To expect that would-be final year degree students ought to be able to communicate?

[drcrab]

I get a call this morning from someone who purports to be a student going into her final year. She didn't ask for me, didn't tell me who she was, didn't tell me what year/programme of study she was on.... And proceeded to ask me these garbled questions. I didn't know in what context she was phoning about.

I had to interrupt her a couple of times to ask who she was, why she was ringing etc. When she finally told me who she was, I said 'oh I remember you... I approved your change of programme etcetera' to which her reply was 'oh uh yah'. No thank you.

WTF? Do these same 'students' expect to graduate with a 2:1 or higher and earn pots of money immediately? And this from a university that's rather highly ranked.

Xenia - you make a good point about academics. In institutions (eg business schools) where students pay high fees and academics earn more than decent living wages (between teaching/research and external consulting/training for companies), academics look better (albeit in a Ralph Lauren sort of way) and are a lot more responsive.

Agree academics not great communicators, dh always cites that as one of the reasons he left that world.

However final year students are NOT academics ffs!

Even if her education has not taught her the basics of communication until now (public speaking etc) then a part time saturday/summer job should have. Suspect she may have been totally bank rolled and over protected.

Agree with Xenia. (Although I secretly think that particular academic may be a bit scared of her, and is avoiding. _

"I still think that telephone manners and talking to people clearly and effectively is something parents ought to be in charge of teaching their children. It's a life skill."

I agree very strongly. What is more, it is incredibly easy to rehearse telephone conversations with your DC - it is one of the easier skills to learn at home.

I agree. I think poor communication skills are a massive hindrance for so many young people today, and parents have allowed that to happen. so have schools. It is PAINFUL trying to listen to some young people express themselves with woeful inadequacy, resorting to endless abysmal connective phrases, 'its like, d'ya know what I mean, like, d'ya get me, yeah?'

Er....no. Actually. There are more of thse phrases in your sentence than there are actual relevent words FFS. And you want me to give you a job where you interface with my client base? Dream on.

relevAnt, not relevent. Can't be too careful on a thread like this.

Some children have a lot more aptitude for getting to the point than others, however. My DSS2, who is 14, far outshines my DSS1, who is 16, when it comes to actually understanding what information is important and getting the right message across, even though he is not as eloquent in everyday speech as DSS1.

British academia is one of the great success stories of this country. Across all fields it is second only to America in publications and patents. It has a massive balance of payments surplus-all those nice foreign students-and all this has been achieved by a staff who now teach twice as many students each as 15 years ago, and whose real terms pay flatlined for a decade. It kicks arse, and it does so because people are willing to work 80-hour weeks with no surety of future employment because they like teaching and researching.

But that ain't good enough for folk like Xenia, who fail to see what academics do and think of them as folk whose job should be to ensure the employablity of students because they have invested in them, just as she views sending her kids to good schools.

Because it isn't. Apart from the fact that academics have a life and families and need to eat occasionally, they are trying to run their departments, apply for cash to keep them going, thinking about the next ten years for their fields, writing the books that will be the set texts of the next generation of learners, re-writing the sodding courses for this year's new scheme, providing pastoral care, giving public lectures, moving the furniture about so the lecture theatre works and their office have desks etc.

And it's in that context that they put up barriers, not because they feel they are important, or because they don't care about students, but because they have to manage access somehow to get all that done. I operated a total open door policy as an academic, could feel student fears about jobs and spent time explaining why what they were learning was relevant, and answered about 50-60 e-mails a week during term time dealing with issues that, frankly, didn't need dealing with just to reassure.

And it's also in this context that they write AIBU threads moaning about students wasting their time or having low skills, forgetting that these gripes make sense in that context, but seem ridiculous to the wider world.

adela - the British university system is on its knees, having been milked to the bone.

I've only ever found academics completely charming and very un-upthemselves, given how ridiculously clever the ones I've spoken to recently are. I've never sought access to one of my DDs' tutors; I'd know that there would be issues of confidentiality anyhow. The tutor is avoiding you Xenia! (not sure scared is why though Fellatio....).

Academics are fantastic. They're motivated by intelligence not money, and they're not overly bothered about appearances. In some cases they can be a bit scatty so don't always respond to emails immediately, but again this is because they're most interested in creative research, not profit.

"Academics are dreadful. They tend to earn not much and not look too good. They think they are God like and they have many more barriers to contact with them than some of the pretty important people who respond to emails immediately"

"They're motivated by intelligence not money." Yes, a lot of them live in an ivory tower. Some of the things I read on MN by admissions tutors for university courses make my blood boil - admissions tutors who are subject-obsessed to the exclusion of all other human endeavour. Money is an absolutely essential part of any human life (think water and food). It is a pretension of the highest order not to think about how you are funded, how undergraduates are going to enter the world of work after their degrees and what added value you offer to humanity. No-one is above thinking about money.

Here in my ivory tower, I have answered several students' emails already this morning. All of them want me to give them a place at my university, which is a thing I have absolutely no power to do, being a lowly PhD student and a tutor on one of the second-year courses, not an Admissions Director. I have written a page to a page and a half to each of them (much of it copied across of course), with links to the relevant information.

I've also emailed back to two of my real students from last year who have queries about what to do next year. Again, this isn't my responsibility and they know that, but I can put them in touch with someone who will help and I can encourage them by telling them they're doing alright (they're nervous about the final year).

I've had a long phonecall with one of my peers who wants to work out what she can do to help a student she suspects is dyslexic but who won't go to the Disability Resource Centre because he thinks dyslexia would mean he's thick and will get kicked off the English course (obviously, it doesn't!).

Finally, I've been drafting a paper on learning to read in the fifteenth century - which you probably think is totally irrelevant to real life. Yet reading, the structures of teaching that we've inherited, the alphabetic system and phonics are of course still important parts of reading today.

I am not an academic; I have a lot of respect for what they do, but that was my morning so far and you'll see most of it was taken up with communicating with students. They are mostly pretty nervous and scared and yes, only one of them wrote to me correctly. So what? They will learn and I done my best to help.

Bonsoir

The system is indeed strained. And principally it's strained because it produces two things-graduates for the workforce and new research and researchers. And, whilst those things are often complementary, they are not always, and in the absenc eof any sensible public debate individual academics then have to decide what to do when and how to put the stress. And whatever you do it will be wrong because it will mean some user is getting less than a 'full' service. It's like asking MacDonald's to run a cordon bleu restaurant on the same premises-neither set of customers is going to be happy, and they are all going to take it out on the servers.

Personally, I always wanted to teach students and help them. But I would have drawn the line at trying to teach them phone manners, because I'm not as good at teaching this as others and because doing so would mean not reading the new material necessary to write the lecture they needed. But, having made that choice, I wouldn't then blame them if I wasn't willing to do owt about it. And I probably wouldn't have answered Xenia's e-mail immediately because the chances are (a) it is about her children, and they are not hers anymore, they can write their own e-mails or (b) it is some academic enquiry which she could find out herself by visiting a decent university library or attending a lecture if she is actually bothered and (c) it is unlikely her enquiry is as urgent as other matters pressing on my time and I am not her employee. But if you gave me twenty hours extra a week I'd teach phone manners and answer e-mails from all and sundry in a timeframe other than 'Friday each week, 12-3am, external non-urgent admin')

So the system looks creaky and failing, and everyone thinks it is, and it can be (and was for me) unbearable to work in because you feel you are letting yourself and everyone else down all the time.

But, strangely, that has always been the case and the walls have never tumbled yet.

Yes ... actually, Xenia, if you can tell us without revealing anything you don't want to, what was the email about?

I emailed an academic recently (an academic with whom I had a reasonable connection, even though I didn't know her personally), having read, digested and understood absolutely every piece of information on her departmental website. I had what ought to have been a pretty interesting piece of work to offer that department (would have been great for a PhD student) and plenty of £££ to pay for it. Did I get brushed off? You really wonder sometimes.

"admissions tutors who are subject-obsessed to the exclusion of all other human endeavour"

It's the basic error that comes form the lack of debate about what university is among those who just pass through-university sets you up for life, there are skills beyond the academic that are valuable in life, therefore university should promote and recognise those skills because it is really about setting you up for life'. Universities and tutors do a great deal to ensure careers advice and employability, and do it willingly because we understand students' needs, but we are not there to pick good employees and give them a bit of paper to show this.

We were/are admitting people to read a subject at university, and what we are doing is providing them with access to that subject. Employers don't go 'you are a brilliant sportswoman and fluent linguist but shit at your job, come on in any way, what a great example of human endeavour you are'.

The other reason we tend to operate subject-specific admissions is because when we didn't the people who were admitted were all round good eggs with a good phone manner. And you can guess where they tended to come from, and how crap many of them were to teach after a while.

Seriously?!

Crikey, no wonder you got brushed off. Do you go to your GP too, expect him to drop everything because you have a great idea for a cure for the common cold and you've read everything on his surgery website and will pay £££ (how much, actually?) for it?

FWIW, to fund a PhD student who is already subsidized by the govt. you'd need nearly 40k. That is the cheapest cost you'd have to pay. Then you'd need to pay for lab time, and the academic's time, and all sorts of other things.

"And you can guess where they tended to come from, and how crap many of them were to teach after a while."

Academics may dislike teaching certain sorts, but IMVHO, those sorts tend to be more successful in the real world than the the sorts who are the apples of their tutors' eye...

Nothing like that, LRD.

And when I contacted the academic in question's HOD, I got an entirely different, and sensible, response!

Seriously, bonsoir, if you offered an academic a viable PhD proposal which was fully funded every single one of them would bite your arm off-we have lists of bright unfunded students who would add to the field immensely if only we could get them cash.

Is it possible, perhaps, that this project was not therefore a fully sustainable PhD project, or fully funded. And if it wasn't, and you were offering 'work' to an existing funded student, why on earth would it be in their interest to branch off into something else?

So why on earth did you not contact the HOD first?!

You're basically saying you emailed someone who, if they're not the HOD, has probably no power or interest whatsoever in what you were saying, and expected them to drop everything and take on your idea?

Do you not realize people have jobs to do? If this person were in the market for new PhD students, maybe you could have applied to her ... otherwise, isn't it just a bit rude not to bother finding out whose job it was?

Again ... if were me, I'd probably just pass you on and ignore the fact you're miscommunicating because I do see you don't mean to be rude. But there's a point when you probably feel you don't have the time for that and you need to do the job you're paid for.

Academics may dislike teaching certain sorts, but IMVHO, those sorts tend to be more successful in the real world than the the sorts who are the apples of their tutors' eye...

(a) academics live in the real world. We have kids, partners, mortgages, illnesses, all of it rather real. And we spend a great deal of our time thinking about the costs of what we do and how to fund it, we don't think money grows on trees.

(b) I don't care professionally if they are more successful, except that it is nice for them, because it isn't my job to produce the maximal number of successful people. It's my job to produce people with as good a grasp of how the subject stands and how to develop it as possible.

I've never contacted a univesrity about my children. They are adults. I don't do interference. In fact I have hardly ever even contacted a school they were at as younger children.

The academic concerned is paid by me so presumably you would think he might be a bit more responsive. He normally does reply in due course but it s a very different experience from emailing a business contact who responds much quicker. My post started by saying they are dreadful and of course I don't mean in general that they are dreadful. I just meant in terms of some of them thinking they are greater than they are.

I can also appreciate that some business models require no response. We all use websites where the business model is to ensure contact with the provider is virtually impossible. For commercial reasons that often works. However for paying students I think it's good if there is communication.

Thinking about this ... to be honest, bonsoir, your complain sounds a bit as if you'd said 'But I emailed someone saying I had half a million in a Nubian bank and do you know, he didn't reply?! And I'm genuine'. I mean: maybe your proposal was good, but you need (we're back to communication again) to be realistic about who wants to hear your ideas and who is in a position to respond to them.

xenia - that is a bit annoying then, yes. But maybe your academic is like my supervisors, and often not able to access email for days at a time? Or maybe since I expect most of his/her money comes from somewhere else, s/he has the university complaining the rest of the job has to be done first?