Unreasonable requests from students: Sense check

Absolutely agree with this. I certainly don't think male and female teaching staff have the same experience.
100% agree. Students will contact me about my male colleagues module that I have no involvement in.

This is quite surprising. I must say, I have not seen this. My DDs at university wouldn’t dream of doing this, and neither as far as I know would their friends (I’ve just asked them). They are not perfect all the time of course, but would certainly respect their lecturers not to impose on them in this way. I hope the young people who do this learn these important life skills before they leave university.

@LaChanticleer it doesn't sound like you are very prepared for your job.

Many students face executive functioning challenges. The DSA is a stripped back version of A2W so the support they'd be able to access in the workplace to manage these issues isn't available during their studies. On top of this their will be students who are getting no sleep due to caring responsibilities, financial troubles or they are trying to carry out admin with children at their feet.

You need to be clearer in your communication. If your email relates to a link put the link clearly in the body of the email (does it need to be in bold, a different colour?) not hidden in your signature when you know this communication method isn't working for your students. Its absolutely pointless saying save this email when you now a large number of students, especially those with an SpLD or other disabilities effecting their processing skills will struggle to find this again.

If a student struggles with their memory or organisations skills they are going to forget their pass. Their disability challenges wont go away because they are inconvenient for you and before you say anything many students with a disability do not know they have one yet or feel unable to declare it to their uni due to the poor attitudes they have faced.

It sounds like your students are making allowances for your lack of inclusive practice and poor communication skills. Keep this in mind the next time your getting frustrated by something they struggle with.

Thanks @ineedsun : )

I agree with you too, there's no reason to stop being helpful just because you're so senior and important

If you don't want to deal with 'feckless youngsters' then don't teach undergrads, it goes with the territory (and always has done!)

The problem with "making allowances" because students are young and need time to learn how to be adults, is that their expectations get set in the wrong place.

My husband is an academic and I have despaired at times over the years when he is answering student questions online in the middle of the night because he finds it easier to do it then - they become used to getting answers quickly whenever they ask a question so don't spend the time thinking and searching themselves first before posting, so the numbers of questions asked multiply and multiply. Some years I've caught him answering such on Christmas Eve ...

Great post @HMG107

I also work at a uni although I'm associate lecturer rather then professor. The example you gave wouldn't piss me off.
A Student missing info I usually have a blanked response of that information is available in our online learning platform ( the place where all their module info is that they often just dont check).
An odd student forgetting a card wouldn't really bother me.
The one that really pisses me of is when I give a student feedback and they think they can argue against it.
I had a 1000 word email last week in which a student told me I didnt understand what critical analysis was. That they understood the experiment better than me ( despite me designing the experiment and assignment). I was also told I was being pedantic and nit picking. Along side a whole host of other stuff. This is the stuff that will get you in serious trouble in the real world. But from me they just got an explanation as to why they were wrong.

I have to say all the comments about students being young and still learning/some having processing disorders etc… remind me of all the threads about primary school children and one child hitting/bullying other children. The calls of being kind because that child might have some SN/issues at home etc…. All the whilst forgotten that in 90% of the cases, the child is just very badly behaved. (And that they would never accept things if it was their child being hit)

It seems that the same applies here.
In 90% of the cases, you have students too lazy to look for the saves/follow instructions/ask their peers. But we still have calls to mollycoddle them because they might ‘have a hard time’ (whatever the reason including having to actually take responsibility for themselves for the first time ever).

I'd really like to see how academics would cope if the professional services staff took the same hard line against 'mollycoddling'

A programme manager told me once that her workload would fall by about 30% if academic staff would just read their emails or do a 30-second google search.

As a university administrator I deal with these sorts of requests all the time from academics, and yes, even senior professors. It's not my job to do that stuff, I'm a finance administrator, but I'm just a nice, normal person who does these sorts of favours for my colleagues and customers (students... you know, the people paying thousands of ££ to us and without which we'd have no jobs). A workplace where colleagues DON'T do these kinds of things for each other is usually referred to as a 'toxic workplace'.

Unfortunately, in all 3 university's I've worked at, a good 75% of academics treated any non-academic colleague like their PA. Perhaps we need to start simply leaving them outside when they forget their key card

I'm not about to spoonfeed information to legal adults. They need to take responsibility for themselves and their learning, especially since it costs an arm and a leg going to university in England.

I taught elsewhere, but it was the same issues. Unprepared and not listening (not all of them but too many), and in the end I had enough and changed careers. Don't work much anymore because of chronic pain and disability but leaving academia was the best thing I did for myself. And I used to love it.

I'm a uni tutor and I would say yes to both those student requests you mention. I can be a bit scatty myself, so I'm willing to cut students some slack if they forget instructions or are late now and then. They're only human after all.

On the other hand, over the many years I've been teaching, I've seen students become increasingly demanding/entitled. Not all students, far from it, but an increasing number of them. I'm sure it does have to do with the increasing commodification of university education, and students seeing themselves as consumers.

My uni has a cumbersome system where we have to arrange seminar meeting times with small groups of students each term. Even though the groups aren't large, it can still be hard to find a time that fits into everyone's different timetables. I had a student email me this week (a day or two before our first class) to inform me that I needed to change the time of our class because he realised he had a lecture conflict. I said no, because all the timetables had been finalised the week beforehand, and he had had ample opportunity to check his timetable and verify that there were no conflicts. The uni makes it very clear that it is students' responsibility to check the lecture list and let their tutor know their availability. When I was an undergrad myself, I never would have dreamed of asking my tutor and a whole group of fellow students to change a class time at the last minute, because I had made a mistake! Also, this student didn't ask me, he informed me that I would need to change the time of the class. Sigh.

I'm friendly and approachable, but I don't like my generosity to be taken for granted; no one does. I also think that it matters whether a student oversight is a one-off, or a pattern. If it's a pattern, they need to be called out on it. If they don't submit their work in the correct format, for example, the first time I give them a polite reminder and mark it anyway. If they do it again, I politely tell them I can't mark the work.

In general, I've become firmer about setting boundaries with students over the course of my career. I try to be firm but kind. And I also spend more time than ever before dealing with pastoral issues. Since the onset of Covid I've seen a noticeable decline in students' mental health.

For the most part, I found that if I treat students like adults, they respond like adults. A very small minority take the piss: for instance,
in one case, I made all sorts of accommodations for a student with complex issues (ADHD, mental health disorders); I rescheduled tutorials and accepted late and incomplete work. Unfortunately, the problem only got worse and the student refused to engage with the (expensive) one-on-one help the uni had arranged for her with disability services. At that point I drew some boundaries (having put in many unpaid extra hours) and the student was so indignant they complained about me to the university, which fortunately had my back.

So cases like that have made me tougher. Some students have issues so complex that frankly, it's beyond my remit to deal with them; I can only point them toward other sources of support.

I've also realised that being a uni tutor, especially in Covid times, is bloody exhausting, and we need to take care of ourselves too, so that we won't crash and burn out.

Taking the time to 'politely respond' NO to a request for a link...rather than just sending the link again?

Your opinion of your status is overinflated and your approach is petty and ridiculous.

To be perfectly honest you sound unsuited to your job and this won't go unnoticed by your students, their parents or your colleagues unless you improve your approach.

OP YANBU!
I work in professional services in HE.
Piss-takers gonna piss-take whether they be students, academic staff or whatever.

[quote HMG107]@LaChanticleer it doesn't sound like you are very prepared for your job.

Many students face executive functioning challenges. The DSA is a stripped back version of A2W so the support they'd be able to access in the workplace to manage these issues isn't available during their studies. On top of this their will be students who are getting no sleep due to caring responsibilities, financial troubles or they are trying to carry out admin with children at their feet.

You need to be clearer in your communication. If your email relates to a link put the link clearly in the body of the email (does it need to be in bold, a different colour?) not hidden in your signature when you know this communication method isn't working for your students. Its absolutely pointless saying save this email when you now a large number of students, especially those with an SpLD or other disabilities effecting their processing skills will struggle to find this again.

If a student struggles with their memory or organisations skills they are going to forget their pass. Their disability challenges wont go away because they are inconvenient for you and before you say anything many students with a disability do not know they have one yet or feel unable to declare it to their uni due to the poor attitudes they have faced.

It sounds like your students are making allowances for your lack of inclusive practice and poor communication skills. Keep this in mind the next time your getting frustrated by something they struggle with.[/quote]
My uni has a system in place for this. Any student with a learning difficulty, disability or mental health issues or really anything requiring extra support have a learning plan in place that is given to all academic staff involved in their education.
It accounts for a relatively small percentage of the students. While I dont know if the ops unis has a similiar system I would think they are pretty standard across most unis.

Yeah, I too am a senior lecturer. I'm a professor. I'm not sure what a "senior" professor is. I note that you haven't been back for a while @LaChanticleer. You sound like many academic staff I have met over the years who see themselves as very superior indeed, and feel that it is slightly demeaning to have to deal with nobody undergrads. Academic life is stuffed full of individuals who wouldn't survive five minutes in the real world.

And oh yeah, just to give another example of what the student who told me I needed to reschedule my class was like: he also sent me his first assignment and explained that he had not done it the way I had asked him to do it, he had done it a different way which he considered to be more beneficial to himself. Again, firm but polite, I replied that if he wanted to do the first draft of the assignment his way, that would be fine, but he needed to do the second draft my way, and turn that draft in. To his credit he said that he understood and would do as I suggested. But honestly, I'm 50 and he's 19 -- wtf is he thinking telling me how to structure my assignments?

Then again I have a teenage DS and he also knows better than I do when it comes to most subjects, ha.

It's not going to kill you to open a door or send an email is it ... I regularly do these things.