Uni's warned over 'snowflake' demands.

I think it's brilliant that students are so engaged and thinking critically about their courses/curriculum.

Groups such as "why is my curriculum so white" and "Rhodes must fall" have done an excellent job in exposing the false narrative that universities and their curriculums are neutral or free from racism/sexism and are often taught with little or no meaningful critique.

They are not trying to censor or omit certain philosophers instead asked that they are recontextualised so that Kants racial hierarchies are understood within a wider context which classified black people as sub human and justified colonialism.

The vital work or women and more so women of colour are deliberatly omitted from the academy.

I think we need to ask why universities which are overwhelming white and male are so against being challenged.

The thing is, you can give a really good, up to date lecture on a topic and the students won't be satisfied. Indeed my students are much less likely to be satisfied if you try to teach them something than they are when they're given objectively bad lectures that don't challenge them. They'd much rather you asked them to talk about what their mum thinks about the topic than actually engage in any way with research. And they get incredibly angry if you do anything that encourages them to think.

I have several colleagues who mistake activity for learning. The students love their classes because they spend all their time doing really easy, unchallenging tasks. But they genuinely do not learn anything from the classes. They can spend all year supposedly learning one concept and at the end of the year they do not have any understanding of the concept. It's not even a particularly hard or new concept (I used to successfully teach it in one lecture in previous jobs) but their not understanding it makes it impossible to teach the students in other classes. They're then much less satisfied with the modules where we do try to teach things, rather than dumbing everything down and wasting everyone's time.

And they will not read anything or think about it on their own. They won't even pretend they did the reading and try to skim it in class (like sensible undergraduates). No they'll just complain that they shouldn't have to do it.

It reminds me of Sussex university (home of lgbtqietc equality) recently banning sex-based pronouns. No he or she, strictly "they".

Actually that is one thing I would be fully supportive of. For the most part whether you are male or female is irrelevant. Mr/Mrs etc could go as well, one pronoun and one title for all. This isn't pandering to the trans lobby either, I suspect they'd want to keep gendered pronouns anyway as a form of validation. And this isn't to say we should also get rid of sex segregated spaces.

Completely agree with grumpmitchell. This was the obvious outcome of making students pay.

20 years ago my uni education was crap!

6-10 contact hours a week, lecturers not worth staying awake for, tutorials no one would speak in etc

Going to uni 15 years later the lecturers worked so much harder!
Handouts, up to date lecturers, more group work, more frequent assignments.

The academic standard was lower but I learned more.

At uni (20 years ago), if a topic was considered to be poorly taught, tough shit - go to the library and figure it out

Yes, this was rubbish. But even in the subjects that were well taught you were expected to self teach, explore, challenge the texts, not just regurgitate them.

Education has already been devalued. When I went to uni 20 years ago 1 person in my course (approx 50 of us, uni requiring high a level grades to get in) got a first. He was a cut above the rest of us and truly deserved it.

Then when I started recruiting people I'd look at uni degrees and be surprised that graduates with firsts were struggling with more technical aspects of the job. Until someone pointed out to me the massive increase in top grade degrees (1/2:1) being given.

I've found graduate problem solving skills are generally low. We had to coach and mentor more and more - new graduates weren't working less (if anything they were doing longer hours and seemed more dedicated) but didn't seem able to cope with coming up with their own ways of doing things.

At uni (20 years ago), if a topic was considered to be poorly taught, tough shit - go to the library and figure it out

Yes I remember this attitude well - and it sucked 20 years ago too. If giving 3 lectures a week is part of your job then prepare and deliver them professionally. If your field has moved on in recent years the your lecture notes should too.

It's not as simple as that unfortunately. The uni has banned the use of gendered pronouns until the preferred pronoun has been clarified by the individual. Origins in special snowflake politics. I can only presume a lot of form filling wrt "what gender do you identify with and which pronoun would you prefer". This is the next generation coming.

Oh. :(
Bad news, indeed.

One could do what Captain Bluebear does in ^The 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear" when he encounters a tribe where everyone has a horribly long name that must be pronounced correctly every time when addressing the person. Namely, giving himself an even more tongue-breaking name than they have.

I think I'd choose my first name, middle name and last name as pronoun.

So that everyone who mentions me in conversation has to say the whole name every time.

At uni (20 years ago), if a topic was considered to be poorly taught, tough shit - go to the library and figure it out

It was like that for me, too. Looking back now I feel a bit angry that the teachers who couldn't be bothered or had poor knowledge of the subject got the same pay as the fantastic ones.

It's not as simple as that unfortunately. The uni has banned the use of gendered pronouns until the preferred pronoun has been clarified by the individual. Origins in special snowflake politics. I can only presume a lot of form filling wrt "what gender do you identify with and which pronoun would you prefer". This is the next generation coming.

German universities, after experimenting with the retail model, have mostly returned to the sensible model, i.e. not demanding payment except for a small fee. If one demands people to pay loads of money, it is only understandable that they see it as purchase and want something for their money.

It reminds me of Sussex university (home of lgbtqietc equality) recently banning sex-based pronouns. No he or she, strictly "they".

I think that's actually a good approach.

If everyone is "they" then no one is a special snowflake. I wonder when the first trans will complain that they are not addressed with the female pronouns they want. (I am pretty sure males will be the first to complain)

DC require ever more open-ended tasks as they progress through school in order to use their imaginations and their research/analytical skills. However, open-ended tasks are risky and even the best students sometimes fail to make the best of them.

I work as a teacher and find it astounding the amount of complaints that we receive about: style of teaching, marks for assessments, lack of help. We are told to help the students to become more independent learners and increase their resilience. But God help us if someone gets a bad mark. In my school teachers are professionally humiliated if the grades are poorer than desired (by the school, parents and students). This attitude then goes on to university. Being a total people-pleaser, i find it a very hard balance (good outcomes versus promoting independence) and have had some shocking situations of student/parent foot stamping that I have created by being too accommodating.

At uni (20 years ago), if a topic was considered to be poorly taught, tough shit - go to the library and figure it out. Personally I think that is part of uni education. Over half of the content that I teach as a science teacher I have had to teach myself to level that is "perfect" and inspires interest and confidence in my students. You cannot get those skills from spoon feeding and "poor" teaching helped me to develop those skills.

Making friends with Bill is the second best decision I ever took. I've known him for many years.

I'm hoping to be a friend of Bill W's but its not quite working out.

Agree that this generation special snowflake status is worrying. They are in for a big hard shock. I find I can tolerate the teens in the poor rough area I live in far better than most teenagers, because they are far more realistic about life. They know that life will be tough for them, and that this government has made everything harder, they are not silly.

The fees should get you decent facilities and teaching - exactly what that entails will vary by subject and also be appropriate to the general ability level of the intake. And there really should be some sort of external moderation. As it is, it's surely pretty unfair on a good hardworking student who for whatever reason goes to a poorly rated uni which nevertheless hands out a high proportion of Firsts - they have received devalued currency.

OP, when you say you're a friend of Bill's would that be a friend of Bill W's? Because he's a friend of mine too.

A teacher I know says that it appals him to see the cosseting of the young within the education system. He says they are going to face the toughest realities since the generation who grew up during WWII but are less equipped than any generation in history. It's horrifying.

It reminds me of a situation my dsis found herself in. She is an exam invigilator in schools, colleges and unis. The most demanding students are not the year 10s or the college students who have returned to learning after many years. It is the uni students. One young man protested strongly at not being able to keep his phone with him and switched on during an exam. His reasoning was that he had paid for his course and thus the qualification so it shouldn't matter if he bent the exam rules. In his mind, paying his fees meant he was a customer purchasing a degree. Gobsmacking.

It's not just the whole safe space nonsense, it goes much wider than this. I had a friend ranting to me the other week - she is at the "theoretical" end of her discipline. Her university superiors don't want her teaching courses on this - even though it's the glue that holds the practical side of things together and places everything in context - because the students find it hard, get low marks, then write bad reviews - which affects the university's place in the league tables.

It's a tendency I saw forming 15 or so years ago when I left university teaching, and I think it's got much much worse since then. I loved teaching, I was extremely good at it, I had students come up to me at graduation to say how much they'd enjoyed being stretched intellectually, I even had one student come to thank me for my perfectly timed kick-up-the-arse in his second year which had made him start working properly! But I wouldn't be allowed to teach that way in today's universities.

To paraphrase the Rolling Stones . Students may not get what they want at University but they must just find they get what they need. Being challenged isn't meant to be comfortable but is essential for personal & academic growth.

Chicago university sent a letter to all its new starters explaining it wasn't a safe space, and the purpose of education was to be challenged.

Hooray for a bit of sanity!

So-called 'safe spaces' are dangerous. The only 'safe spaces' should be literal ones - women's refuges etc - and stop this puerile anti-free speech nonsense.

Daily - I suspect you think you're being amusing in some way. Let me disabuse you of that notion.

Why shouldn't students get what they want?

Because, and I'm trying to be kind here...it's very likely that their picture of what will serve them well in the world is...unformed. Nascent. Incomplete. (what I really want to type is "they have no fucking idea what's in store for them", I know I sure as hell didn't!)

But I agree that their arriving at this opinion is no fault of their own, it's a result of the school and home environments that they're being brought up in, and the relentless march of the market through education.

But the things that will make students satisfied in the short term, and employable in the long term are different.

Universities should be measured on post grad employment rates