AIBUto feel so angry with Dd's Uni

[Booklover123]

Dd taking her finals, first exam was today. Phoned me straight after distraught, as they had failed to provide the necessary appendices. Entire room were in tears, invigilators contacted dpt but to no avail.Were told to continue exam which they could not without the supplementary information! Tonight dd has received an e mail from said dpt "apologising for the error and mistake will be rectified". But how wii this be done? AIBU to be absolutely fuming with this utter balls up happening?

What an amazing opportunity for an intelligent young adult to write an answer detailing what information they would need, from what sources, how these would use it, what interpretations/analyses that would make of it, etc.

I'm looking at it from the inside, and I disagree, and I think your thinking is part of the current problem. But there you go

Yep, this.

AuntJane, in some exams you literally can't do that.

I would be interested to know what the 'service provider model' posters would like to see in return for the £9k students undertake to pay back as and when they earn enough.

If it is a service - what do you think it should entail? What do you think academics and universities should be offering? What do you think students should do, and how much responsibility should they have for their learning?

ImperialBlether - But in any exams you cannot complete without additional information - as in this case - surely you must be able to explain what information you need and how you would use it?

But what's the point in writing about that? Exam questions have mark schemes which allocate marks for particular things you've written. There are never marks given for saying what information you need and how you'd use it, because the assumption is that the information is with you.

So yes, if they wanted to spend time writing rather than just sitting there, they could write whatever they wanted but they wouldn't get any marks for it.

anonymice

I had something similar when I was lecturing. I think one of the problems with students paying fees is that they now consider themselves to be in a position of calling the shots. I had many who did not expect to have to learn - it was up to me and other staff to get the knowledge into their heads somehow, without them having to make any effort! Many also feel that if they've paid the fees they've "bought" their degree and should get it whether they have earned it or not.

The entitlement of some students is astounding, and it is particularly difficult on those students who are hardworking (yes - they do exist despite my whining here and especially when they have been put into groups to work on a project, and one or another just will not pull their weight. The lazy ones know that the others will carry them because they want to do well, and will do their work for them. Sadly, there is little that can be done about it, but it is reflected in the comments that will be made in references from universities regarding teamwork.

Oh dear. I wonder how the exam board will deal with the fact that for some students this might have been their best paper. All very well calculating the class of degree from the other modules and any elements of this module which are already completed (e.g. essays, group projects, presentations) - but what if the student could confidently have expected to get their best mark of the entire degree on this one exam paper? What if that's the one most of their revision efforts were focused on? What if it's got the heaviest weighting of anything in the final year?

It will all be the same in five years but if I were in that position right now I'd be really thrown by the whole thing, and I'm in my mid 50s.

However, I do agree with those saying it's for the students to sort out, not the parents. I wish them luck.

Such a strange old world, Mumsnet. On the one hand, you have people complaining about paying over the odds for a badly decorated birthday cake and everyone up in arms on their behalf, but throw the cost of a university degree into the mix and students are castigated for expecting high standards, a thorough complaints procedure and recourse if things go wrong... Just because someone is a student doesn't make their opinion any less valid. Many of the students on my courses have been mature - they can't be accused of being young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, can they?

I posted upthread and still stand by the points I've made. I've paid for three degree courses now, the third out of pocket (and loans on the other two long cleared) and have seen very little difference in the quality of academic output/teaching I've experienced during the fifteen years between courses two and three, despite a huge increase in the amount of money I was charged for course three as opposed to the other two (when fees were 'just' £1000/£3000/yr). Here's an example from the RG uni I'm just about to finish my current course with. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a mid-thirties mum of two with years of corporate experience. I'm used to how things work, how things should be done and pretty clued up about my rights.

So - module one. Lots of info online, slide packs and so on, most of which is badly written, not formatted correctly, making it difficult to understand. The word count for our assignment was given as 2500 words in one document and 4000 in another (resulting in much wasted time and last minute editing when the tutor finally clarified which was correct). Give it a few weeks and we get feedback. I had a pretty low mark but had passed, and was quite upset. It had been years since I'd last studied but I didn't think I'd gone from being relatively academic to a dunce. I started to read the comments the tutor had made. Lots of talk about lack of paragraphs and bad grammar and so on. I emailed her and queried where these were, as even if the content of my work had been appalling, I was confident that it was well written. Turned out she had sent me the someone else's mark sheet and I had scored pretty highly overall. However, it took her two goes to attach the 'correct' mark scheme, and my personalized feedback, and I'm still not convinced I actually have my own feedback... I ask for a remark, involving my personal tutor, who is also the course lead. Six months later, it still hasn't happened and I doubt it will. The general attitude of the university staff was 'you've passed, get over it'. I don't want to just pass! I want adequate feedback on the work I've submitted, tips for improvement and a fair marking process. The fact I've paid over £6000 for this privilege does make me expect more. In another context, you'd be able to invoke the Sale of Goods Act for such a huge purpose. But the tutors I've come across seem more worried about covering their own arses than anything else, and seem to prefer those students who are less academic and less likely to question and kick up a fuss. It's a pretty sad reflection on the academic world to be honest. All this talk of students being whiny and entitled. Really? Maybe they're just calling out the underperforming, crusty old academics for what they really are and those people don't like the fact their cover has been blown...

" The entitlement of some students is astounding, and it is particularly difficult on those students who are hardworking (yes - they do exist despite my whining here grin and especially when they have been put into groups to work on a project, and one or another just will not pull their weight "

DS3 was just telling me that he has chosen his third year modules and is delighted that none require group work. He has had some humdingers in the past. Fortuanately on his course students are marked on individual contribution within the group. For one project two of them got 80 something and two got precisely 40

*purchase

Happy - but I did expect to learn and still had complaints. I handed all my work in on time, attended my seminars and so on. There's one thing not being drawn into ridiculous arguments with students who really can't be bothered, I totally agree, but for those who can, and who do work hard, should they have to put up with a slack service too? As I said above, I noticed that a lot of tutors preferred the less than committed students as it fed back into their narrative that all students were lazy, shouldn't be so entitled, tutors were to be revered blah blah blah. The problems came when mature students, or those who'd done everything by the book, started to point out that the university weren't keeping their side of the bargain. You pay for a course, you expect a service. I'm not saying you can buy a degree, but you're buying access to information and a lecturer who turns up. When that doesn't happen, of course there should be some kind of comeback.

Sprinkle, I'll make two comments (I can't comment on your personal situation with the lecturer).

First, no-one on this thread has argued that students should not expect "high standards, a thorough complaints procedure and recourse if things go wrong". Not a single person.

Second [I] have seen very little difference in the quality of academic output/teaching I've experienced during the fifteen years between courses two and three, despite a huge increase in the amount of money I was charged for course three as opposed to the other two (when fees were 'just' £1000/£3000/yr).

Do you think that as tuition fees have increased, universities have received increased funding by the same amount?

BTW. Combined together my 4 D.C. have collectively done 16 years of University ( which we've paid for 😭) It is of no surprise whatsoever that most of their lecturers etc are very good and occasionally brilliant and it is of no surprise the the very odd one is a bit useless and lazy. That's how it is for most things isn't it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Overall my D.C. have loved going to University and they seem to have got a lot out of it. It's a shame that so many people seem to be so negative about it. The UK university system is great in my opinion

" I handed all my work in on time, attended my seminars and so on. There's one thing not being drawn into ridiculous arguments with students who really can't be bothered, I totally agree, but for those who can, and who do work hard, should they have to put up with a slack service too? As I said above, I noticed that a lot of tutors preferred the less than committed students as it fed back into their narrative that all students were lazy, shouldn't be so entitled, tutors were to be revered blah blah blah. The problems came when mature students, or those who'd done everything by the book, started to point out that the university weren't keeping their side of the bargain. You pay for a course, you expect a service. I'm not saying you can buy a degree, but you're buying access to information and a lecturer who turns up. When that doesn't happen, of course there should be some kind of comeback."
I should imagine all my academic colleagues feel like that @sprinklestar, or hope so. I always do my best for students and did so even before they had to take out astronomical loans to make it through the door....

"but what if the student could confidently have expected to get their best mark of the entire degree on this one exam paper? "
You can compute the weight of this exam compared to the overall degree mark. That will hence be known and become part of the process of assessing what should be done (and the university, faculty and school should have standard procedures in place to deal with such circumstances). So, for example, similar procedures as are followed by students who submit mitigating circumstances (illness etc during exams).
Frankly, the mark for that ONE exam is only going to make a difference to the overall grade if they are close to a grade boundary anyway. In such cases, I would expect that the boundary region where cases are looked at would be widened, OR all people who sat that exam could have their boundary decision looked at. In cases where such students did fall just below a boundary, we would ask, was it the mark on THAT exam that was the problem, or were other marks at the lower grade. Because frankly, if you could see that 5 more marks, say, on THAT exam would have put them over the boundary, they'd possibly get it, especially if the advice according to the rules was that we should be lenient at grade boundaries for students who did that paper.
Then the external examiners would have their say as to what they thought of that process.

Or the person who set the paper in the first place could re-assess their mark scheme based on the difficulty of the new paper without the additional material. Which would then also be looked at by the external examiners and the exam boards.

As regards complaints -- frankly, there aren't any grounds for a complaint in this case. It was probably an administrative error of some sort (and I'm sure someone will be looking at exactly what went wrong in this case and whether or not procedures need to be changed or tightened to try and reduce the chance of this happening.) It was probably nothing at all to do with the lecturer concerned, because once exam papers are handed over to exams admin staff, we have nothing to do with the rest of the process until scripts turn up for marking. Even if an examiner had been abominably stupid and failed to include extra sheets/booklet/pages with the required appendices (not clear from OP what the nature of this material was), then I would have expected the internal moderator to have spotted that it was impossible to answer the question without additional material that they had not seen. Just as if I wrote an exam question that said, referring to Figure 2, when there was no Figure 2 on ANY page of the exam script!

As regards any supposed delay, I would assume that what happened was what might happen at my uni. Any query about the paper from the exam room has to go to the lecturers from the module who set the paper (who are supposed to be contactable DURING the exam, and this is also something that admin staff check before exams, in terms of where will you be and what contact number etc etc). If there was supposed to be, say, an extra appendices booklet/formula sheet, I would expect this to be LISTED on the front of the script. When it was realised that it was NOT there, I assume admin exam staff went desperately hunting for the envelope.............And then would have had to ask the lecturer if it was possible to at least partially answer the paper without it. Whilst also frantically explaining that, yes, they had looked, no one could find it etc etc.

The point I was aiming at originally was that there only would be grounds for complaint if there were procedures set-down for what to do in such cases, and the school or faculty or university ignored them. Or if there were not procedures and different schools applied different ad hoc procedures made up on the spur of the moment and you could show that some schools would have been disadvantaged by this. So, say, someone who got struck on the head by a meteorite in a physics exam would come out with a poorer result than someone who got similarly hit during an english exam.

What often surprises students, compared to A-levels, is that there is NO remarking, and that the academic judgement of the person who taught and wrote the exam and marks the papers, is unquestionable! There is no further expert authority, we are the experts on what we teach! But, yes, if a certain lecturer is held to be just plain abysmal, useless, a bit crap at lecturing etc etc, then student comments and complaints, and the success or otherwise of students in that module will be looked at, and conversations will be had. We have various procedures to peer-review teaching quality, we sit in on others lectures, we see what advice we have to offer about how things could be improved (I say lectures, but of course we have various modes of delivery, lectures, seminars, practicals, examples classes etc etc).

Because we all recognize that the quality and the content of our teaching and our methods, and how we listen and reply to student comments about teaching impact on the quality of students we get in the future.

Stuff happens (fire-alarms, administrative errors, printing errors, collapsing ceilings etc etc) during exam periods. You can never eliminate such events totally. Which is why we have procedures in place to deal with such events, and as long as procedures are followed and are fair and reasonable, and as long as we do strive to try and reduce the incidence of avoidable errors, then what more do people reasonably expect?

"The fact I've paid over £6000 for this privilege does make me expect more. In another context, you'd be able to invoke the Sale of Goods Act for such a huge purpose. "
Except previously, the state would have been paying the same amount.

One thing I have noticed is that since students have been paying directly, some of them have become more studious! Quality of teaching and quality of teachers varies between universities and between schools/departments, but that is part of what establishs the reputation of a university. And at my uni at least, all academics are aware of the general push towards giving students the best quality materials and teaching. So, for example, we have had improvements in electronic access and library online access (this has been a technological improvement, not just locally. Gone are the days when you had to have a whole raft of individual usernames and passwords for various online services, now it is all dealt with via a single centralised system). We have online work submission and marking and communication to students. We have online access to teaching materials (handouts, slides etc) and also podcasts of the actual lectures. But these systems take money to establish, and time in terms of teaching staff how to use them and make the best use of them. It isn't (apart from maths lectures which are a bit different being chalk and talk through the proof!) some fusty old git in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches mumbling into the board and erasing what he has just written with his sleeve as he proceeds, or someone dropping a stack of old overhead slides onto the floor then presenting them in the wrong order! Although I did once attend a talk by a french professor who had a minder sat in the front row whose whole job seemed to consist of saying 'english professor' whenever the chap lapsed into french................

Students who don't study are a larger problem, at my uni at least, than crap lecturers, but the latter is much easier to complain about (although not as easy as the annual pretty top-notch student from council estate who didn't get offered a place at Oxbridge........).

UK academics in general work really hard and pleasing their 'audience' whilst also judging it too, is a tough gig.
I have this on my wall, I think it says it all.

Students and staff alike, lets cut eachother some slack!

Stuff happens (fire-alarms, administrative errors, printing errors, collapsing ceilings etc etc) during exam periods

Of course, in the good old days, a well placed bomb scare in the horror exam didn't go astray.

Sprinkle - If I gave the impression that I think that all lecturers are saints and all students are whinging little sinners, I apologise wholeheartedly! Of course it isn't so, and mature students almost to a wo/man put their hearts and souls in because a) they know they haven't got time on their side the way the young 'unsisterly have, and b) they are, by definition, mature - i.e. they expect to have to graft (some of the younger students coming straight from school, free from parental restraint and not used to shifting for themselves, organising their workload and from (in most cases) much more "protected" environments that us oldies did, and with the expectation that life will be handed to them on a plate, find the adjustment from being taught to being expected to manage their own learning is just too much of a culture shock).

I only worked at one university - not Oxford or Cambridge, but a very good one in the North of England, an we bent over backwards to ease the students into learning (that's what the foundation year is for) while still supporting them. And it isn't easy - I have had parents ringing me telling me to make sure that their child (technically an adult at 18) doesn't get too drunk or stay out too late (NOT my job), and students complaining because placements (which are like hen's teeth!) involve travelling and aren't available on campus. One student demanded - demanded - that the university paid for car hire to get to the placement! And I've also had assignments handed in that were just cut-and-paste jobs from the internet (do they really think this goes unnoticed?)

We don't deliberately stick them an hour away - it's the only place that's prepared to have them. And the heavier clinicians' workloads get, the less keen they are to carry what is effectively a passenger because clinical supervision, done properly, is a very time-consuming task.

Not all students are like this this - many are very hardworking and a joy to work with. But honestly - you just need one workie-ticket in a year and s/he can cause chaos.

• don't have any idea where "unsisterly" came from

I love your poster Scientist

"frankly, there aren't any grounds for a complaint in this case."

I find that puzzling, because I can't see how this could have happened without someone having made an error? Obviously it's not clear who at the moment.

Re 'the taxpayer is paying the fees via a loan'. Not necessarily - some dparents have paid the fees upfront. Their choice of course, but given the terms of repayment not necessarily a foolish one. (And yes I know the 'don't have to repay unless etc' but once people look at the interest rates they may take the view that if you can pay it's a good idea not to take out the loans.) Presumably all non EEA students have paid upfront?

Also part of the cost of university is maintenance which many students or their dparents have to finance in part themselves - see numerous earlier threads! And in any case students will make repayments if they earn more than the threshold - the fact that they won't repay the loan in full doesn't mean they won't pay a hefty sum by the age of 50. (sorry, too many negatives there)

There's no cause for complaint if the university procedures adequately compensate students for the error. The university in this example have already said they made a mistake and they will use well established procedures to ensure the students are not disadvantaged by their mistake.

Universities bend over backwards to give students the benefit of the doubt in determining degree classifications. They actively seek to maximise the numbers of firsts and 2:1s they award.

Also reading this thread, I suspect there are quite a few parents who need to take what their adult children tell them about their university lecturers with a pinch of salt. Yes, lecturers can vary but most lecturers really do try to teach well and support students. The students' account of what happened is not always a fair representation. For example, we've had students complaining that they didn't get a summary lecture and that's not fair - except they did get a very comprehensive one, and it had been video recorded and was available on the VLE. I'm pretty sure what the students who complained told their parents about that class was not anything resembling what actually happened.

"The university in this example have already said they made a mistake and they will use well established procedures to ensure the students are not disadvantaged by their mistake. "

But can they really ensure that - as another pp said, what about the student for whom this would have been the best paper? Also, the fact that they follow procedures to mitigate doesn't necessarily mean there's no cause for complaint about the original mistake. Whatever else the £9k is paying for I would take the view that it should include complete exam papers.

I fund the fees and just like in their private school I am the direct customer and the universities need to provide a good service. I have paid so far for 12 years of university educationand post grad for the older 3 children and have 6 more years + about to start for the twins.

We do not expect important components to be missing on exam days. That student might as said above expect to do best on that paper so some kind of average from their other papers is not going to be fair. As the necessity for a 2./1 determining earnings and careers for the next 10 years at least is key then those who don't achieve this because of an exam cock up should be able to sue for the loss of earnings over that period if directly attributable to the cock up over the equipment.