Birkbeck?

[Magpiecomplex]

Does anyone have experience of lecturing at Birkbeck? Natural Sciences, and I think it would be their traditional evening lecture model. Thanks in advance!

My experience of being a student there was not great.....

That's interesting, what was the problem, do you think?

I’ve heard quite good things about them (psychology). A friend who worked there for a long time did say it’s not as bad as other places.

Yes, I know people there and it sounds like the college is positively benign compared to other institutions (although they were saying that before that brutal round of redundancies last year).

@GCAcademic @LindaM001a Thank you. It's terrible that "benign" and "not as bad as other places" sound like ringing recommendations, isn't it?

Close friend who works in hums there says it's a pretty civiliised place. There were no redundancies but a lot of Vs and quite a contraction in numbers, finding it's feet again with new Vc, who seems quite strong. Sounds a lot better than my place, anyway!

Thanks @felissamy, that's helpful to hear.

I was a student there until 2 years ago for over a decade so some of that time sort of in dept as a research student and still have friends in my dept. I think it probably suffers from a lot of what other unis do - admin etc. I do think that the study body is largely quite invested - one of my colleagues said this is why she has no plans to leave, a class at Birkbeck vs a class of 18 year olds is different. Though not without its own problems E.g. drop out rates were quite high because many of us came without traditional qualifications but it also made for eclectic, engaged classes who knew they needed to turn up to get the most out of it and came from all walks of life.

My experience there wa very disappointing. I paid thousands for the course, and it was simply not quality for money, We spent hours listening to presentations from other students for example, and these were of very poor quality - worse then you would expect of students in a secondary school. I used to sit there listening to someone who could not speak English fluently saying this or that person was "their hero because they showed a good attitude" and so was this person, and so was this person........and in my head count up the hundreds I had paid to be present for that evening.

far too much faddy "interactive activities" with flip charts and post it notes, and far too little JUST TELL US THE THINGS WE HAVE PAID TO KNOW.

Also, instructions for exams were vague to the point of wondering if they were deliberately trying to cut down on marking by making it impossible for anyone to work out when and where their exams were. And time taken for assessments to be returned was totally impractical, when trying to plan what units to do next.

Not worth even a quarter what I paid for it - very upsetting - some of us seriously discussed asking for our money back - we still might

What subject area?

business

That does sound awful. I was in the humanities.