AIBU to have submitted 2 fake applications to The New College of Humanities today?

[ManateeEquineOhara]

Namely Agnes Nitt and Draco Malfoy.

Am considering doing Bart Simpson in a sec. I hate elitism.

OP, what is your objection to NCH? Please, explain yourself to those who do not necessarily agree with you. Phrases such as "elitist little hovel" do not form part of a rational argument.

I am reserving judgement on this. The government aren't funding degrees in the Arts and Humanities at the moment - i've read that this college will be admitting only students with 3 As minimum at A level, so whatever you say, the students will be as bright as any attending our state universities. Added to this, Arts and Humanities students at most universities only get around 10 hours tuition a week and only a very small minority get one-to-one tutorials - so it sounds like this College is offering a superior education. I'm not sure how they are 'ripping off' degrees offered by other universities. I can also see academics wanting to work there as there are so few positions in the Arts and Humanities.

The independent university of Buckingham has been going since the seventies and costs a lot less than that.

I agree with crystalglasses - the courses sound brilliant and you will have to have attained very good results to be offered a place. I just wish that it wasn't (likely to be) the preserve of those with very wealthy parents but I don't object to what they're doing or the point they are obviously trying to make about university under-funding.

If A C Grayling felt strongly about university funding why doesn't he stay at Birkbeck and fight its corner? It does look like he has copied course ideas from other academics.www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/06/ac-grayling-private-university-syllabus

Also, private universities in the States presumably have wonderful libraries and resources of their own. NCH is relying on using other London University resources.

The courses may sound "brilliant" but they have been nicked from the University of London, where you would be able to study them for half the price. Amanda Vickery, who works at Queen Mary, was extremely surprised to find one of her modules (on quite a niche topic) on the NCH programme. The celebrity academics (many of whom - Fergusson, for example - are basically "pop professors" whose research has little real credibility) will deliver one or two lectures a year while the real teaching will be done by junior lecturers.

This goes further than seeking to escape government cuts - its about venture capitalists making an actual profit out of education. And it's happening at the expense of the taxpayer who funds the resources of the University of London which NCH will be using.

OP, just get that chip off your shoulder

The Best - I am not sure the SLC would allow double loans? NCH ask on the application how you are going to finance your course.
Being in HE does not make you elitist, being at an institution of celebrities who charge double fees for the 'privilege', kinda does.
I am taking a masters myself at the moment - financially it is a huge struggle and it should not have to be.

MrsDeVere - I totally agree, and I started out with OU, I transferred to another Uni to go full time, but the OU is far closer to how HE should be.

HR100 and Tinkertonk - In the US there are many scholarships available to fund Uni. That just isn't the case in the UK, and with a big ? over whether student loans will be available to students there, it is somewhere that you can only consider if you are rich. The degree of wealth you were born into should not be a factor in whether or not you can get a degree. Of course many will agree and stay well clear even if they can afford it, but the fact that you have to be rich to go there will make it a ... elitist little....enclave? Enclave better than hovel for you tinker??? :)

So, its an overpriced university with unoriginal lectures. Probably won't do wonderfully well then. Who cares? And how on earth do you care enough to waste your time making more work for administrations staff? I don't get it at all, is it really funny somehow?

OP, right on yeah. Lets bring the hated system down by sending a fake application.
What a dipstick

Seriously, in your professional role, don't you actually have something better to be doing?

I think it's a rip-off and those students are going to be conned into buying something that they could get for a cheaper price at a better quality elsewhere. I cannot see how the finances are going to work: if those celebrities were really going to offer a substantial amount of their time to see individual students it would cost a bomb, not just twice the Oxbridge fees. Private universities in the States do not depend on student fees to keep going: they have generous endowments, in other words people who are interested in putting money into the venture, not just getting money out of it. And they do not build their reputation on using exensive sleb academics. It may also be that the University of London will eventually start getting disgruntles with their resources used to enrich other academics.

But no, I won't be doing anything active against this: I just think it is a silly and greedy idea.

Personally I am not sure more hours teaching necessarily equates to a better university education, though. The main problem I find in my own students (all straight As at A-level, as we accept nothing lower) is that they are not used to independent reading. They get to university with the expectation that there will be a teacher on hand to tell them what they need to know, so they won't have to struggle with reading books or thinking things out for themselves.

What employers want otoh is independence, the ability to cope with material on your own.

I would doing those students a massive disservice if I delivered everything they needed to know through 30 hr/week lectures. And seminars are a pretty useless form of teaching unless students spend enough time studying on their own to actually have something to discuss when they get to the seminar.

What students need is a programme that has been carefully thought through: lectures that stimulate them to go off and do their own reading, seminars that help them to make sense of it and stimulate further reading.

Our students get around 12 of contact time/week and on top of that they can come and find me during my office hours. That leaves them 28 hours for reading and writing and preparing things to discuss with me. Seriously they need that time.

But a big problem with student fees is that many students have come to see an education as something that they have already paid for and that it is therefore up to somebody else to deliver. Whereas anyone who works in the field knows that an education is primarily about what you do for yourself, hopefully with expert support and guidance. It's a bit like employing an athletics coach: it may make all the differences to your chances in the Olympics but it won't get you out of doing the actual training. Lots of students these days seem to think that since they have already paid, it should be the coach doing the push-ups

YANBU, it's also really annoying that they're using the whole 'oxbridge' tag which may perpetuate the whole stereotype that oxbridge is only for the rich, which they're trying hard to fight against.
Also the professors will likely only be teaching guest lectures, so students will have been misled a little. And some of these professors, like simon blackburn, have also campaigned for wider inclusion of students from all backgrounds at university and making subjects more accessible!
I find it funny that they've already been told off for saying they're a university without having that status too :)
Definitely agree about the independent study though, that is a completely necessary skill, but you still need some contact time for guidance, and you expect to apply to uni knowing who your lecturers will be.

I agree, cory, that the ability to work independently is one of the major pre-requisites of success at university but in some universities, the courses have so few lectures and seminars (and no tutorials) that I wonder if their students would be better off doing a distance learning course. My friend's daughter is studying history at a well-respected university and some weeks found herself with three hours a week .

My understanding (from reading reports in the Guardian) is that there will be 13 hours a week of contact time.

Three hours a week sounds bad, lalalonglegs.

But I am not sure I would take a student's word for that without checking: I have been shocked this semester not to see how many students who fail to attend semindars regularly and who fail to make appointments for tutorials, but even how many make appointments and simply fail to turn up. I waited a whole afternoon for six of them who had all made appointment- never got the slightest excuse or message. I also have a weekly office hour advertised on the website and tell students regularly that this is the time to see me with any queries: I sit there wasting time every week, nobody ever turns up.

But on the evaluation forms they still wrote that there wasn't enough contact time and that I wasn't accessible enough.

sorry, got sentence muddled: "not only to see how many students fail..."

That's appalling and must be very depressing for you. You're right I should check with the friend's daughter - I know she was very upset about it, so I took her word .

I think contact time is a big issue (and will become an even bigger one when fees go up) so, by stipulating a generous minimum amount, NCU hopes to reassure prospective students that they are getting value for money. It depends what sort of contact time it is, I suppose. If, as you fear, it is a way of spoon-feeding students then obviously it's not great but when I was at university (late 80s, early 90s) it was quite academically rigorous - lots of discussion and defending your position rather than sitting there and taking notes. Some of it was quite scary...

You should start sending applications to the Norwegian former "her royal highness" Martha, as she has funded a school where you learn to talk to Angels.

Angel School

It is all mumbo jumbo about ancient goddesses of Persia, Greece, Egypt and how you can harness their powers to find and communicate with your guardian angel. Now, this is a bogus school worthy of bogus applications!!

cory and lala at 'Oxbridge' 3 hours a week of compulsory contact time is about standard. Yet that is supposed to be the best education in the world.

So no, it isn't 'bad' at all. It's just that students at those institutions are made to do something outside those 3 hours - or leave.

Also lala seminar group sizes are so big nowadays that the talking and defending is often (sadly) done by 3-4 students in any group (out of about 25). So lots of them do just take notes.

One of my dc studying humanities at a top RG university had no tutorials during the whole 3 years, and in the last year had 6 hours of contact (3 lectures and 3 seminars) a week during the autumn and spring term and nothing in the summer term, plus 3 meetings with a dissertation supervisor. No opportunity to attend any lectures other than the allotted ones. I don't call that a valuable learning experience or value for money, which ever way you want to look at it.

I really think something must be done about the unequal contact hours between universities. Saying that Oxbridge has 3 hours compulsory contact a week is a little ingenuous because the contacts are very intensive tutorials and the students also have the opportunity to attend as many relevant lectures as they like.

So- while £9000 fees + accommodation and living costs are the same whether at Oxbridge or most other universities, the learning experience is vastly different. This can't be right. Looking at it this way, AC Grayling's university degrees will be expensive but the teaching arrangements will be vastly superior to that of most other unis.

I agree totally with Cory, both re the amount of teaching time offered at that University and with the massive difference between how many hours of teaching students at my University SAY they have, and how many I KNOW they have access to.

I saw someone on here post about the amount of teaching time her DC received on a certain humanities course, which I know well. I looked at it and thought 'Your DC is simply being lazy and failing to attend anything that isn't entirely compulsory.' I know perfectly well that you'll find another student on the same course who's taking full advantage of the lectures, classes, seminars and special guest lectures that are on every day of the week - but are not compulsory.

The first thing I thought when I saw 13 hours a week of contact time was 'but when are the students going to do any work?'