AIBU to sneak into uni lectures even though i'm not a student

[Lecture]

I am in fact a SAHM . We live in a university town and every Wednesday my DM has the baby for the morning so I get a break. About a month ago I ordered a book from waterstones and picked it up from the university branch. I'd never been on the campus before and couldn't believe there was no security or need to show any student ID. After i'd been to Waterstones I got a cup of coffee at one of the cafes and had a wander round the grounds.

Its lovely there, lots of (cheap) restaurants and cafeterias and you don't need to show ID to use them

The next week I went there for lunch and looked around the library for a few hours.

Today I was wandering around and sat on the bench outside the lecture hall. There were hundreds of students milling around and the lecture schedule on a big flat screen TV on the outside wall. Anyway i watched them going in to each room and there were loads of spaces in the halls (big double doors open so i could see in). Then I was looking at the schedule and there were lots of interesting sounding lectures on. It suddenly occurred to me that i could probably just go in and sit in on one without being noticed by anyone. There were quite a few mature students so I don't think i'd stick out too much.

Now i'm home I think I might be being a bit mental (and possibly a bit post natal) to consider essentially stealing lectures I haven't paid for. I haven't told DH or DM i've been hanging around the uni

AIBU (or do you think I could get away with it)

BTW, can't believe the username Lecture wasn't taken!

Soooooooo....

I do this. OP, if it's the same uni, we could meet up for elicit sessions. It all started under similar circumstances, when I had just one young child (I have two now- so the time is even more special). I just loved the atmosphere of study and 'really using your brain'. Erm, at the redbrick university in the SE that I frequent, you can just walk into the library. Nobody has ever asked for ID, and I have spent hours and hours of my life there. I haven't actually even read any of the books. I just find it quite a pleasant place to do work. Quite exciting, even.

(and no way am I saying which uni. I don't want them changing!)

Definitely sounds like Essex uni.

I've done this many times, when I was a student and around it (my student path was somewhat atypical). I even attended tiny seminars where there were only a handful of postgrad students.

I always asked the lecturers (unless it was like in a 400 person lecture theatre) and they were always pleased to have me. A bit puzzled at times, and some kept coming up to me and asking questions which clearly were aimed at understanding wtf my interest in this was (I am just a random interested in everything type, nothing else!), but always pleasant and welcoming.

Definitely not unreasonable!

I did this in at a major university in the US while DH was doing his PhD there and I was basically staying at home and writing my PhD dissertation for a UK university. So I knew no-one there, had nowhere to go, and was going a bit out of my mind with loneliness and stultification.
It was the US, so university fees for foreigners, if you attended officially, were astronomical. One of the ladies who worked in student admissions actually suggested I try auditing for free.
I ended up taking a whole heap of language classes (5 different languages, actually) some of them right up to Masters level. Lots of the groups were small, some as few as five people.
I started by going to the first class, and asking the teacher/lecturer if auditing was OK. Made it clear that I would not hand in work to be marked if that was not wanted, would not participate in class if that was not wanted, and so on. Made it clear that I would not be extra work to them against their will. Seeing as I had more experience in language learning already, I ended up getting asked a few times to pair with weaker students to help them out/ tutor them, and was happy to do so.

Next step was going to the department, and clearing it with them. There was only one department where they said it was not OK, so I didn't end up learning that language. The others either didn't care, or were delighted by having someone there just out of a thirst for knowledge.

I miss all that now.

FWIW, boffin, I have had people come up to me at the brandishing papers stage and ask to listen. I had no issue with it. Though I suspect they were actually students in another subject.

All my lectures this term had more attendees who were not enrolled on the relevant course, than those who were - there were 7 students registered for the paper in total!

If anyone's in Cambridge next term and fancies hearing me make an idiot of myself talking about Shakespeare in performance, feel free.

I say do it! You're not gaining a qualification from it so you're just listening to a clever person talk about their favourite subject.

I am a lecturer and you are most welcome to sit in at any of my classes! Like most lecturers, I am just glad someone wants to hear what I have to say.

I doubt the university would give a monkeys either. The campus is so busy with dozens of goings on all day - workshops, talks open to the public, conferences, external visitors - that no one would notice in the first place.

No one will ever ask you for ID on my campus either because this is not Soviet Russia .

I know this sounds lax and worryingly open (yes, anyone could walk in etc) but despite security employed in some.buildings, universities are still public places, and many operate in that spirit.

Don't do it. Its dishonest.
However, I can see the appeal. And so many here would love to do it. So why don't we petition Unis to open some of their lectures to the public? People could register then sign up for particular lectures/courses, so there was a record of who would be on campus and when.

timely, does it ever occur to you to, I don't know, read the bloody thread?

(Although maths lectures are a special case, the only expense tends to be chalk, since most maths lecturers still prefer the old-style blackboard and going through a proof presentation. And the likelihood of anyone who isn't a maths student wanting to listen in is so slim as to be insignificant for all practical purposes! :-) )

Pretty out of date and sweeping generalisations being made.

Don't you think maths lectures also have exactly the same issues as other subjects in terms of rewriting and updating material? Maths lectures also have hand-outs, lecture notes, podcasts, use of social media such as twitter to make them interactive etc etc. It is increasingly common for lecturers to record themselves solving problems, in the style of Khan Academy, and make these available to students online. And many maths lectures delivered to large groups of students do use slides. Plus maths students often have programming modules, with related lab work.

Oubliette Jack Baldwin, of Rules fame? I always heard he was a reasonably good lecturer. Also assumed he lost his hair in the usual way, rather than heavy metal poisoning...!

When DS was in y12 he contacted a local university to see if he could spend half term attending 'real' undergraduate lectures (as opposed to the stuff laid on for sixth formers) We had to fill in some insurance forms for him to be allowed to do it, so that might be an issue.

for being post natal.

I thought I'd be cross at this thread but actually you sound delightful and eccentric, and perfectly harmless.

Let's face it, you'd probably get more out of it than many there who would be thinking too hard about taking offence about some old dead guy and not toggling up the duffle coat and getting shouty about stuff that actually matters NOW!

I might join you!

At my uni you could quite happily access the library and the social areas -although you couldn't access the computers

Lecture theatres we have to scan ourselves in for our attendance to be recorded but no one would spot an extra one

I wouldn't, however, assume that it's a chance to hear someone knowledgeable talk about their favourite subject. I have been tasked with teaching all manner of things in my career, often a long way from my favourite subject and sometimes where I certainly do not consider myself knowledgeable.

Ideally we'd all be teaching on areas we love and know inside out, but sometimes your HoD decides you're teaching, for example, quantatative methods and you need to dig out the notes from the masters to remind yourself what a t-test is for. This often happens because no one else wants to teach it and you're new.

Maydancer: the forms were possibly because of his age. There are issues with having under-18s in the class. When I taught in a Scottish university, we all had to be enhanced disclosure checked because we'd be working with 16 and 17 year old undergrads. We can have adults in to our classes as guests, but the university gets very angsty about children and young people.

Curioushorse can't resist pointing out what a lovely typo/autocorrect error "elicit sessions" is. We normally call those tutorials where I work...

StepAway that must have been a while ago - that particular piece of idiocy went away, I'm glad to say.

That's probably for the best. It was only a couple of years ago (although I willing to bet my department held on to the idiocy as long as possible).

"a record of who would be on campus and when"

That wins the 'most bonkers post of the thread' award. Have you ever been to a university?! They are public spaces, anybody can wander in and out, and most universities explicitly make some of their facilities available to the public (concerts, public lectures, even, er, lectures...). Though a few more years of Tory government, and you can be sure some swivel-eyed loon with £ signs in his eyes will suggest charging by the hour to enter university premises...

Libra

I do a branch of Edukashun

I really can't see a problem with sitting in on a lecture if there's a big audience and you're not taking a space away from an student. The fraud argument seems rather tenuous! You're not attempting to gain credits towards a degree, asking teaching staff for tuition or to mark coursework without first enrolling and paying the fees. It sounds very much like you'd enjoy returning to study, in which case it would be a great idea to check out a few lectures in different areas you might enjoy.

There are lots of part-time options now for physically attending Uni, as well as the OU options. In fact, lots of Uni courses record lectures and put them online so that students who miss a session can catch up. It's much more flexible than it used to be.

I'm heading back to uni this year 2 decades after getting my first degree - nerve wracking but very exciting! I started doing a couple of introductory return-to-learning courses with the OU last year to get my brain in gear and to make sure I could manage study alongside my other commitments. From there I decided to go for a degree with a very flexible structure at my local Uni. It might not work for you until your DC get a bit older but don't discount it as a possibility.

Why not ask if you can sit in. The students are not just paying for the lecture but use of computers, library, tutorials essay marking and a piece of paper that says you have a degree at the end of it all. Most lecturers would be flattered and it is possibly they have an open lecture policy anyway.

The uni I work at sounds very similar to the one you describe and the new big building was designed to allow free access to the community. The library across 5 floors only needs id to take books out or use the computers, there are papers and mags to read.... we have a book shop, bank and grocery store and a dentist and lots of Starbucks and other catering outlets. Use the library and the facilities..... if it's a big lecture then on guess it's not a problem to sit quietly at the back :) enjoy the space and you could consider signing on as an associate student and take one module at a time rather than a full degree if you enjoy it!