cant understand why FULL TIME college courses, are not full time,.. not like in my day..

[slartybartfast]

ds has college 2 and a half days a week, this is a full time course. previously he was at another college with so many gaps in the day
it does not help with them at all imo. When they go out to work it will be such a shock to the system.
all this free time is meant to be study time, pah - they would have to be very motivated to spend this free time in the library.

why arent they full time anymore,?
even if they were say mornings at least it would be better than it seems to be. one of his friends goes to a full time college course 2 days a week [hshock]
]

I kind of agree that as a society as parents are we properly preparing our children for jobs. There has become a mentality that it is the teachers responsibility to drum information into quite passive individuals instead of them learning about self motivation, research. This thread sums that up really.

But there is a lot more being paid for that ten hours of contact time and 'use' of a library.

LRD, you have my support, but maybe you do need to stress what a student is getting for their money. They will have come from a secondary school where marking essays, setting exams and offering pastoral support were pretty much taken for granted.

Yes, I take that point complex. We have free education - that's great. I wish we had free education to degree level, but we don't.

An 18 year old must surely be able to grasp the concept that this stuff is all free at the point of delivery - their teachers are not lovely volunteers, but do actually get paid?

Though I do occasionally wonder.

What is the tax payer and employers getting from subsidising these unmotivated students to undertake courses? Lets ask that question?

Indeed.

They will have come from a secondary school where marking essays, setting exams and offering pastoral support were pretty much taken for granted.

Well yes. As it is at university!!

Excuse my ratty tone but I am sitting in my office waiting for first years to come visit me so that I may serve them by going over an early test paper with them.

40% didn't bother to turn up.

so many here don't want my attentive services.... they just want to switch off.

Until exam time when they want to fire questions and complaints at me every 5 mins.

I am so sick of being asked questions like 'in the exam will we have to cite case law'???

ffs THIS IS A LAW DEGREE WHAT DO YOU THINK??

bah. time for coffee break I think :D

As far as I'm concerned raising the degree requirements is no bad thing. Even if it puts me out of a job!! er.... :D

Very good point Loveweekends, wasn't it Blair who first came up with the idea of raising the numbers in tertiary education, possibly resulting in a lowering of the standards required.

Having said that, I did get on an HND with one grade 'E' back in the late 70's. I was allowed to jump up to a BSc course after one year.

To be clear btw complex I was offering literally hours of precious 1 to 1 'contact time' today and the failure to turn up rate is now at 50%.

I think the students are often just doing this because mum and dad think they should be lawyers, and they can't think of anything better to do with 3 years.

It amuses me that people actually think that 9k covers the cost of their university education for a year. Some people spend that on a two week holiday!
Not everyone can go to university. I'm not sure it was the right thing to do to give people the expectation that they could. However this government now need to provide alternative routes for these young people instead of giving them the expectation that they will need to be screwed to a chair 8 hours a day to get their money's worth then go and work independently as a lawyer!

Loveweekends it's just all gone so very, very wrong.

I find what I do often quite farcical tbh.

I stand up to lecture and feel i am just talking to myself, as today.

10% of the students really engage and are a pleasure, you can really watch them learn. Another 20% do okay and are responsible people I'd be happy to employ. The rest sink into a mass of passivity ,10% don't seem to attend at all (the mind boggles at the waste of thousands of their own or taxpayers money) and another 10% are frankly incapable of work as a lawyer imho or possibly any job that involves writing formal English.

I feel bad for them as we in universities are involved in selling them the lie... because we have to sell everything these days, education as commodity. Sheer rubbish and contradiction in terms.

Libraries now have social zones (?!) and cafes because that is what students want and they are the customer.

Standards are disturbingly low. You end up marking on a different scale then you ever wanted to or hardly anyone would even get a 2:1. And that is not 'acceptable'.

I know how you feel. The sad thing is when I teach a student from Poland or Somalia and they are so keen to learn cos they value education. I'm afraid we have indoctrinated young people to think that it's a god given right.
I'm going to sit and stare out of the window whilst you push this knowledge into my brain. If I don't learn it's your teaching style not my lack of motivation!

I think it is cruel to encourage a student who is at the bottom of that 50% of the population who're meant to be going to university, to spend 9k on it. Sure, some people are badly served by school and do worse than they should, and some people suddenly realize they can do much better if they work. But it seems really unfair if a student who's not done well at school then goes to university and wonders why s/he isn't coping.

If they can't manage to motivate themselves to work for two and a half days during A Levels, how are they going to do it later on?

However I will help anyone 110% if they want to get on and learn now but couldn't or didn't at school for whatever reason. Unfortunately now I cannot get them to A and B a level standard. Too little time too far to progress.

Well degrees have been devalued haven't they. Every adminstrative post needs a 'graduate'. My letting agents are half graduates. They didn't need a degree in law or whatever to do that. They'd have been better off getting the job sooner and earning the cash.

And yes they do indeed think it's their god given right to sit and have knowledge spooned into their heads. And oh you should hear the complaints when they have to sit exams!

one student last year actually complained because 'the exams were so close together there was not enough recovery time'

I'm a leftie but on one point I agree with the right: there's a very spoilt generation out there who really don't know what work is and particularly self-motivated work. I think parental attitudes like the OP are no help at all either. Everything is the university's fault for not being exactly like school. Duh.

So i came to the end of my scheduled meetings. 50% total non attendance for their one to one time and advice. Which they moan so much about not getting.

one student had the nerve to email me insisting I was not in my office when he came round even though I even missed lunch in case the little dears were late. It can't be his mistake, of course.

Gah.

heheheh I am well and truly JADED aren't I :D

Sounds like we both are!

I was at university between 2003 and 2007. I had between 2 and 8 hours a week of compulsory contact time, depending on the year and term. In my first year I arsed around and did fuck-all, to be perfectly honest. But I became more diligent and self-motivated as time went on, and by my fourth year I went to plenty of optional lectures and spent between 2 and 8 hours a day in the library every day.

School pupils are so spoon-fed, on the whole, that they don't know how to manage their own time. I came dangerously close to crashing and burning in my first year because I'd never had to actually work before. It's a really important skill which so many people seem to lack.

I think the essential thing you're missing is that though your son is not in lectures all day, 9-4, the classrooms and/or lecturers probably are in use or teaching, respectively! Those gaps in his timetable may be there in order to accommodate a longer list of courses. If he was in from 9-4, they'd either have to employ more staff, or have a much smaller intake, surely?
There are students out there who take 5 A levels at a time, so the timetables have to be structured in order to prevent as many potential clashes as possible.

The above post assumes that the "college" is an FE college, by the way.

Yes the same principle as when a parent tries to call me then gets upset because I'm not there! I'm teaching 24 hours a week contact time! I'm not sat waiting for your call!

well yes - as it says, it is college i am talking about not bloody universities

So you're talking further ed or vocational course not degree level?

The term "college" covers a multitude of sins esp these days. You should have stated the course and you might have got replies more appropriate to your needs.