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 can't see why someone wouldn't get something out of a lecture on a subject they find interesting. If they find the subject interesting then they'll be more likely to look up the things they didn't follow.

So if you're interested in maths, you might find Gaussian whatever it is hard to follow as the lecturer scrawls equations on the board, but you might go home and google it, and have a go a few times, and at some point you might get it; at the very least you've expanded your own knowledge in that you now know that such a thing exists!

If you're not interested in maths, hated it at school, failed the GCSE etc, then you're not going to sit in on a maths lecture in the first place, are you?

It's the same with absolutely any subject. I find it very hard to believe that a normal person, wandering into even a third year lecture on a subject they're interested in would get nothing at all from it.

I don't think I want to randomly walk into a random undergraduate lecture, but I think I will definitely be keeping an eye on what's on locally. The three nearest universities to me all have an events page, listing various talks and lectures, including Shami Chakrabarti speaking about her work at Liberty.

www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/events/

www.leeds.ac.uk/events/full/type/130003/opento/130007/faculty/all/subject/all/added/all/

www.hud.ac.uk/events/

For my undergraduate degree there was no such thing as first/third year lectures. First years had an introduction to the skills, terms and theories they would need for their degree in their first term and after that, would sign up for whatever course they were interested. So first, second and third years would all be in the same lecture, along with some students from related courses if that particular course crossed faculties (there was quite a lot of overlap between history, art history, literature and languages).

May, what was the point in doing that? Some poor knackered PA is now going to have to try to find out the university's position, probably get the right-to-audit-a-lecture thing wrong because he/she asks the wrong person, then write back to you with a helpful leaflet about public lectures on offer, then have to file everything in triplicate in case there is an FOI request at some stage.

FFS. Just so you can prove a point on MN.

I don't know where you work, but in universities there just aren't the resources for dealing with daft stuff like that.

Hopefully it will keep finding the bottom of the to do pile. :)

I suppose maybe she actually wants to go?

But I agree.

I am honestly really sure people are allowed to audit lectures where I am, but I am also sure that if someone rang up 'the university', they'd struggle to get a reply, or the person who responded might spend ages trying to figure out what on earth to say.

Recently someone got in touch with me, somewhat annoyed, to say they'd sent me an email to 'the university' and it obviously hadn't reached me, and did that mean they were not entitled to contact me (they sent this via a handwritten letter to my faculty address, FWIW). Now, obviously I know that the university just wouldn't forward mail to me from random people. But that doesn't prove that random people shouldn't write to me - it just proves the central system isn't geared up to take the time or the responsibility for it all.

Boffin, again, you obviously work at a kinder, gentler institution than I do.

One of the Deputy VCs will probably set up a working group. The working group will require all departments to complete a return specifying all lectures that are/are not open to the public and a rationale for each case. In late August, when no-one sane is checking their mail, the working group will produce a paper outlining the multiple ways in which departments - particularly the ones that are top-rated for REF and NSS and therefore up themselves and deserving of being taken down a peg or two - are failing to meet the university's target of maximising revenue/increasing public engagement (goals to be decided by coin toss and switched on the first day of every month with a y in the name). They will require each department to produce a policy, compatible with but different from the university's overall policy, setting out how they will meet the important goal of allowing/denying public access to all lectures. This is to be approved at departmental, faculty, and university level within ten working days, in time for the start of the academic year.

I actually ended up in my field doing something similar.

First week at uni, signed up for my subjects. Had an hour to kill between two lectures, so wandered into a general lecture, thinking i could sit at the back and at least keep warm.

By the first 10minutes i knew id found "my" subject, and switched straight after.

The big massive lectures should be available to all. A few extras dont hurt, and could result in extra students at the university.

FatherReboola

We have those moments as well.

Go on, OP! Do it!

(I'm not place marking or anything)

So if you're interested in maths, you might find Gaussian whatever it is hard to follow as the lecturer scrawls equations on the board, but you might go home and google it, and have a go a few times, and at some point you might get it.

You might get it. More likely you wouldn't, since there is so much specialist knowledge required to even get going: calculus, linear algebra, analysis, differential equations, statistical analysis etc. Math students are usually not meant to transfer between modules if they have missed more than the first week as they in general aren't able to catch up.

I really don't think somebody with, say, A level maths knowledge would be able to take notes from a third year maths course and then go home and understand what it means.

It's not unusual for students from other courses to come to maths modules with interesting sounding titles (cosmology, relativity, quantum computing). They don't last long because they just don't have the required background to follow (even engineers, computer scientists etc).

The big massive lectures should be available to all. A few extras dont hurt, and could result in extra students at the university.

Actually they may hurt, as typically rooms are barely big enough to cope with the enrolled students. I would refuse permission for members of the public to attend my lectures on these grounds.

Disquit typically on your course at your university - not in general. I don't recall ever attending (or, alas, giving) a standard undergraduate lecture with no spare spaces.

As for the content being accessible, perhaps it would be possible to credit those wishing to attend undergraduate lectures for fun with the intelligence to know whether they are likely to understand the content?! They are perhaps even fairly likely to have an actual degree in a related subject, unlike most of the other people in the room! I'm quite sure most arts graduates could gain something from most humanities lectures, and ditto science. What a patronising assumption to think otherwise.

I am shocked that an academic would make a sweeping statement like that about large lecture rooms typically being full at all Universities countrywide disquit.

Where's your evidence?

Go for it, OP. I would if I could!

Interesting to see the more....'Us vs Them' posters here.

I don't think they're worried you won't understand the content. I think they're worried you will.

Do it do it do it Lecture and please come back and tell us all about it.

Many UK universities have expanded student numbers considerably since 2012. Facilities have not caught up. I can name at least half a dozen universities which are considering/have started to schedule lectures outside the 9-6 Monday-Friday period, just to be able to timetable all required classes. In these universities big lectures are quite frequently taking place in unsuitable rooms, which can barely seat all the students or which don't have the correct setup for the class format.

Unless you are currently an undergraduate, I would suspect that your experiences in the past are not reflective of the current situation. If you are currently an undergraduate at an institution which hasn't particularly expanded student numbers (e.g. Oxbridge) you also probably won't see a problem. (Although Oxbridge has had fairly poor facilities for some of its large STEM lectures for decades.) But go and ask students at universities which have massively expanded student numbers about their current experiences: you will find many complaints about big lectures being in claustrophobic lecture theatres or unsuitable lecture rooms which barely have enough capacity.

disquiet Non-Oxbridge uni here, students numbers up and cohorts of 300+, but I have never heard of a lecture that was standing room only (sadly).

May why would you do that? Creating wholly unnecessary work, and for what reason exactly? I would support you being charged for doing that, rather than the OP for attending a lecture...

I have a friend who is a professor, I asked him this very question, can members of the public just sneek in, he said he didn't think anybody had but would be very welcoming if they did and have no problem with it at all.

BTW if universities did develop their policies on public attending lectures (as advocated by May's question), lecture theatre capacity and health and safety would be significant issues in their response i.e. they would have to take into account that members of the public could push student numbers over capacity and hence violate health and safety. To deal with such health and safety issues, universities would probably have to introduce, for example, systems of scanning into lectures to give priority first to enrolled students and then to members of the public.

Very expensive and complicated, so more likely they would issue a blanket refusal to members of the public attending undergraduate lectures, pointing out how public lectures and MOOCs fulfil public engagement responsibilities.

If people want to go to lectures then they would be far better off making informal arrangements with lecturers than asking universities to detail their policies.

I can name at least half a dozen universities which are considering/have started to schedule lectures outside the 9-6 Monday-Friday period, just to be able to timetable all required classes

Mine has done an 08:30-18:30 day for a while. And starting to talk about some things scheduled for Saturdays.

As a lecturer, I am very pleased to see so many posts from non-lecturers which acknowledge that lectures are only a part of what students receive in exchange for their fees: makes an enormous change from the parents and students who divide the yearly fees by the number of lecture hours per annum (and then whinge )

I personally wouldn't mind: and do allow people from outside to attend lectures if they ask. I would notice if you didn't ask - because in first year classes (which are the ones in the hundreds, where I don't necessarily know everyone's names from the start of the year) I make sure I have a photo list of all attendees. (It helps me learn people's names) In second and third years, where I have people I haven't taught before, I learn their names in the first fortnight - and post-grad classes are smaller, so your attendance would be noted. I wouldn't necessarily ask you to leave if you had attended without asking - but I would come over to you during a break, and ask who you were and what you were doing. I only teach about 600 different students a week, so names and recognition is fine - people who teach more might well not realise you're not supposed to be there.

HOWEVER - if you fancy some legitimacy, and also making some money too: why not register with the university to help students who have SEN? Most of my classes have one or two note takers, who don't sit with the students for whom they are taking notes, and they can attend, ask questions and generally enjoy the lecture whilst also being paid for the privilege. Those I have had in my classes have always been fantastic: why not look into that for your free morning? That way too, you could "follow" a class from beginning to end.

I went to university part time in the mid 90s (took 5 years instead of 3). It was one long day a week, 9 while 8. The course was shared with full timers most of whom didn't bother to turn up to all the lectures especially those in the morning or evening.

So scheduling lectures outside a 'normal' working day is not new, although the courses I did were specifically aimed at the local chemical industry, who had input into course provision (days/times/sandwich years/content).

disquit my department has one first year lecture that is so big, there are no lecture halls large enough to accommodate it (or at least, certainly not any within a twenty minute walk of where all the lectures on this course tend to be held - there may be one or two lecture halls large enough in the science area) so we run it with a video-link between two large lecture theatres.

The "main" one where the lecturer is is always full - the secondary one (policed by a member of staff, but not taught by them) varies: I don't think it would be fair to pinch a spot in the "best" hall from a paying student, but I don't see an issue being in the overflow.

H and S can be an issue: I was allocated a room too small by 10 spots for a second year class a few years ago, and the university refused to change anything to permit it to be held in a room large enough (whilst at the same time refusing to cap any classes) - as all lecturers know, attendance drops off after the first few weeks, so I just told the students we would be violating health and safety until such time enough of them decided that staying in bed at 9am on Thursday was a better option. It happened by late October...

I went to Uni in the mid-90s, and had 2 lectures a week in my second and third years from 6-8pm. In my 3rd year, I had a seminar once a week which started at 8.30am (lecturer didn't like it any better than we did, but had no other time available; it was optional, but most of us went).

In my old days when we were too many for the rooms we had two different times we could attend. Via video link is not quite the same.