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?

Is it really that baffling? I think it's mostly down to the fact it's become very difficult to get a well paid, reasonably interesting job without a degree. Most people don't love their jobs, most people don't have a passion for a particular academic subject. So most people picked their favourite subject, or the one they were best at, or one they thought would lead to good career options.. I don't know anyone who went to university purely for the love of learning the subject. Even now as someone who loves working in research.. I'm good at it and I find it interesting, but "passion" is a bit of an overstatement.

I taught in a Scandinavian University where active participation is a requirement to pass the seminar part of the course. Students who didn't say anything had to do it again

This is why I stopped teaching in 'normal' universities. I couldn't stand the apathy any more.

@PissedOffProf if I could have got the job that I'm in now without going to uni I absolutely would have. Unfortunately that's not an option and a degree and post grad degree are absolute requirements for entry to my profession. Agree it's an institutional problem, but uni was always a means to an end for me and I managed to do (very well) with minimal engagement

University tutor in an Arts related subject here. YADNBU.

I love my job but at times I feel it’s completely pointless. The current cohort seem to have chosen university to completely avoid the “real” world.

80% (genuinely) of them don’t put in the work then become totally hysterical the week before major assessments and claim extenuating circumstances due to mental health problems. The students with genuine mental health struggles do everything they can to attend lectures/seminars/tutorials and get through assessments without drawing any attention to themselves. I’ve often seen the students who have been hysterical with me in a tutorial only an hour before saying the stress of the assessment is making them ill and they can’t possibly think straight out dressed up to the nines completely bladdered in the SU Bar. It’s a small campus! “Sorry Shady, I’m so sick today I can barely lift my head off the pillow. I can’t possibly make seminar today.” Then I see them sharing a pizza with a gang of mates, laughing their heads off at lunch.

I’m not a senior lecturer and don’t design the policies so there is little I can do.

The powers that be don’t enforce discipline because they need to retain students for £££.

Today I’ve worked for 90 minutes total due to students not turning up. My friend’s back home are laughing saying “I wish I got paid to do nothing all day”.

But I didn’t train for and choose this career to sit on my bum doing nothing all day. I’m passionate about my subject and wish my students were too.

Rogue fucking apostrophe 😡

@chemenger

Oh god it took me quite a while to realise your post was sarcastic, some people do seem to expect university lecturers to act like court jesters, babysitters and life coaches for their students.

So I studied Scots law. I loved certain classes, criminal, family, IP law and would talk in my tutorials. However then it came to ones such as business and contract law and I hated them but I had to do them. So I couldn’t be passionate and talk about them as I didn’t understand them or like them. Also with us we had 1 tutorial once a fortnight so it’s not like we were building rapport with our tutors every time was like starting anew when everyone is a bit awkward and shy.

When we had amazing lecturers who engaged with us it was great. When we had ones who would just read slides in lectures it was hellish. I could do that at home. The tutorials at least were questions you had to answer.

However still ended up with a 2:1 as I was able to pick my dissertation topic and my classes in 4th year so I picked the ones I enjoyed.

So maybe your class is a mandatory one? Also I graduated 5 years ago but I doubt it would change that much. I never had a tutorial were people sat in silence and if you hadn’t done the work you were asked to leave.

It's really sad to read this. I dropped out of my degree years ago - combination of MH issues and financial hardship. I completed two years and always said I'd go back and finish eventually. The problem being that as the years have gone on, job, mortgage and bills all mean that FT HE is a non-starter. Added to that is the fact that fees are so expensive now that it seems like an extreme luxury to spend so much money on a non-essential as it wouldn't make a huge difference to my employment prospects in my field. I have professional qualifications that I have funded myself, which are equivalent to any 'weight' a degree would add.

It makes me wish there was a cheaper option for 'mature' students (or whatever we're supposed to be called these days!) who really do want to learn and can only go PT. I keep looking at distance courses but the OU is so expensive. I wish there was a PAYG option like in the States.

OP I think management and my subject, engineering, both suffer partly because they are vocational. So often parents steer their children towards a degree with a clear outcome, rather than encouraging them to pursue what they are interested in. Students are also very aware of things like salary outcomes for different degree programmes. I am really fascinated by my discipline but I could not imagine studying it for years without being really interested. I talk to first years who are quite clear about the fact they are doing engineering because it is highly valued by the big 4 accountancy firms and my heart sinks.

I think my most recent low point was being compelled to go to a compulsory training session where an student intern explained how to use powerpoint, including how to use bullet points and how to make slides more interesting by introducing library pictures. Utterly soul destroying. When asked what picture I should use to illustrate the principles of competing chemical reactions and their thermodynamics she seemed a little stumped. She was shocked by the idea that actually it might be quite important to put lots of equations on slides without the distraction of pictures in the background, because, you know, they are important, have lots of fiddly little bits, and I might want to talk about where they come from and what they mean (which the students will, of course, say is "reading from the slide").

I realise I forgot to say in the original post that while you must never read from a slide you must also never say anything that isn't on the slide because otherwise students who haven't come to the lecture won't know what you said.

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?

From speaking to my own students, often it's because they can't bear to disappoint or challenge their parents by refusing to go.

(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?)

And because they believe their parents/teachers when they tell them that university is vital, that it's a crucial part of their growing up, that it will open the world to them.

Also, they choose programmes they know very little about (how could they?) according to what their parents or their particular school had decided is the right way to get on in the world.

I am probably luckier than you because I teach small subjects that possibly don't meet with quite as much parental approval. But with that of course goes the constant fear that my modules won't recruit and I'll be out on my ear. The knowledge, at the age of 55, that I will probably never get a fulltime post. The sinking feeling when my pension statement drops through the door. But I do, on the whole, have nice students.

I wonder if, and I don't mean to be rude, perhaps the issue is your subject? I seem to remember that the management students at my uni were not the most academic. They were very much doers rather than thinkers and they were there to tick a box on graduate scheme applications not to engage with theory.

ShadyLady53, it's hard to believe that this is happening in the Arts. Who would want to do an Arts degree if they were not interested in it? It's not like it automatically leads to an incredibly lucrative career.

Lyricallie, yes, some classes will be more interesting than others. We don't expect everyone to be passionate about everything. It would be nice, however, to have a consistent level of basic civility and preparation.

ResistanceIsNecessary, this situation pisses me off even more than the disengaged students. I hate the fees and how they hit the mature and part time students the most. Charging for higher education is bonkers. No civilised society can exist without educated people. Higher education is a pubic good and has to be financed by the society as a whole.

And I love mature students. They are usually the ones who know where they are and why they are there.

@corythatwas

I think you’re right. My eldest is only 8 and already we’ve been talking about she will leave school at 18 and go to Adult School (university) to learn for her job. It’s never really entered my thoughts that she will leave after compulsory school and not go to uni. I guess I just thought she would follow what I’ve done. I went straight to uni after school and even now I’m carrying on my education at 34 doing a MSc.

chemenger Compulsory university training courses! My favourite! Especially those health and safety ones that say we have to take a break every couple of hours or something. What will they think of next? :)

futuredayspast, you speak the truth that my philosophically and socialist-minded self tries to block out.

corythatwas, yep, some of them actually say that they are doing the degree because their parents want it. It's grim. I have promised myself that I will not be forcing university or any kind of degree onto my children.

to be perfectly honest, blank faces would be a step up for me.

I tended to get looks of such hostility and disgust that I would try to avoid looking at the students so I could just get through the lecture.

Now I teach in labs and the same students are so very different in that context. Personable funny and at least passingly interested in whats going on.

My solution is stop lectures and do all labs...this suggestion has not been popular with colleagues though.

I once taught PE students because they were forced to take a history module. I don't even know why PE students would be at university - they certainly didn't know why they were there.

Shallishanti123, both me and my husband have PhDs. It was always expected of me that I would go to University just like the rest of my family. It was a lucky coincidence that I was academically minded and organically fit into this life plan.

I do discuss university with my own children who are still young and do present it to them as a natural option. However, I also say to them that it's an option, that they can also decide to do something else.

M3lon, yikes, this sounds ghastly.

As my username suggests I have namechanged for this post (could be outing).

I'm at university currently (not a mature student). I've never had the experience of ideas whizzing around a room, everyone massively engaged. I had a seminar today and it was awful. No-one wanted to speak, it was like pulling teeth for the PhD student taking the class. That's been my experience of seminars ever since I went, and I'm a dual honours student so it's not limited to just one subject.

I think part of the problem for me is (at least where I am) one of my subjects only requires lectures so there's no real interaction between lecturers and students and not all that much between students. I'd struggle to name most of the people on my course, honestly.

I try to engage as much as possible but it's hard sometimes. A lot of the content in one of my subjects is exactly the same as last year. Some of it is the same as what I studied at A-level. I'm not doing topics I'm passionate about because most of my modules this semester are compulsory, although I do enjoy going through them to find something I'm genuinely interested in. Some of my lecturers aren't great either - I have one who just reads off notes for an hour and it's really impossible to engage with that.

On the other hand, I completely understand where you're coming from OP. To be honest, I think universities have made it too easy to skip lectures - all of mine have the slides online and they're audio recorded. There's minimal registration for attendance so people don't have to go. For a lot of my lecturers, they're fighting an uphill battle. One of my lectures last year, just before Christmas, was attended by 6 people, including me, out of the whole year. It's really awful. I don't know what the solution is.

Have to say my 3 dc come home from college full of enthuasism about what theyre learning. Two sound liike they are having interesting debates within lectures which they continue on with us over the weekends. One is doing a course that l thought would be tedious but he loves it.
Me? I went to university 40 years ago and didn't listen to a thing as too busy socialising and dossing around. Swotted like mad at each exam and have been totally engrossed in my teaching career since. So its not just the present generation!!!

I am a very tired student... those pesky lecturers and their slides This thread has made me laugh (thankyou chemenger!! ) because its so absolutely true.

Im a mature student and the mindset of the kids (I call them kids for a reason even though I am not much older than them at all) absolutely baffles me. There is still the mindset that thou shalt go to university otherwise you will never get a job. Thats not true, but watching first years, once they get past the initial euphoria of 'yay! were in uni now! no one can tell us what to do and we are going to go to the bar, take selfies together, add each other on social networks, always be brilliant and attend lectures, we will all get firsts and be friends forever!' the lustre fades a little and reality kicks in.

From day one you can see who wants to be there, who is there because they got the points needed- mummy and daddy said it was a good choice and those who have such an over-inflated opinion of themselves they truly believe they can do it without putting effort in.

Christmas seems to cull the weakest, but even a couple of years down the line it is amazing to see how little they seem to grasp about what it is they are doing in a degree- this goes for any course. They still expect to be spoon-fed information that is only relevant to exams. The idea that they might have to read outside of class, or come in having read ahead, or prepared the work theyve been asked to do seems alien.

If it pisses me off, I cant imagine how the lecturers feel. I have wonderful lecturers, who go to great lengths to explain and help. However, the kids completely ignore this. First year, we encountered a topic in one of the modules that required actual thinking, not just shoving the handout/phone under the desk and parroting an answer whilst pretending you knew it all along! Kids were in uproar- bad lecturer, cant teach... actually started a petition to oust the lecturer because they didnt understand.

Actually, it was simply a new concept that wasnt being spoon fed and it required students to think in a different way about the subject than they would have before. I didnt grasp it immediately- instead of bitching I went to the lecturer and she spent a great deal of time explaining it to me until I did. Lovely lady who has all the time in the world for anyone bothers to ask. They didnt bother, simply complained that it wasnt fair (shades of Kevin and Perry).

I still cant get my head round the 'is this in the exam?' thing. One of the kids recently had the balls to ask not to do the reading and ask for the lecturers revision notes as they felt they learned best that way (book was too tricky). Of course we all want to know whats in the exam but if you want to use your bloody degree you might actually have to know more than six answers on one bloody module!

There really seems to be this delusion that they are still in school and it can all be smoothed over if their mum writes a note in.

Its really insulting to me as a student who actually wants to study and I imagine its horrible for the lecturers.

I wont even start on the phone thing... its beyond rude and they arent even subtle anymore.

I am probably lucky in that I come from a family which is fairly evenly split between university and manual work, while dh's family have been either actors or salesmen/other non-professions, so my dc can see that everything is valued equally as long as you do it to the best of your ability. My own PhD is in a very traditional, niche Humanities subject.

So far, dd is at drama school and ds is hoping to get an apprenticeship as a plumber or similar. Out of my nephews/nieces, one is a carpenter, two have office jobs, one is at conservatoire, and one is thinking of doing STEM at university.

I love students but most of all I love students over 23, who have seen a little bit of life. Almost all of them, in my experience call the younger students "kids" and describe them as you have, Bananas. Maybe we should ban young people from going straight to university from school.

Bring back national service! (not serious, just in case anyone doesn't twig).

I usually do force myself to contribute in tutorials but I’m always worried I’ll stammer or say something stupid (I was much worse in school though!). When tutorial participation contributed to our grade I found I talked a lot more-the fear of doing badly >the fear of saying stuff wrong. Tbf most of the people in my tutorials are very talkative and confident so there isn’t much space to get a word in anyway.
I do feel bad for tutors when no one contributes-it is not their job to teach us.