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?

Student wellbeing services and counselling are stretched so much at present. There's been a horrible spate of suicides at RG universities as well
This is not new, but the scale of the poor mental health of our youth should be worrying to all of us

Agree so much with this. ITs so sad to see so many posters are blaming the students for being "crybabies". What a fucking great attitude to people who are so stressed, they start crying in an exam. As someone said these people have been put under so much stress since they were 7 years old, the amount of suicides at universities is horrendous! Something is going very wrong!

To go back to your dd, OP, at my DD's university last week, something went wrong with the IT system. Students couldn't send in their final dissertations in the day. (They can't hand in a hard copy), so the uni gave everyone a weeks extension on dissertations. Don't worry OP your dd will be fine, thye will be bending over backwards to sort it, they do. It want thier reputation to be tarnished.

*excise typos!

Condolences to all academics having to put up with the sort of wahwahing that really you wouldn't expect from 12 yr olds.

Thanks Artemisia - but honestly, it's OK - most of the time. In the situation of the OP's DD, I'd expect some strong reactions from student, actually (not their parents, though). I think it gets tough when students throw unfounded or 12 year old child-style accusations about "My tutor doesn't like me, and I can't work with a tutor who doesn't like me" is one gem I had in my office a while back. OR "My tutor is bullying me." We have to take any accusation of bullying very seriously, and I had to investigate. What it really was was a student with a troubled background projecting onto a colleague who had done nothing to warrant the accusation, but had a week of sleepless nights and a visible weight loss.

The problem at the moment is that a combination of an appalling secondary school educational outlook, pushy entitled parents, and general economic precarity, means that students are very very anxious. But without the skills to deal with their anxiety, because they've been so spoonfed by schools requiring high league table positions. So students actually have a fair bit of power, but very little understanding of their responsibilities.

I unfortunately agree that students, by paying fees, and being made to behave like customers, but it has led to a shift in expectations by students, to the detriment of what learning and education is about.

The example I give is that combined with internet, students now often expect printed lecture notes, all the slides online, all readings on the same online site, etc, etc, so that students don't have to go through the trouble of making their own notes during lectures, and I'm sorry to say it is leading to a reduced educational outcome.

I've had students complaining that a question (I work in a technical subject) hadn't been worked through entirely in class. "Yes, but given what you had learned in class, could you apply it to this situation you haven't seen before?"

KidLorneRoll education is not a service. It may look like it from the outside, but it is not a service industry.

You know, those of you insisting on education as a service and students as customers add to the kind of lack of resilience and stress and pressure on current young people. The attitude that a university is a service provider and a customer-service industry filters through to the young people you're raising, who then have distorted ideas and attitudes about their relationships to those who teach them.

I think you need to think about this. Academics and professional staff in universities work extraordinarily hard (I'm having my breakfast now having been at my desk since 5am, and I won't finish my working day until around 7pm tonight, looking at my diary). Our purpose is the education of young adults - helping them to grow & develop as people with mature critical analytical skills and knowledge, to become the next generation of professional knowledge workers. You need them to engage with the process wholeheartedly and with a touch of yes - humility - that they need the knowledge, skills, and approaches that academics can help them develop. That undergrads know less than their tutors and have much to learn.

Instead of encouraging an attitude which comes across (frankly) as "gimme gimme" in a minority of students.

We had one tutor fuck up our exam. She had been truly awful all through the semester - she'd given us topics each week and had us present our understanding to each other (which was truly bizarre for our discipline). Not once did she actually teach us anything or help/correct our presentations. She sat in class doing separate work or on her phone.

We had an essay due to be marked and returned to us three weeks before the exam that would basically give us a good indication if what we were doing was correct and obviously the feedback would help us in the exam. This happened in all of our other modules and it was extremely helpful.

She didn't return our essays until two weeks after the exam. When we complained she said she was on holiday and forgot to reassign another marker in her absence. We complained to the SU who said her behaviour was unacceptable and urged us to take he complaint higher. We did so as a group and nothing more came of it. Our marks were never adjusted and we never received an apology.

What students and their parents seem to forget is that, in the vast majority of cases, they haven't yet paid a penny in fees!

I'm constantly staggered by the amount who genuinely seem to think they have actually coughed up £9k already!

But that doesn't matter, Seek. They have the debt.

Which they may or may not pay us back for, yes.

I do think people forget that all their lives a lot of these people have been told they should only measure their self worth and standing in society by their exams results.

In that case it would be pretty bad if the exam was ruined because of something that wasn't your fault.

Indeed SeekEvery.

Thinking more about this "customer" thing - as I said, it may look like a customer service from the outside, but education is about relationships, and the development of the individual. And whereas in a customer service situation, it's an exchange of equals, in education, this is not the case. We do a lot to bring students with us in our research (I often teach modules around the current book I'm writing, and get my students engaged in quite high-level critical research questions), but ultimately, students know less than their tutors, have less experience, and need to be taken through learning experiences. They need to participate wholehearrtedly and openly.

Most of them do: my experience of students is that they are smart, and ambitious, and interesting people. But the atmosphere in which they participate, is increasingly working against the efficacy of the process of learning - which CANNOT be reduced to the model of cash nexus or financial exchange.

And the attitudes of parents such as on this thread who insist that it's a customer service actually contribute to the damage that's being done to their children's chances of getting the most out of their education.

I also think the dynamics have changed with people paying for their degrees. When it was state provided it was arguable unis were answerable to the state, but this is no longer the case. Every person in that uni is personally paying to be there, they are paying for a service level and a product and they are there and paying through choice.,and I am slightly appalled at the academics attitude towards not recognising that.

This is not state funded education. These are people paying out their own pockets for a service.and as such the unvitersity has a responsibility to be answerable to those students if they fail to provide the service they have charged them handsomely for.

A university is a business now, they charge individual clients for their services and as such should be answerable if they fail to provide those services as required.

To repeat: they're NOT paying out of their own pocket! Taxpayers fund student loans. We are all still paying for university education for our young people. As we should be.

I think the tears just show a lack of trust in the university and an understanding of how things work. I think at that age I would have had faith in the fact that the university and department wouldn't want students to do badly because an admin mistake and also the external examiners would make sure things are fair. I would also have taken comfort from the fact that everyone would be in the same boat. It doesn't surprise me that they were some tears but it really surprises me if the "entire room" were in tears.

Goats we certainly are paying out of our pockets, in the same way you are paying for your house; via a loan. The fact that some people don't take student loan and just pay upfront for their tuition should show you that you do pay out of pocket for your tuition (most just take a loan out). If you are still paying student loan, that's you paying your debt back , not mine ! Otherwise you'd have received a letter informing you that fees had risen to £9k and so you now have a lot more to pay (assuming your fees were

When it was state provided it was arguable unis were answerable to the state, but this is no longer the case

Universities are more answerable to the state than they ever have been. The audit culture in HE has intensified massively in the last decade, and applies to teaching and administrative processes as well as research. The student loans system is, after all, still underpinned by the taxpayer, to the extent that many claim the current funding model is unsustainable.

KidLorneRoll education is not a service. It may look like it from the outside, but it is not a service industry.

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.

We have not decided to charge them - we get the same money we always did, but now the government have decided that the students will have to pay back all of it.

You cannot buy university level understanding like a 'product' - I can't package it up and give it to you. And to be fair, if I tried to - if I said, right, sit down for three years and I will tell you everything I know and exactly how to parrot it back to me - the students would really hate it!

It will either be a repeat exam or they will lower the passmark.

artemisia, I'd rather have condolences about having to deal with people like you, than with people like my students!

It is such utter bollocks that students are fragile flowers the likes of which were never seen in your day or my day. It's just not true. The people who believe this should speak to the retired academics who will tell you so.

In 1890, men taking the maths tripos at Cambridge threw their toys out of the pram, not even because the exam was unfair or badly run, but because a woman scored more highly than they did. I cannot see my students today doing that.

When I was an undergrad, people wrote to the papers and kicked up a stink - not because the exam was unfair or badly run, but because one of the questions didn't satisfy some students' ideas of the 'correct' level of grandeur for the topic. No, really. They objected to an exam question being set and it made the papers.

I think a 21 year old who is upset by this situation is behaving perfectly normally. OP, I wish her all the best.

Goats said "education is about relationships, and the development of the individual. And whereas in a customer service situation, it's an exchange of equals, in education, this is not the case."

My friend is a psychiatrist and does a lot of counselling. He would say that in his profession, it's also about relationships and the development of the individual. Those who visit him are called clients or patients but they're customers. They pay a fee, he provides a service.

The fact that one is paid upfront and one is not, doesn't mean they aren't customers in one form or another. Universities operate more like businesses now then they ever have done, in terms of admin and management staff, shed loads of marketing. You can't have it both ways.

You can't have it both ways

Can't speak for everywhere, but we have less admin staff than ever. We do a lot of our own. Yes, we have to market - we didn't choose to, we'd rather not, we're not trained to, but we can't not.

Your friend the psychiatrist - yes, he provides a service in that he's there, he can listen, he can offer his expertise - but he cannot make people be happy, any more than I can make them clever, without their input.

Suppose he has a patient who rarely shows up to sessions, won't speak, asks for different appointments from those available, because his part time job makes them awkward, or he slept through his alarm.

Suppose that patient's fees are paid by the taxpayer (including your friend), though the patient will have to pay back the debt if he's ever happy enough to earn the money to do so.

Suppose that patient complains that he doesn't think the facilities at your friend's practice are fun enough, the coffee isn't nice, the chairs are a bit crap.

Suppose the patient, after 3 years of therapy which he may or may not pay for later, for which he rarely turned up and seldom contributed, then gets to affect your friend's professional standing by filling out an online survey about how 'satisfied' he feels with the whole process.

Then you have yourself a more workable analogy.

Suppose the patient, after 3 years of therapy which he may or may not pay for later, for which he rarely turned up and seldom contributed, then gets to affect your friend's professional standing by filling out an online survey about how 'satisfied' he feels with the whole process.

Yes, and not just professional standing, but their job itself. My university is currently revising its redundancy procedures, in part so that it can easily close courses that do not have high student satisfaction. In recent years, on the course I teach, dissatisfaction has been expressed on evaluation forms because: the module was "difficult"; a member of staff returning from maternity leave did not put sufficient effort into varying the outfits she wore; the seminar tutor questioned students individually on the seminar preparation they were supposed to have undertaken (but they hadn't and were therefore embarrassed - the tutor should have been "sacked" for this according to one student). Add to this that the Students Union is encouraging students to fill in an online evaluation of module tutors that includes a rating for how "hot" they are. Actually, I can think of very few businesses where staff's livelihoods and professional standing could be affected in this way.

yy Lord Rothermere on my recent feedback which was passed down to me by my HoD and therefore, I must assume, screened, I was castigated by three students for having dragged myself back to teach an important lecture after a week of illness where I lost my voice with 'a very high pitched squeaky voice' which 'was alarming'. [sceptical]

[hmmm] even