to be shocked by parents of some university students

[giraffesCantZumba]

My friend works in the graduation office, this time of year is really busy for her so been working weekends/long hours etc. She was venting to me about this and says she gets 3/4 parents a day phoning trying to sort out their childs graduation for them! ANd become totally outraged when told that it is confidential and they can only deal with the student. When do the apron strings get cut?!

Often its because student has totally missed the deadline for paying graduation fees and they are outraged as their poor dc had no idea.

I agree. If they can't deal with things themselves yet, they are not mature enough to go to university and get the most out of it.

Good point exotic fruit

I used to fess about which schools my DC's might or might not get into until the Dcs and I went round the highly successful, highly selective fee paying local school. It is one of the top schools in the country, but we realised that none of us actually LIKED the place. Since then I have wised up a bit and become much more guided by what my DCs actually want to do and where they will both fit in and be happy.

I used to work as a housing officer for a red brick university and the amount of crap we got from the student's parents was unreal - talk about them using daddy or mummy to fight their battles! I have had parents going beserk because their precious offspring might not graduate because they owe the university rent money etc. Shame their offspring didn't read or act on the many warnings they had already received...

Also, when I went to university I had to go to my interviews and open days by myself (and this involved flying to them!) as my parents said if I couldn't manage to do this, then I wasn't meant to go to university!

I went to University and chose the course I did to please my parents. I quite enjoyed my time at Uni but then wandered from moderately interesting job to moderately interesting job with absolutely no sense of purpose or focus. I never really used my degree. Eventually, in my forties, I took the plunge and started doing what I wanted to do at 18.

Ha if a kid can't sort out it's own graduation stuff then how in hell did it get a degree?
My daughter sorted hers out, I wouldn't have dreamed of ringing them up for her. Her degree not mine. I wouldn't have expected her to sort mine out the year before either!
Mind you, having done the course some of us oldies did wonder why, and how, in hell these kids were there!

mrswoodentop - what was she supposed to do with the baby- leave it at home?

We took our baby to DC3's open days. All involved an overnight stay and she was ebf. We'd been with DC1 and DC2 so DC3 was expecting us to help him, plus he has SEN so needs a bit more coddling than a normal student.

I'm quite that you are

When we had two much younger DCs we didn't go-we left DS1 to go alone-it hardly seemed fair on the one doing the visit or the younger ones to drag them along.

crumbs yes cut the apron strings and don't ask me for any money

take my money, take my phone calls

Talulah I am afraid that I think that priority should be given in the talks to the potential students,that may sound harsh but do you really think a mother and baby sibling should be able to attend in preference to a potential applicant.
The mother and baby should have gone for a coffee ,visited the central exhibition stand for information on the course or accommodation or simply waited for their son to emerge from the lecture.
If there are particular circumstances to address then a private visit or appointment can be made

Arrrrrrrgh. Basically, everything ViolaTricolor said.

In the past, I have had a mum ringing me to ask why her son wasn't attending classes. Er, ask him yourself?? Then, 'Can you text him to remind him?'

I am also quite disturbed at the idea that universities are engaged in ripping students off. In all seriousness, that makes me really sad that people think that. I have slogged my effing guts out for 7 years to get a permanent job as a lecturer because I love what I do and work all hours at it when not MNing. Honestly, lecturers are generally geeky, awkward, overly conscientious people - we're not bankers ffs!!

The problem honestly is that with the massive rise in student numbers, a lot of students who don't have the emotional maturity to go to uni are being pushed through - and it's their parents on the end of the line. If you have to ring up and hold the university 'accountable' you might want to look closer to home first: funnily enough, it is never the high-achieving, conscientious students whose parents do this!

dd1 is 13. When we get to that point I will ask her what she wants us to do. If she wants us to come with her then one of us will but we will make sure she has time alone in the space to look around and quite frankly get a grip. I went to open days and interviews with friends - it's part of the adventure.
Children are different and I will never forget the story of my friend's nephew. He was all set to travel to an open day alone then he rang up his aunt two days before and askd her to come too. His mother had died the year before and his aunts etc were all he had. Being a good parent is about stepping up when they need you and stepping back the rest of the time. I think we all struggle with some or all of that. I know I do.

RevoltingPeasant - you are not doing the ripping off. The decisons being made in some universities at levels above you by senior administrators about student numbers and resourcing are simply about balancing the books. The quality of what is being offered in return is a very low priority. Some senior academics are also hardly ever seen in lecture halls either yet are already demanding the lion's share of the increased revenue from the increase in fees in their pay packets.

Actually I have been shocked with both my DCs at some of the poor teaching and treatment students recieve from some of their lecturers. I'm sure this is a minority of academics but has been a shock to both of them. If this were to happen to any of us, as adults, we would be assertive and complain whereas most young students don't. Whilst I have never intervened I can imagine it is the frustration of supporting your child financially and seeing their prospects damaged by this sort of thing that encourages parents to cross the line.

Opus, as with any profession, there are good and bad lecturers. Fortunately, the nature of the role means that they are mostly passionate and devoted to their field (you can't just fall into lecturing like you can in some other jobs). I do know lecturers though who are frustrated (rightly or wrongly) by students who couldn't care less, don't turn up, fall asleep in lectures, turn up hungover or drunk, can't spell etc and who are generally taking the piss.

I don't think the issue is the quality of lecturing though, it's much more the way it's dealt with by the student. Sure, if you have an issue with a lecturer, go to them or your personal tutor about it and discuss or find a way to get the best from your lectures - it's the fact that parents are still hand holding and doing this on behalf of other adults. Parents should be supporting their kids through this, not doing it for them. Otherwise, they'll never learn.

Bear in mind that too lots of 18-21 year olds are in work - I can't imagine many parents calling employers, asking why their teenagers had been disciplined for lack of punctuality, absenteeism or (returning to the OP), trying to organise their participation in a works event.

Thinking back to my university days, I remember quite clearly that students (not being fools) responded to great lecturers they admired and respected with regular attendance, proper attention, work handed in on time. And, conversely, the very same students did not respond with similar assiduity to less good lecturers...

Perversely I think it is often at the so called highest ranked universities where this happens.Even when I was at university in the eighties at a prestigious university some of the lecturers made little secret of the fact that they regarded students as a necessary evil ,only acceptable because they enabled them to fund their research.I was speaking to an academic the other day at another Russell Group institution who said that as far as he was concerned students should be avoided at all costs because they just got in the way of his research.He was being a little tongue in cheek but only a little

YANB(that)U

MoreBeta sorry, you posted ages ago, but actually I disagree that the quality of what is being offered is a low priority. I am not in senior administration but I have served on committees which touch on teaching provision in my institution and I think that is just not true.

The people who determine the quality of provision are, ultimately, the lecturers, the people on the ground doing the teaching. I don't think that for me or any of my colleagues that is a low priority. Quite the reverse.

Plus, 'student experience' and 'student satisfaction' are and have been HE buzzwords for ages. We live and die by our NSS scores. And students are not dim victims: if they are unhappy, they say so. Every single module I run is assessed by the students at the end, and the recommendations they make are taken really seriously - genuinely. Every three weeks we have meetings with student representatives to talk about issues they want to raise, and we are required to take action if they raise something serious. Our external examiners, from other institutions, visit the department several times a year and are closeted with students with no members of our staff present, so that students can give honest feedback, which then goes into the external's comments on the dept: these are taken very seriously.

I just do not agree that the quality of teaching is a low institutional priority.

What I do think is that many parents (and forgive me if you are not amongst them) do not understand how university is taught and think that because little Johnny isn't being sat down and patiently talked through everything that he's being 'neglected'.

morebeta your comments are extremely insulting and not at all true. I couldn't name you a single university where the student epxerience dos not loom large on the agenda at Board/Council level, let alone academic board.

and whatsmore, they are all assessed on their quality and perfromance through a national inspection programme, so their acheivements and attention to same are all in the public domain....

kidsmom Quite.

I should add that I have taught in a well-known, very traditional Russell Group university for a number of years and now work at a large, 'new' regional university. What I have said holds true for both places.

I have worked on the teaching side of academia in a very prestigious institution and I am afraid I think there is a lot of "winging it".

Bonsoir it may be largely down to individual institutions, then, and I have just been lucky. The RG uni where I worked was admittedly unusual in enforcing equal teaching loads across all members of the dept, no matter how senior, so that Big Professor types were involved in UG teaching. The institution where I am now comes more from a teaching-intensive background, with the result that most of the staff are heavily invested in the quality of the teaching.

I'm sure that individual institutions devote more or less management time to ensuring quality control of teaching!

And I am equally sure that Beta and I are right that consumer (students backed by parents) pressure on teaching quality will increase with the fee hike. Some institutions will have to pull their socks up (and others will be shown to be the centres of teaching excellence they claim to be!).

The university department where I work recently made several academics redundant, supposedly for focusing too much of their time and efforts on teaching, and not bringing in enough research funding or keeping up their publication count. These were some of the most popular and respected lecturers/tutors with the students.

We do have notoriously low student satisfaction levels though.

It seems a shame to me. Obviously research is very important, and rightly most academics at such institutions see it as their main job. But at a university, excellent teaching should be valued as well - there should be room for both. Maybe we need some separation between the researcher and lecturer roles - though that would be controversial as many people see the main point of going to a research-intensive university to be that they are taught by and have contact with some of the leading researchers in their field. Maybe it's a question that needs to be revisited though.

kidsmom/RevoltingPeasant - I too have been a RG university lecturer and in general at the individual level most lecturers are sound commited people like you are.

Look above your level though and it is quite an ugly picture. The decisions being made at that level are a lot less benevolent. The most senior academics in this country in many subject areas now aim to spend as little time as possible in a lecture theatre and instead maximise their pay by trading on their research ranking. Meanwhile Vice chancellors are in a viscious game of self preservation aimed at maximising revenues. The unseemly fight over the money from fees is only just begun.

My advice is don't get stuck in a lecture theatre. It is widely seen a low priority drudge work for lecturers who have stalled careers or newly minted post docs who are doing their apprenticeship but aim to get out of their teaching load ASAP. Research is where it is at - not teaching. Problem is that attitude does now pervade the senior levels of academe. The objective is to maximise revenue and minimise cost with less experienced lecturers teaching ever larger class sizes.

Sorry but this is what I saw and what is happening ever more in the university my wife works in. It cannot go on. This is a scandal that will be exposed one day when a student/parent sues a university. Either that or a TV programme will send secret cameras into a university.