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!

ABetaDad - that would be Professor Sir Jack Baldwin then. Commiserations - his lectures were dire (you should've tried Professor Malcolm Green's in Inorganic Chemistry - they were usually a hoot).

Honestly crashing a lecture is nothing. I'd happy do it. But then I once crashed a Gordon Conference Dinner - only to find the chairperson was my tutor he saw the funny side - I even got a mention in his after dinner speech

Steve Jobs talks about doing this in his Ted Talk 'how to live before you die'. Amongst other things he credits discovering a love of typograghy in lectures (after he dropped out of college that is) with the later idea of introducing different fonts to the mac. Sounds great :)

Yep another vote for coursera.

Come on I want to hear how you snuck into a lecture on "Patagonia weevil taming practices and pitfalls"

Almost sounds as good as my "Ethnobotany - pleasure or pain?" lecture.
Very odd - lots of talk of mushrooms and curare.

I work at a uni and the campus is open to the public, all cafes and shops etc. The public are permitted in the library, although without a card you may have to ask for access, and can use as a reference library. There are plenty of public lectures, some of which are in the day. But you would be better to ask a lecturer if you could attend a student lecture. You could email or phone in advance if you can get a contact from the timetable. If you are interested in lectures without the full on study, check out Cousera or similar as unis around the world put up videos of sessions for people to do online courses.

This happened recently at the uni I work at. They were told not to do it again.

Oh I D love to do this. I was an oxbridge undergrad and would so love to go back as a student now now I'd appreciate it so much more!

I am an university lecturer.

Members of the public are apparently entitled to attend lectures at publicly funded universities (which is practically all of them) with the permission of the person giving the lecture. Many universities publish full lecture timetables for consultation so this can be easily achieved, especially at places like Cambridge. Students are supposed to attend as many lectures as possible even if they are not on their own courses. Attending a lecture when you are not signed up for a course is called 'auditing a lecture'.

The practicalities of it are a bit difficult though. Many lecturers would find it a bit weird if an apparently random person walked up to them just as they were shuffling their bits of paper and USB sticks around and asked out of the blue if it was OK to audit the lecture. Some might not know the public are allowed in and start to panic. Some might this the Department of Business, Education and Science were suddenly doing a kind of unannounced teaching OFSTED (this has been threatened). So I would not do that.

I would instead just dress a bit like a student and go in there brandishing the appropriate stationery, i.e. slightly crumpled file paper pad, battered ring binder, highlighter pens in at least three colours, and possibly a laptop for effect. Then I would drink in the knowledge and present an approving and encouraging facial expression to the lecturer at all times, modelling appropriate lecture-attendance behaviour to the younger generation, some of whom are a joy to teach (usually the mature students) and others less so as they are either asleep or forgot to do the advance reading because they were too busy with university mating rituals and panicking about their student loans.

Bonus points for going on RateMyProfessor afterwards and saying how well-prepared and student-focused the lecturer was, and how you are considering a postgraduate degree course because of the high quality teaching obviously on offer in the department.

If lectures are too daunting, there are absolutely loads of free seminars that are open to the public and you can usually just stroll in. They are sometimes pitched at postgraduate level though, unless it's a famous speaker. Departmental websites usually have a list of what is on offer.

I so need to move to a university town...

Partial, I actually pluck my lady tache when I am having lectures filmed for putting out on online teaching platforms. Times have changed since the bearded 1970s.

I would love to do this, go to some history lectures. I often have to drop dd off for weekend classes at uni (they do stuff for teens) and love the campus. Ive got an NUS card for a different uni which lasts till 2018 as im supposed to be doing a masters (but I'm not).

I should have typed the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Education doesn't come into it in terms of our Lords and Masters.

Some things to think about...

I personally wouldn't care (lecturer) at all, I'm giving the lecture anyway.

However, in an anthropology class, which typically don't have the huge numbers like say first year law, you may stand out a mile.

I teach up to about 50 students, and this late in the term, if a new face came into the lecture, I would most likely approach them and ask why they hadn't attended seminars.

Your chances of being spotted depend very much on the subject and the size of the class.

Also, it isn't the same as a student from that university studying outside their course, at our uni any student can audit any course or access the online materials. This is because they have been accepted/paid.

I don't think it's immoral at all, but it's obvious that if lots of people did this then there would be a tightening of security about lectures (our uni campus is completely open to the public and encourages people to use the facilities).

I don't know where you are in the country, but as everyone says, many unis run a whole public lecture series, there's Cafe Scientifique, there's online courses for free (the MOOCS)- so not really sure why you need to get your fix by pretending to be a student. You could still access the campus, have lunch, wander about, and study these courses at home.

This may not be as thrilling to you though, as it seems to be more about the excitement of pretending, and less about genuinely getting interested in one subject (most lectures would require some background knowledge, or are in a series).

Public lectures in Cambridge.
talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/5462

lecturelist.org/

Lists of public lectures, the LSE series I used to attend was always packed out, people used to get quite arsey if they couldn't get it which was quite often.

Another academic saying she would be delighted to have an interested member of the public in the audience. I don't count heads, but it is nice to see a fuller lecture theatre, particularly at the end of term. Actually I do a lecture related to sex in one of my modules and that always has a 110% attendance - I think people bring their flat mates.
But do consider the public lectures please! I have to do one next month and am really worried about no one turning up...

Oxford

UCL, London

Imperial

King's College London

UEA, Norwich

Leeds

Manchester

Liverpool

I'd happily do a free online one on MN if MNHQ asked.
I would get big outreach kudos for that.

Thanks Op, I will definitely look into going to some public lectures at my local uni.

What's your subject boffin? I'd probably listen in anyway. I love listening to people passionate and knowledgeable about their subject.

I really would love to be paid to study...

www.cafescientifique.org/

These are one of the tougher crowds I have encountered while lecturing.

Oh yes Boffin. Think of the impact!

Personally, I find that students nowadays are very keen on seeing what they are getting for their money. Okay, variations depending on whether it is an arts or a science/lab based course. But even in science courses, lectures are not cost-free. For example, when calculating how much a course costs the School, explicit calculations are made based on contact hours (including lectures), and preparation time. We don't, after all (well, most of us!), just use a video recording of ourselves from a previous year! And given current fees, students expect top quality resources (hand-outs, lecture notes and slides available online, pod casts and audio recordings of lectures etc) for their money. Updating and maintaining equipment in lecture theatres, installing new technology such as automatic audio capture, capturing output from projectors etc all costs money, and is part of what we tell the students they are paying for! So, saying it is okay for someone to listen in for free kind of undermines what we are trying to get across. It isn't free to listen, it's just that the paying students are subsidising your bum on your seat if you sneak in. Just as it would be if you snuck in and watched a theatre performance from an empty seat!

(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! :-) )

I don't want to see what I do in terms of a live lecture be de-valued! It isn't the same as a video recording from last year, it takes times and resources to present and prepare, and like a live theatre performance (which is the closest thing I can compare it to!), it isn't free to all comers once you've done it once!

If a member of university staff, or a student, or a very interested party wanted to attend my lectures for free, they should at least have the good manners to ask. It's not that I think my lectures are particularly brilliant BTW, but I don't like this devaluing of what lectures should be, or the idea that they somehow aren't worth paying for, or that there aren't costs involved.

Thanks for that list Boffin, you've posted my local university and there are two lectures I'd really like to attend.

I've never gone to a law lecture, law being how I earn my living, but I have taken the chance to go to history lectures* which is what I read forty-plus years ago.

*Shades of Spooner: You have hissed all my mystery lectures and deliberately tasted two worms and you will leave Oxford by the town drain.

Ooh Ive just discovered a cafe scientifique near me I'd never heard of! Looks awesome.

(I went to a maths lecture once, I was upper sixth and visiting a friend at uni. I really liked it!)