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!

I used to work for a University and quite a few higher members of staff there actually encouraged people to attend lectures.
I was never 100% sure of whether it was technically allowed or not but the lecturers didn't seem to mind as it didn't give them extra work but did give them a larger audience. Their mindset was that they were happy to spread their knowledge.
Tutorials and workshops are a different matter, exclusively for the students because they involve active participation, worksheets etc etc

Another academic who'd be very happy to have you in one of my lectures, OP, though my institution would probably take a dim view (if we don't charge for everything, how will we afford all those lovely 100K+ senior management salaries and pointless building projects?).

If you're trying to stay under the radar, though, do be aware that if you turn up to lectures in the morning and look interested, you'll be spotted as a non-student straight away

Uni lectures are by definition 'entry level stuff'; the idea being the student should then go and do wider, in-depth reading around the topic in the first year maybe, but not in the second and third year. I assume also that the students have attended the rest of the course, so if the Op turned up now into one of my lectures, after a term and a half, there would be lots of taken-for-granted words and concepts. Honestly, you can't get a degree by doing entry level stuff.

Not really getting how anonymised medical information, which the patient has consented to being used in textbooks, is sensitive information only for the ears of students. Surely anyone can buy a textbook if the fancy takes them?

Yanbu. I don't even think it's an ethical grey area. People who pay are essentially paying for the degree/qualification not just to attend lectures. Go for it I say.

Yes, of course anyone can buy a textbook.

Not anyone can 'drop into' detailed discussions on children's safeguarding issues though, for example.

OK Woof but you talked about medical descriptions and photos before, not case studies on safeguarding.

And even regarding safeguarding, surely you can't give personal details in lectures as not all students will go on to become professionals in the field bound by duties of confidentiality - aren't they just students who could drop out at any time?

To draw an analogy, in a law lecture the students can be told about reported cases but if the lecturer also practises as a solicitor he could not give identifying details of case files where there had been no public court case. He could however talk about his cases in general terms.

PS Woof not suggesting it isn't a good idea to exclude the public, just musing over how students can be trusted with this info. I somehow see it as different from a student doctor or other clinician sitting in on a live consultation as part of their clinical training.

Scenarios are given and discussions are had. Sometimes things can be triggering.

Not going to go into much detail as I'll out myself, but these discussions, and yes, pictures are to prepare students for clinical scenarios.

Of course nothing can prevent these students from leaving the course. But the tight security at the uni prevents anyone not registered coming in, good intentions or otherwise.

Maybe I'm just being over anxious. If I was lecturing in the complexities of Mr Darcy's intentions to Elizabeth Bennett, the more the merrier...!

You don't discuss projects or assignment feedback in a lecture though, do you?

On my course, we do. Our lecture group is split up into about 10 sub-groups and we are asked to contribute our research and review each other's work for the topic we are learning that week. Additional material from the lecturer will go on the VLE. I appreciate not every uni does this but ours is certainly more student-led, which is great because it makes us engage more. The downside is it's a bugger if you are hungover and just want to die quietly at the back of the lecture hall

Two thoughts. Sometimes you can pay a small annual fee and buy access rights to a university library for a year (although not usually to take books out), so that might help with ID issues.

Secondly even though students pay £9k for a year's tuition this does not actually represent the full cost of providing it and HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) are subsidising that by a surprisingly big wedge. This is why the public has more rights at this sort of university than, say, a private one such as Buckingham. So it's not fair to say you are taking something away from a paying customer, as you have also paid a contribution too, theoretically speaking, if you are a taxpayer. Then again, that's a slightly complex argument.

One more thing to add. I think universities generally see lecture attendance by members of the public as a recruitment tool, along the lines of a free taster.

Secondly even though students pay £9k for a year's tuition this does not actually represent the full cost of providing it and HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) are subsidising that by a surprisingly big wedge.

I think it's a bit more complicated than this. Roughly 80% of a university's income comes from tuition fees/HEFCE block grant. (This varies between universities.) However, universities exist for both teaching and research: let us assume that 50% of their purpose is education and 50% is research and enterprise. (Again this varies but let's split equally as a first approximation.) Thus income which is labelled as "teaching income" is actually being used to fund research.

In other European countries universities receive block government grants/research grants to fund the 50% which is research and enterprise. They receive separate block grants/tuition fees to fund the 50% which is education.

In the UK we are making students take loans to pay tuition fees. These indeed do not cover all of the funding needed by universities, but that's because the universities do not get large enough block grants for research. Students effectively pay partly for research, which should arguably be funded by all tax payers, as it benefits all of us. (On the other hand, it is definitely true that research informs teaching i.e. to get high quality university education you need academics to be active in research... so it is debatable whether students should pay some of the costs for research.)

Moreover, in the US and other systems, students don't just contribute to research with their fees - they effectively almost completely fund it. At top tier US universities, fees fund salaries of research superstars who often don't even teach much. So our students still get a better deal than students in the US.

I agree that universities in the UK receive at least some fraction of their funding directly from the government, and therefore the public has rights to access. Indeed universities take this very seriously, and spend a lot of time and resources on a wide range of public engagement activities. But I find it a bit hard to believe that wandering into specialised lectures (without access to course materials or assignments) is going to be useful for most people.

If you want to know if it is ok or not, whuy not simply email or phone the university and ask them? the fact that you haven't done, would imply you know what you are doing is wrong.

Jeanne Back pedalling some now I see! You and your boss don't set university charging policy, do you?

UCL put their lunch hour lecture series online for anyone to watch. There is all sorts of interesting stuff:

events.ucl.ac.uk/calendar/tab:lunch_hour_lectures/

Definitely YANBU.

When I did my inaugural lecture, I had quite a few "general public" in the audience, and interesting conversations afterwards.

And most parts of a university are open public spaces (not labs or offices or residences, of course).

I think it's a really depressing trend that several posters talk about security and "protecting" students. Universities are amongst the few remaining public civic spaces which are not being covertly privatised.

And I'm having fun trying to guess the universities various people are describing! Fwiw, my place only requires an ID swipe into the Library after 8pm. Otherwise, anyone can wander in.

And when in another city, I always use their University's amenities - student union cafes etc.

You go for it, OP. But maybe introduce yourself to the lecturer at some point. I'm sure she'll be delighted. I know I would. Lecturing is actually quite tough because you put out so much energy to get through to 100 students, not all of whom are as engaged as one might wish .... So I'd be overly excited to talk to someone who was there by choice!

And I'm having fun trying to guess the universities various people are describing!

Me too

Do it! It is a bit bonkers and if you get caught you'll have to confess and stop going but as long as you aren't causing any issues (ie there is lots of room in the lecture halls, you're not taking up a good seat that a student would otherwise have, etc) then what's the harm? I think most lecturers would be really flattered that you were sneaking in!

Oh sorry just read fogs post - I agree!

I'd encourage you to do two things: slip into any lecture that catches your interest and, alongside this, contact the student office or check online for what is already available to the public. As previous posters mentioned, many institutions have programs to encourage people not part of the university to participate. These programs tend to be less popular than the universities would like them to be, so it would be good to be included in their stats, too.

Generally, though, knowledge is for sharing.

Disquit, I think it's a bit like the MOOC phenomenon, in that many courses and lectures are only really of use to people who already have a degree or at least high level training in learning how to learn. Haves vs have-nots.

WRT funding, we get distracted by the Ivy League when thinking about the cost of a university education in America, and also by the fact that their rack rate fees include accommodation, and also are usually offset by scholarships from large endowments. Regional, public universities in the US cost something like half what our public universities do to attend, which I think the UK Government keeps pretty quiet. The main difference for students in the US is that their loans are at commercial rates whereas ours aren't (yet).

Wait until the Government sells the loan book though. Then we will have the same kind of financial car crash that is currently going on in the US, with people killing themselves to pay off 100k only to find that this has merely reduced their student loan from 100k to 90k because of the dodgy sub-prime way the interest figures have been calculated (they don't have the same regulations in place in the US about misselling financial products so people sign away their whole lives without understanding what they are doing, in some cases). Nightmare.

Huh? I don't follow, may?

While I am on here, I will make it known that degrees in Malta are free, taught in English, and this is a popular venue for UK students to study medicine as then they will have practically no student loan at all at the end of the whole course. This is such a popular wheeze that they try to ration places for UK students, I understand. Nevertheless if any MNetters have kids wanting to study Medicine this might be one to consider if finance is a consideration.

I told Tristram Hunt this fact (in person) and he was very sniffy and said 'But it's only the University of Malta and that's, well, Malta' which I thought was rather bitchy. It's alright for him as his family are well off but for other people this might make all the difference, and one European medical degree is much like another.

May is talking bollocks methinks and doesn't understand how university faculties work.

If you rang up a university asking this, you would end up either on hold all morning while they worked out who the hell to put you through to, or they would just tell you not to worry about it. Universities only charge for individual lectures if this is a special event and they are selling tickets in a theatre-style arrangement. Otherwise there is no charging code, so you can't invoice someone (which costs £12 just to raise anyway, so not worth it for the £5 or whatever it might be considered worth).

It is better just to send a donation to the university fundraising office if you think you have benefited from something for free that you would like to pay for. They are great at accepting money