To expect university students to engage with their studies?

[PissedOffProf]

User name changed because I don't want to totally out myself.

I am a lecturer in a management department at a mid-level UK university. I have tons of experience in teaching, love my job, am nice to students and go out of my way to help them with their learning.

Increasingly, however, I am faced with classrooms of blank faces. Students who clearly have zero interest in their studies. Students who never prepare for their tutorials and have nothing to say. Students who are disruptive in class. Students who watch videos on their phones or do online shopping instead of engaging in classroom activities. Students who do not seem to have any respect for each other as they ignore the others when they speak. Students who, in the end, deliver mediocre work with zero critical thinking or creativity.

AIBU to ask why people decide to get tens of thousands of pounds in debt to spend three years of their lives being bored to death?

@shadylady53 this happened to me too! I got pulled up for being 'too harsh' with final year students.

@sushisuperstar it’s beyond ridiculous isn’t it?

I’ve just remembered though, that whilst I was doing my MA they considered banning feedback due to the fact that students on the exact same course at a different university complained that they found feedback too upsetting and it made some of them suicidal. Feedback was actually banned at that university at the end. My cohort was asked if we wanted feedback to be banned. We all vehemently said absolutely not, we were paying twelve grand to get better at what we did, not have our egos massaged. Tutors on our course worked at the other place too. Feedback was never, ever harsh just honest.

How many MNers do you think would be absolutely happy with an offspring with reasonable A-levels announcing that they don't think uni is for them?)

I pleaded with my 2 dc not to go to university. They got the required A level grades but neither are interested in academic work especially with a big bill at the end of it.
However they insisted on going ‘because all my friends are going”.
A waste of their time and money, and more to the point wasting the time of the people trying to teach them.

I always used to spend lots of time explaining what wasn't quite right, why, and how to make it better next time. I was pulled up for giving too much feedback (we have loads of students and I admit I spend much time on giving feedback). But then you get the ones that are bothered wanting it explained anyway. My specialism is quite fashionable at the moment and has been for a while so student number are high, quality is low. I'd rather have less students if I'm being honest but ones that were bothered so I could spend time with them. Even if it meant a pay cut, I think its low paid considering what you have to do to get in anyway. Now the sector is more like an assembly line as others have said.

But it a nutshell there's this expectation of passing now that we have to acquiesce to as lecturers, certainly the job is not what I was led to believe it was when I did my PhD. When I was there we had exams all the way through, now exams are too 'stressful'.

Quite often students send emails not even addressing the recipient. How are they meant to communicate with employers? Fair enough if you want to treat us with disrespect, whatever, but that doesn't cut the mustard in a job application.

If I had my time again I wouldn't have touched academia with a bargepole as it is hard to get out (when you are located in my field anyway). However there are still some students who are driven, generally mature ones IME. There the ones that still make the job rewarding sometimes.

But how could the students learn if feedback was banned? That's bonkers!

or Toby Young who didn't get the grades for Oxford but still got in because his dad rang the admissions officer

I thought what happened was Toby Young didn’t get the grades for Oxford but the university mistakenly sent him an offer which they then retracted.
His father said if the university had made a mistake then that was their fault and having given Toby an offer, albeit wrongly, they must stand by it.
Not sure if the Youngs or the university sought legal advice but whatever, he got his place.

Then with all due respect Chemenger you are part of the problem. DS did his year in industry, went back aced his finals coming out with honours. He is now very successful in his profession. I am just glad his tutor cared enough to come up with a solution.

Justasking you're wrong. Chemenger is correct - the stringencies of the new data protection laws mean that we cannot discuss an adult with another adult, without that first adult's written permission.

Your post offers evidence about what both Chemenger and I have been saying about parents on MN - that they will tell highly experienced, caring & knowledgeable academics that they're wrong.

We're not wrong on this one. Ask your family solicitor, or ask your DS's university Registrar (Registrars oversee university's legal compliance).

Idk, I’m 26 and study full time (undergrad). I also work full time (flexibly) for a large multi nat and care for an elderly relative.

I try to engage with the course (very good grades) but often I either don’t go to the sessions or I mentally switch off throughout them as often I’ve barely slept!

Yes ‘In an ideal world’ I would have loads of time to engage and focus- I’d love that but it’s not possible. I do uni this way or I don’t do it!

I had a lecturer this year tell us ‘If you’re 5 minutes late don’t bother coming’ and ‘if you miss a class you better have a good excuse’ - I went to her after the lecture and said ‘I won’t be in many of your sessions as uni is currently my third highest priority but I know that attendance doesn’t factor into grades at this uni so I’ll do my best’ 😬

No clue @sushisuperstar, it made no sense to me either. I feel I didn’t get enough feedback! That cohort said that they wanted marks only, no written or verbal feedback because it wasn’t helpful. Insane.

This thread has inspired me to look again at HE to see if I can find a way to finish my degree. Sadly my previous completion credits are now so old they don't count anymore (which is a blow!). However I think I have found a potential route by doing a HND - as there's much more choice for distance learning with these - and then applying to complete a top-up year to gain an honours degree. The top-up years seem to be more flexible with distance learning as well.

It's a couple of years away yet, as I'm in the middle of a professional qualification at the moment, and work are due to sponsor me through the next stage of it in 2020. Maybe 2021 entry?? Fingers crossed!

Sorry, everyone. I disappeared because the work got the best of me. I'll try to post some replies, if time allows today.

MrDarcyWillBeMine, I understand that students' personal circumstances can be difficult. But the problem is not that one or two or even three students in a tutorial of 20 are disengaged because they are tired due to work and caring responsibilities. 18 out of the 20 students will be disengaged. And there is not way that all 18 have been up all night with a grandma with dementia or something similar.

In addition to this, would you be disengaged from your work because you are tired? You yourself state that your university studies are your third priority. How do you expect your lecturers to work with you? Also please remember that your lecturers are also alive people, most of them work tons of overtime and have caring responsibilities of their own. I personally have children and when they were little, I spent many a day fighting to stay engaged after a completely sleepless night (years of sleepless nights, in fact). I also have a disabled relative and have to take significant chunks of my time every year to care for her. I am not being dismissive of your situation, just trying to say that disengagement is perhaps not the best answer.

Ugh, I am not being clear because I am in a hurry. When I asked "would you be disengaged from your work", I meant the workplace, not the university.

I really don't mean to sound harsh or dismissive. I do understand that in cases like yours, MrDarcyWillBeMine, disengagement is largely due to wider structural problems such as lack of availability of flexible part-time degrees, the idiotic fee system that we have, the fact that it is impossible to obtain any kind of meaningful support for people who require care, and on and on and on. And the universities adjust to this system largely by dumbing down degrees. Students can't engage, universities create teaching and assessment system that do not require actual knowledge. We are all participating in this farce.

But god it is frustrating that when I am prepared for the tutorial after having slept for 4 hours a night for a week, and worked from dawn till way past midnight (life is no garden walk for a full-time working mother) and my students, most of whom have no jobs or care responsibilities whatsoever, cannot be arsed.

ShadyLady53, yes, I too really resent how we all have to be complicit in this fakery. Fake news, fake degrees .... The capitalist system is geared towards obtaining the most profit from the least product/service. It will sell you fake goods and services if it can because they are less costly to make.

Do you find gap year students are more appreciative of the course?

I picked something I loved for my degree. The thing was, my University had so many mandatory breadth requirements that I barely got to take the classes I was interested in!

For classes where I was interested in the subject matter, I did all the class work and more. Attended every lecture, every seminar, went to my Previous office hours to get further depth... And I achievigreat results in these modules.

In the mandatory classes in which I had no interest? I went maybe 50% of the time. I didn't like the material, wasn't good at the subject (why would a Linguistics major be required to take Computer Science and expect to achieve good results?), and didn't care if my grades were shit because my 90+ average in my Linguistics classes would even out the classes that I barely passed.

In the mandatory classes in which I had no interest? I went maybe 50% of the time. I didn't like the material, wasn't good at the subject (why would a Linguistics major be required to take Computer Science and expect to achieve good results?), and didn't care if my grades were shit because my 90+ average in my Linguistics classes would even out the classes that I barely passed.

So can I just opt out of the mandatory but not interesting bits of my job? Because I have a tonne of admin tasks I didn’t go into HE to do. And, frankly, I don’t like teaching about X and Y (because I went in to it to teach my specialist area, Z). So maybe I’ll just not bother with them. After all, I do a really good job when I teach Z so that makes up for only turning up 50% of the time and not having prepared anything when I do.

Maybe there is a good reason for having breadth requirements and being able to show that you can work at something even when you find it boring.

Do you find gap year students are more appreciative of the course?

No. In some cases the students who’ve been on a extended holiday or (worse) been out acting the white saviour as a voluntourist are worse than the ones who’ve come straight from school.

What I do find makes the difference is age and experience (by and large). Give me a mature student who has been in the workplace (or raised a family) and is motivated to get a degree any day. I’ve taught on programme where all the students were from non-traditional backgrounds for HE (and usually over 25) and the greater levels of effort and motivation make such a difference, even where the academic skills may be lacking. I’ve never resented helping a motivated student who is trying but struggling; I do resent helping a student (however bright) who has put no effort in and expects me to tell them what to put in their essay.

I have mostly taught postgrads and they are generally great. I do have to say I work at a university that attracts a lot of international students, and usually there are more international than British postgrads. Most have come over because they have a genuine interest in the subject area, and many have worked for a couple of years before deciding they want to pursue a postgraduate degree.
That is not to say they're all academically gifted, and there are some significant issues with some students' ability to speak/write English at a sufficiently high level. However, they are generally engaged, and the group discussions are usually lively.

I have, however, also taught 1st year undergrads, and the difference between those who want to be there and those who see 'uni' as a rite of passage is clear as day. Initially I would often try to pair up the more engaged students with some of their less engaged classmates in group exercises in the hope that their enthusiasm would rub off on the others. I gave up on that after a few weeks, however, as it mostly just seemed to demoralise the more enthusiastic/better prepared students. After that I'd pair up the enthusiastic ones with each other, so they could at least have an interesting and informed discussion.

Having just left a huge northern university through the latest round of job cuts, I can say with great certainty that the current model of university education, from funding, to recruitment, teaching and graduate employment is completely unsustainable.

Less people, young and mature students, are not seeing university as a viable or attractive prospect any longer. It's too expensive, both in fees and accommodation, which means a miserable time is had for not much gain career wise as employers value experience over education more and more.

Universities therefore are lowering the bar and accepting any applicant, irrespective of academic suitability. Open days are complete sales pitches, bribes are being offered in the form of starter grants.

What you are left with is uninterested, bored, disruptive students who have no hope in keeping up academically .

Overall achievement and grades then fall accross the board, NSS scores are poor, and the whole cycle of trying to recruite students starts again. It gets more difficult every year.

Eventually universities are going to have to admit defeat, downscale their numbers and admission targets and value quality over quantity.

Apprenticeship degrees seem to be proving popular, combining work experience with education. Maybe that is where the future lies.

'Because I have a tonne of admin tasks I didn’t go into HE to do'

Honestly @Crustaceans I have found my people within this thread.

Yes, twelve years of study and work experience to be bombarded with admin which I am hopeless at and having emails asking me to locate a map to an exam. Admin tasks are increasingly getting filtered over the academics. Our admin were wonderful, but increasingly I am finding I am having to juggle complex admin stuff student demands, pointless meetings, and research which I am contracted to do but there is simply no time to do it.

Every initiative in our university involves more academics’ time, because it seems that is both without value, due to our vague job descriptions, and infinitely elastic. So much tedious admin intended almost purely to generate data that can be audited and used as a stick to beat us.

I am a teacher at a sixth form college and feel much as you do. The students pick my subject because it 'facilitates' entrance to their desired subject at uni and then look at me askance if I expect them to read (it's literature ffs!). I do have some lovely, engaged students too but the blank faces staring at me does often get me down.

I’m not in the system, but curious about how many of these students with little motivation or interest in the subject actually graduate. I know a lot of first year students drop out, are the cohort for 2nd on better or do good students drop out?

For me personally it was because the reason course was so much more boring than I thought it would be. I wanted the degree, in accountancy, but I was bored out of my mind.

I often sat there with a blank face, if I went at all. I did however, read the materials and I got a 2:1. I probably could have got higher had a had a passion for the subject. I was 17 when I chose my university and the course, after a presentation by the university at college. I love maths but wanted a ‘trade’ and thought accountancy would be the best of both worlds. It wasn’t. But I wasn’t going to quit the degree so I pushed through.

I’m currently half way through a degree as a mature student.
It is a local Uni and all of the other students live Iocally.
I work 2 jobs and am very excited at the prospect that now my children are older that I can actually pursue an education.
I live the lectures and want to gain as much as I can.
The other students sit pissed off and eye rolling while bemoaning anything and everything as if it’s all one great hardship. Instead of a PRIVILEGE.
None of them have a job outside Uni and most days it’s like being on the Jeremy Kyle show with the appalling behaviour of some students.
I do not find I’m marked easily though, I work damned hard and am currently at a first level though I may find that hard to sustain and would be very proud to finish with a respectable 2.1