To think Uni students are a right moaning pita compared to when I went

[ohtobemoanproof]

Im a lecturer.

When I went to University-we went to the lectures, took notes from the board or overheads, went home, studied, did the exams etc, got our marks whenever they were ready and went away. No bothering the lecturers ( ever), no having their emails and demanding appointments, no arguing the toss over coursework marks, no moaning and complaining.

Now, I feel almost "bullied" by some of the students (not high fee payers, in fact some are on a bursary). They constantly moan (about everything, not just me in case anyone suggests its my module leadership in question), are always at the door, send email critiques about the quality of highly appraised visiting expert speakers, threaten to sue if coursework is returned a day later than you suggest it will be back, blame the lecturer if they get lower marks than expected, demand formal public apologies if they dont receive central messages about "one off" timetable changes, bitch if lecture notes aren't on module spaces a week before the lecture is held...it goes on. Bloody nightmare.

Aibu to think this is a new breed and we just weren't like that "in my day".

sniffs and has some more gin

I may be missing something, but surely they have a right to complain if work is marked late or lectures are cancelled at the last minute.

Across the three years of my degree I had an average of six hours contact time a week (for an English degree). If I was paying £9,000 a year, then that works out at £50 an hour. A cancelled lecture effectively means the student is £50 down.

Yes, I know that's not precisely how it works, and I know that occasionally there are extentuating circumstances, but I think paying such a huge amount of money DOES mean that students can expect high standards of organisation.

Sally, I agree that if you're paying lots, then you expect your scheduled contact hours, but in the case I posted about, the lecture was re-scheduled for the next day. They weren't complaining because they'd lost contact hours, they were complaining because it was "a wasted journey."
I was just gobsmacked. A student bitching that a trip into uni was a wasted journey.

I'd always been told that uni was like a 9-5 job. When not in tutorials or lectures, there was still work to be done on campus. For a group to want their fucking bus fare back from the uni was laughable.

I agree that the students should be able to expect high standards of organisation etc. etc. But as laptopdancer says, the facilities for lecturers are often terrible. Furthermore, many have never had access to a work computer, a lot don't have an office (so, how do you have office hours?) and quite a lot are actually for working hourly rates which give at most one hours paid prep time when the marking might take a working day, so their actual rates of pay are below the minimum wage. If the student wants to rearrange the class, the lecturer does not get paid on such contracts. On top of this, we are expected produce two or more peer reviewed articles per year.

The students are right to complain, since universities are taking a lot of money, but it is not going to many of the teaching staff. I could imagine a lecturer telling a student that they cannot reschedule a class because they just can't afford it. I have worked contracts where I could have earned more cleaning.

Fred I am complaining - I said upthread I'm talking to the head of my department about changes they can implement. But I'm not complaining to my lecturers because it won't change anything (and they are likely to call me "a right moaning pita"). The way I see it, if it's important enough to warrant a complaint then you might as well complain properly, rather than just whining at people who can't/won't change.

Boney & Sally - but students aren't paying this money upfront. That is a major urban myth. If you were forking over £9k out of your own pocket, yes, you would be paying £50 per lecture or whatever. But it doesn't work like that.

Also, the universities are not suddenly 'taking a lot of money'. What is happening is that the government is no longer paying what it actually costs to educate a student and that burden is being transferred to students. The universities have less money now, not more. It's a reduction in subsidy, rather than a rise in price.

Also Sally, I work in an English dept - it's a pretty low-maintenance subject as they go, we don't have labs or anything - but if you think you are only paying for the lecturers' time, you really need to look at what you are getting from your degree. Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a university library, even a small one? Electronic resources cost tens of thousands of pounds a year. So do the course readers most places will produce. That's before you get into the extracurricular stuff most decent departments put on for students. Seriously, it's totally illegitimate to divide your tuition fees by your contact hours.

I once heard a university finance bursar explain the actual cost of educating an undergraduate in a subject like English or history, and it is well in excess of £10k a year. Paying £9k a year means you get a much lower subsidy than before - which sucks - but you are not paying for your education.

... You might just think that US students who DO pay the full cost of their education pay in excess of $30k pa, for example.....

Chaotica

Sorry but those are just excuses. The student is paying for a service and the lecturer is part of that service.

I admit that I am slightly biased as I have had lecturers that
make appointments and not keep them.
Marking handed back that was so late that they couldn't fail students without serious complaints going in as there was no time to re-submit work.
Lecturers sharing work from other students so that other students could pass.
Lecturers making appointments that they had no intention of keeping " so and so always leaves at x time"
Lecturers that demand stupid formats as they didn't understand certain programming languages.
Lecturers that go on holiday and leave entire classes without any timetabled classes.

I hope that the consumer based uni's do two things
Kill the soft degrees
and
make uni's much more accountable for theiractions and the actions of their staff.

And Past you should complain to the powers that be, but you should also talk to sympathetic lecturers. Most of us care. I will be sending out my own questionnaire to all students on my new option which is running for the first time, in addition to the standard one, with specific questions about how I can improve it for next year. Most of my colleagues have similar attitudes and will act on feedback where they can.

If you frame it as constructive criticism they will probably listen

I get upset when students are upset about their results :( I want them to do well and be happy.
The average for the most recent coursework I have given back is 61.5% and they are all unhappy. I will get a complaint "higher up".

The student is paying for a service and the lecturer is part of that service.

No offence, but that is what is wrong with higher education in this country.

It's not a service. You don't buy an education. You give yourself one. You get access to the extremely expensive resources of a university, like the library, computer suites, performance spaces, and the experts who work there. They create opportunities for you to learn. They are not providing a service, and frankly if they are, you may as well be at a further education college.

RevoltingPeasant - I am puzzled by the fees. I am currently doing an MSc course that costs £4500 ish full time.
I assumed that postgrad courses were nor subsidised by the govt. Unless that is not the case, why can't the undergrad courses be run for £4500 per year?
My course has a heavy workload, so plenty of marking for lecturers and some laboratory use.

For those complaining about students 'bitching' about wasted journeys, some of the part-timers on my course travel over 100 miles each way to university and do their coursework at home. If they travelled all that way to find their lecture cancelled of course they should complain! And with the financial pressures on everyone at present, more and more people are studying part-time while working. Particularly for mature students, if the course they need is a long distance away and their spouse/family needs to stay in the home area there is little choice but to commute a long way.

Luckily, my lecturers recognise these issues and if they must cancel a lecture they e-mail students in good time.

Universities have evolved, and what they do has to evolve with it.

When a student pays their fees they are paying for all that you have described and they have a right for it to be there when they need it.

If the experts are only there for their lectures then there is no point in them being there, you might as well put all the lectures on youtube and centralise the whole system.

Students now demand a personalised service for their money. Someone up thread said that being at uni was like a 9 - 5 job (hours wise) it should be the same for the lecturers.

I am a bit like at lecturers should be 9-5.
Do you have any idea what hours we work?

yup I do

maybe I should have phrased it

"Be available 9-5"

Well yesterday I taught 9-11 then 11-1 then had research students from 1-3 and taught 3-6 so sadly wasn't "available".

"Someone up thread said that being at uni was like a 9 - 5 job (hours wise) it should be the same for the lecturers."

Yes - then DH wouldn't have to bring marking, grant applications, course planning and research work home even at weekends as well as working very late weekdays. We can't move to where he works as he hasn't yet been given a permanent job contract yet so we only see him at weekends and he tries very hard not to bring work back.

x-posts.

Though I do get very annoyed with people assuming DH is around during school holidays as he is doing nothing.

Someone up thread said that being at uni was like a 9 - 5 job (hours wise) it should be the same for the lecturers.

... Okay seriously. So you want one of two things, yes? Do you want lecturers to be available 9-5? Fine. Go to a further ed college. There, they don't do research, by and large. They're not paid for it. So they're available for their students all the time.

But they are not as academically prestigious

I am paid to be a lecturer/ tutor for about 50% of my time, but the rest is devoted to admin (helping to run my institution) and research. I write papers and publish new knowledge. This is why it is valuable for my institution to employ me. That is why they pay me to do research - which is why I am not available 9-5. Because students aren't my entire job. They are not the entire job at any university.

And if universities 'evolve' to cater only to students 9-5? - then they will be shit. They will essentially be glorified sixth-forms.

Do you really think top-flight privatised universities in the US make their staff available to students 9-5? Do you think the most prestigious professors sit in their offices all day? No, they are also in the lab, excavating sites, in the archives. That is what makes scholars.

Seriously, this is making my BP go through the roof. I haven't had a day entirely off work, where I didn't answer student emails, since Boxing Day. Yeah, like last friggin' year. I'm hiding the thread, not worth it.

As I said I am slightly biased and apologise for any offence given.

I know that even as each course is different each uni is different and each lecturer has different work loads.

I may have been unlucky in having the ones that I had.

Sorry if this is stupid- but is the uni getting more money with the new fees? I thought they were getting the same amount, but the govt. was making students stump up all of it instead of funding some. I'm not clued in!

This year we've been told to double the number of compulsory personal tutorials we give per term, and to increase the length of time for each one, as this was something that came up in last year's NSS.

I sat in my office today for four hours waiting for my personal tutees to turn up for back-to-back 20 minute slots. Out of 12, guess how many turned up?

Two. And they were both foreign students.

I bet we'll get the same complaints this year about lack of contact time with staff...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11483638
"
Will universities get more money?

Universities argue that much of the money raised from raising tuition fees will simply replace major cuts to teaching budgets, especially in arts and humanities subjects.

Teaching grant cuts of 6% for 2011-12 have already been announced, with a further 16% reduction expected the following year - although by then universities will be getting income from raised fees. Teaching-related capital funding for universities has also taken a hit - 54% in 2011-12.

Cuts of 40% to the higher education budget over four years were announced in the spending review on 20 October 2010."

"but is the uni getting more money with the new fees? I thought they were getting the same amount"

You are correct - we get the same amount (or less if you're a band A, B or C subject), but the students pay three times as much.

I head up a department at a large but not highly ranked university. We moved in to a "customer friendly" set up a while back and as a result the students have lost respect for their lecturers.

Today for example I was doing a lecture for another tutor and one student was reading a paperback while I talked with no guilty when I asked her to put it away and another 5 were obviously playing a game on their lap tops and refused to stop. I challenged them but was told they were paying for it and could do what they wanted.

This afternoon only 47 of 64 students turned up. A good turn out you may think but it was an assessment and they knew they had to be there. By Monday it won't be the students fault they did not show but mine and I will have to lay on extra sessions at times to suit them not me to get them through with no extra reward for those who did show.

We work 9am to 9 pm five days per week. On our preparation time we are expected to be in our office and available for students who just drop by without an appointment. Don't even start me on the micro management of the workload model which counts every 10 minute time block that we have and records deviations from it.

Lecturing is a vocation but I am really surprised that staff stay at ours as its more about paper chasing and form filling and less about education.

As a final year student in alomst £30,000 worth of student loan debt I feel perfectly in the right to 'complain' if things aren't going smoothly, or to expect that my tutors will answer an email.

We pay more than £3000 a year, yet when an essay is given back we get between 1-2 lines of feedback. We hand in work on time, of course, but we can wait weeks and weeks for results. Recently I've been waiting for an essay mark which I gave in at the beginning of Jan. For the past 4 weeks I've received daily emails from my tutor telling me I'll get the mark soon but I don't.

I'm currently more than aware that as students, we are not top priority. My dissertation is in in 7 weeks, yet my supervisor still has not made a time to see me.

I appreciate that lecturers have their own research to undertake, but that is not my problem. All I see is the letters coming which say how much interest is piling on per month, how I slave away in the library 8-6 everyday just to scrape a good degree, and there are no sodding jobs at the end of it. Lecturers bear the brunt of this because we students are frightened. It wasn't like this in your day OP? Of course not, because you weren't facing your adult life with mountains of debt.