resources online, rather than in the traditional physical library format (which is more expensive due to building/staffing costs)? Why can't they be more imaginative in renting out facilities to businesses and drawing more income in there. And finally, in the face of all the cost struggle that you puport universities to be under....why do vice chancellors and the like insist in giving themselves pay increases of double digit figures each year?

Hmmm - I think that the model for costs and charging structure is not quite so perfect. However, if young people HAVE to pay £9,000 per year (and that's what the coalition put in place).....AT LEAST monitor the QUALITY of tuition, kick out any "dead wood" and give these young people access to proper systems which support them on their learning voyage of discovery.

What we have currently is a "take it or leave it" product delivered in the style of many public services....but one which comes with a very high price tag!

PS Also interesting to see how somewhere like Buckingham (an independant university) has managed to condense a Business degree into two years at a slightly lower overall cost tuition fee wise.....and of course, these students save a years worth of living expenses too.

More thinking outside of the box is required IMO!

Indie_Kid

dizzie wrote: »

The second question is also an ethical one. Tuition fees and maintenance loans are also dependant on parental income.

A tuition fee loan isn't based on household income. You can get the full amount whether your household income is £10,000 per year or £100,000 per year.

PS Also interesting to see how somewhere like Buckingham (an independant university) has managed to condense a Business degree into two years at a slightly lower overall cost tuition fee wise.....and of course, these students save a years worth of living expenses too.

I seem to remember that Plymouth uni do (or did) this too.

dizzie

Hi Indie Kid, thanks for your comment.

What I meant is that universities were allowed to charge £9000 (ha, which was meant to be "in exceptional circumstances) on the grounds that they offered students from lower income households bursaries....So the higher fees harvested from some students is able to reduce what others have to pay for their tuition (because of the availability of bursaries).

In other words, the money for bursaries comes from those students who pay the full fee. Some students therefore subsidise others.

Also, thanks for the comment about Plymouth....there are at least a few institutions starting to think outside the box then? Great! Let's hope the rest follow suit.

Mrs_Soup

Is he not having any assessment (exams, essays etc) at the end of the first year as most universities do. He has pretty much made it to the end of the year and should presumably be getting some results for his first year performance which will be a guide to how well he is likely to do. If not well then now is his chance to think about something else. If however he has passed everything then he perhaps has less to worry about.

Does he have a personal tutor? I would generally advise against a parent contacting a uni directly as they can only give you general information - they cannot discuss your child's performance with you as he is an adult and it would be a breach of the data protection act for them to do so.

As an administrator in a uni dept we would always try and direct a struggling student to a particularly helpful member of acadmeic staff as some are brilliant with students and others somewhat less so. There is usually someone around who can help though.

Mrs_Soup

Oh and on some courses being cheaper to run than others this is true but courses are grouped into different bands and those that are classroom based get a lower level of government funding while lab based or medical etc get a higher level of central funding. It doesn't mean it costs less than 9K to run a business course - in fact it is costing more than that as there is still some money coming from hefce.

dizzie

First, I would like to point out that the OP and her son are not exceptional in feeling that the university is short-changing the son. Just look at this news story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27486606

Whilst some businesses have a "stack em high, sell em cheap" mentality....in my opinion, some universities have a "stack em high....er but don't sell em cheap" philosophy. Five hundred students in a lecture theatre? You can't really blame some lecturers for not being able to cope with students who are running into difficulties based on these numbers! Does a course like this really represent quality?.....or is it just an opportunity for the university to make a profit....perhaps to subsidise other subjects running at a loss?

Even the government agrees that universities need to do better!

Now, I want to look at students on group D courses (typically with very little contact time) and explain in terms of finance (including HEFCE grants) WHY these students in particular should be expecting more for their money.


Figures from 2010

Data from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), is that it costs £7,300 to educate the average student per year. This is presumably why the coalition suggested a tuition fee of around £7,000 and why £9000 was only meant to be "for exceptional circumstances"

Some universities appear to be more cost efficient than others. Again in 2010, at Durham University it cost about £4,776 per year to educate a student in modern languages, whereas at Sheffield Hallam University, this was just over £7,440. Why the discrepancy? If this was any other business, it would have two choices: Either become more cost competitive, or go out of business!


I understand that one of the grants HEFCE gives to HE institutions is based on price bands for subjects: i.e. Band A – clinical medicine and dentistry, and veterinary science; B – lab-based subjects (sciences, pre-clinical medicine, etc.); C – subjects with a studio, laboratory or fieldwork element; and D – all other subjects.


But as illustrated above, there are huge variations in cost from institution to institution. Certainly, the Oxford University estimate of how much it costs per student is not representative of the whole, since Oxford offer a very different teaching style with 1-1 tuition (which is clearly very expensive)


Below is a table for the Teaching grants from HEFCE for 2013/14. Okay, subjects in group C2 and D attract no teaching funding....but that's because it is meant to cost less than £7500 per student to offer those subjects (yet they are paying £9k for them!)....and furthermore....group D subjects should cost less than a group C subject!


HEFCE funding for Groups from 2013-14
Group and Funding per student for that group

A £10000
B £1500
C1 £250
C2 £0
D £0

Group C1 subjects are subjects in group C which cost on average > £7500 per student.
Group C2 subjects are subjects in that group which cost on average < £7500 per student

Now I'll show you the table for 09/10 and the relative funding cut for each subject. We can see that overall, the funding was cut for the higher bands by a greater amount.

HEFCE funding as shown previously, but for 09/10

Group....... Funding in 09/10 £.......... Reduction in 13/14 cf to 09/10 £

A.............. 15788............................. 5788
B................ 6710..............................5210
C ............... 5131............................. 5131 - 4881
D................3947..............................3947

If we look at medicine in group A, the reduction in funding from 2009/10 is £5788, whereas for say a group D subject like Business, it was only cut by £3947. Okay, inflation will have added to these figures, so for arguments sake, lets say that costs now are around 12% higher due to inflation.

This means the HEFCE grants for Group A have been eroded by £6482 and for Group D by £4420.....and there is a difference of over £2000 in these figures!

In the same time period, student tuition fees rose from a cap of £3225 in 09/10 to one of £9000 (a difference of £5775).

In summary, it is clear therefore that students taking subjects from Group A are not actually paying enough to make up for the drop in funding by HEFCE, whereas students from Group D are paying more besides the drop in the funding.


So Group D students are getting poorer value for money and should certainly not be expecting to be short-changed for their money!

atypical

dizzie wrote: »

In summary, it is clear therefore that students taking subjects from Group A are not actually paying enough to make up for the drop in funding by HEFCE, whereas students from Group D are paying more besides the drop in the funding.


So Group D students are getting poorer value for money and should certainly not be expecting to be short-changed for their money!

Price and value are two separate things. 'Cost plus' might be a good way of pricing a commodity good, but less so for pricing a higher education. In any case, the average fee a university charges may well be around £7,500 after grants/bursaries. I still struggle to see how universities can be accused of overcharging.

Also don't think it's helpful to make value comparisons with medical/dental courses that comprise less than 5% of the total student intake and which have strategic importance.