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?

many of our students are on nursing and midwifery courses

they didn't go to university because they are precious and entitled: they are there because the government now insists that you have to be a degree for a job which has changed and become more challenging over the years- and for which hospitals no longer have the resources to do the training

if they dropped out, we wouldn't suddenly have solved the problems of universities: we would just be without nurses and midwives

corythatwas vocational degrees are somewhat different - they tend to need to be more lecturer led by their nature, and to involve work placement/ shadowing.

Aren't apprenticeships coming back in though? Given the shortage, physical demands and comparatively low salary for nurses I think they should be paid during their studies in an apprenticeship model, not have to take out loans to fund nursing degrees!

You do not need a degree to do most jobs! It is thinking like this that has led to the mess that we have seen described up thread.

There is a perfectly reasonable education system offered up to the age of 18, which I imagine teaches people to read, write and add up. Businesses, as someone has ridiculously suggested, do not need to do this: schools do this.

However, if we continue to dilute degrees, there will come a day when teachers will be only able to pass on limited knowledge, as that will be all that they have obtained and that will progressively become worse.

That is not the case-yet-and so schools provide as much education as most people need.

I still say 10% is all that is needed at university-their fees paid whether their parents are billionaires or street cleaners. If not, we will have people in positions-doctors, teachers, social workers, engineers, who are simply not fit to have them.

Do you fancy driving over a bridge that has been stress tested by one the students described earlier in this thread or being operated on by someone who only learned enough to scrape a pass? That, by natural extension, is what we are on course for.

The Scottish system looks a bit better, in the sense that you have a bit of time before you commit to your degree subject, so perhaps less likely to make a wrong choice.

aconcert you are doing a huge disservice to the degrees you mention. Many (if not all) a regulated by professional bodies who monitor fitness to practice. But only do they need to pass the university element they need to prove they are fit to practice.

It's not as simple as removing tuition fees. The reasons the number of working class people attending university is lower than middle class people is not because of the introduction of tution fees. There are wider, deep rooted reasons behind this.
Reducing the number of university places would only result in disadvantaged, non-traditional students missing out.

who is going to insist that businesses take on the whole burden of training them that they used to perform? .... they want universities to do the job of separating the grain from the chaff rather than take the risk of taking on someone who turns out to be not very capable

In the past, a 15/16 yr old school leaver would be taken on as an office junior, to do the filing, lick stamps, make tea, whatever needed doing. The wheat would soon be sorted from the chaff. The ones who were bright, reliable and showed initiative would get opportunities to work their way up.

Or if you did a secretarial course post-16 you could go in at 17-18 at a slightly higher level, and progress. Starting as a secretary used to be the career path for women wanting to work in production at the bbc.Office work also used to be a way of getting experience of a variety of industries/workplaces if you didn't know what you wanted to do.

Technology has unfortunately done away with a lot of those junior roles, and young people don't come into the jobs market at 16 any more. But I think a lot of young people would benefit more from getting into the workplace at 16 rather than staying in education to 18 or 21.

@Constanza. I totally disagree.

Working class children take on enormous loans-loand that they tend to be stuck with, as there is no-one in the family to help them.

Under my proposal, if a bright working class child gets top grades, then off he goes-with his tuition fees and a full grant paid. All he needs to do is get those grades.

He does not need to have to worry about money which, at the moment, stops many bright working class children from going further.

If a billionaire's child does the same, then he too gets tuition fees and a full grant paid. All he needs to do is get those grades.

The downside-or in my opinion, the upside- of all this is that only 10% or so go but no child needs parental approval, parental fund, all they need is the grades and that benefits clever working class children. All they need to prove is that their grades are amongst the top 10% in the land.

The other 90% get their education in school. We do not need 40% at university.

Bizarre of some posters to suggest that those businesses have to provide education for school leavers. they may train them up in the job and that is to be expected/desired but if they are having to teach them to read, write and add up, then that is a national scandal.

If employers stopped their lazy insistence on 2.1 degrees quite a lot of problems in universities would be reduced. In my opinion.

This is so depressing. My first two DS speak fondly of uni. and most lecturers, mind you some lecturers did not turn up every time, one turned up stoned every time makes for funny stories looking back, not so much at the time.

Now DS 3 is going I hope he will have some good lecturers and have the nouse to study alone if he does not. The path he has chosen a degree is a must.

aconcert it's really not that simple.
Many young people from working class backgrounds get the grades for top universities but still don't end up applying or attending them. They still end up going to university in many cases but they attend low tariff, lower ranking universities. Money is not the major factor in that decision.

If you revert to an elite system where only 10% of the population attend university I guarantee that working class, non traditional students will miss out.

There would also be no room for the use of contextual data in this system which again disadvantages first generation students and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

As a student myself, I find it so very difficult to engage as we are mostly using video conferencing with at least 3 large partner campuses plus a handful of independents beaming in from Orkney etc.

Of course it's better than nothing but it's really hard to take part as much as you want to.

It is really bad IME.

I used to love teaching. With the way things have went I sorely wished I had taken a different path (I'm finding it hard to get out of academia). The students who do know what it is to work and contribute bring relief though. God help you if you don't pass them all either....

When I did my degree there was none of this bum wiping and mitigating circumstances for having a cold you know? Once I had a student email me asking with bus to get to the exam location... 🥴

obviously not all students are incompetent but I'd say the majority are. It is true that anyone can get a degree - there's always going to be some place that will take you. And it's going the same way now with the post grad system also. For example the last place I worked at brought the entry requirement down to a 2.2 degree.

I come at this from a different perspective as I am one of those students who recently graduated with my undergraduate degree, masters and I am now second year of a PhD.

I think it really depends on the student and their life experience. When I was in college doing my HND, all the students in class were the way you described. I just think they never knew what hard work was as they most likely never had a job in their lives. I came from working in retailing and felt college was far easier than the challenges you face in the workplace.

In university, I loved it! I found my lecturers, assignments and dissertation really interesting. I was striving towards an end goal though and I was always setting myself my own personal goals i.e. I want to get at least one 80% grade this semester or I want to stop making this mistake in my writing. I also found that a lot of my classmates were so helpful and we were always working together, sharing tips and reading each others assignments to help give improvements before submission.

Do you think this is a problem all throughout the 4 years of university or just 1st year students? I am a teaching assistant now and the students just sit there and do not interact. I would ask them a question and no one would respond. However, all the academic and other phd students in my department are saying its just because they are first years! I was direct entry to university 3 year so I never saw my classmates in year 1 and 2.

I think they do not realise though (your students and those in general) how easy they have it. In my masters all my classmates were from China, North Korea or somewhere else in Asia and they had immense challenges with the language barriers, writing in English and other factors with culture on top of everything else you would normally encounter as a challenge.

I really miss my undergraduate days as the going (for me) got very tough when I entered my masters. As I write this today, I am taking a short break from re-writing my literature review and trying to figure out what my PhD is even about. I really do not have an answer for you sorry on how to change this but perhaps it is something to speak to class reps about and see if this can be discussed through teacher student class rep meetings.

On the subject of attendance monitoring, my understanding is that it’s a by-product of Theresa May’s hostility to international students. The Home Office under her watch made it a requirement of student visas that international students have their attendance monitored (to show they were “engaged” with their studies). Universities rightly refused to single out international students in this way, and so the upshot is that everyone gets their attendance monitored (in seminars/tutorials if not lectures). This has resulted in the further infantilisation of the student experience, IMO - it seems more and more like school, albeit with no-one contacting your parents if you skive off.

That’s not true ladygregory
It’s primarily linked to the finance system. I was attendance monitored as an UG student back 2000. The government don’t want to be handing out loans to students who don’t attend.
Another major reason is student welfare and well being . The first sign there is an issue is if the students don’t attend lectures.

If you revert to an elite system where only 10% of the population attend university I guarantee that working class, non traditional students will miss out

I disagree. In the 1970s, both my parents came from poor, working class families, and both attended university (and thus were able to access professional careers). Both had full grants. My mum went from a grammar school, my dad had attended a technical college (where he was advised he should really be doing A levels) and then a grammar school for sixth year.

This was in Northern Ireland where we still have post-primary academic selection incidentally, and our universities are some of the most meritocratic in the UK and give out very few unconditional offers.

I've spend three of the last six years on a post-grad management programme attended almost exclusively by nurse manager type people in their 40s and 50s. You couldn't shut us up in class

Pierre individual, anecdotal stories don't aren't necessarily representative of generalised trends. I'm from one of the most deprived areas of the UK. My parents were teenagers when they had me and I attended a school that was publicly announced the worst in England the year after I left. I'm now a senior academic with a PhD. I was lucky.

Many don't follow that path and unfortunately the data tells us that you are still less likely to go to university if you are from a non-traditional group and 2/3 less likely to attend a top university. And that's recent data in a climate where just over 40% of the population are university educated. Reduce that to 10% and what do you think will happen? There certainly won't be equal representation across all classes.

Many young people from working class backgrounds get the grades for top universities but still don't end up applying or attending them. They still end up going to university in many cases but they attend low tariff, lower ranking universities. Money is not the major factor in that decision.

What is it, then? Is it because they don't want to go away from home? Because their schools don't encourage them to aim high? Because they lack confidence?

On the subject of attendance monitoring, my understanding is that it’s a by-product of Theresa May’s hostility to international students

This goes back way beyond Theresa May. Particular methods of monitoring may have started on her watch, but when I was a postgrad, there were concerns about fake institutions offering fake courses to enable people to enter the country on student visas.

It was felt necessary to require proof that students were doing a minimum number of hours of study per week, to prevent both the visa system and the students from being exploited - since some students might have thought they were signing up for genuine courses at reputable institutions.

Marta my research has shown it's a deep rooted perception that university is still for rich, middle class people and 'people like us' don't go there.

Those that do decide to go to university tend to choose lower tariff, lower ranking universities because they felt a sense of belonging and felt very much out of place at more elite universities.

I'm not suggesting finance doesn't play a part but it's too simplistic to suggest it's the only or primary reason. The research around financial suggests some groups are culturally debt averse which does have an impact on their decision.

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

Because you need a 2:1 to get into a graduate program in order to have a career

That's not necessarily true. I've always worked in degree-calibre roles, roles which have been quite 'high-up' for want of a better phrase, but I don't have a degree. I've often been the only one in my team without a degree. I do, however, have transferable experience as well as professional qualifications and that takes time and hard work. But it doesn't need a degree. In my current job (ironically in a University working in academia!) I think I'm the only one in my team without a degree. I'm one of a handful without a Masters or PhD. And yet here I am, doing the same job and earning the same money!

My personal opinion - having been round the job market recently - is that there's a lot of jobs that really don't need a degree, and where it would be perfectly possible to learn on the job and work your way up as long as you were reasonably intelligent and had a decent background education. But a significant number of employers are bloody lazy, aren't interested in using the interview process intelligently, are even less interested in training staff once they're there, and they think the award of a degree - even if it's a Third in knitting studies from the University of The Arse End of Nowhere - saves them the job of finding the decent candidates. If I'm being harsh, I'd suggest that some firms have an over-inflated sense of how necessary a degree is for their jobs - I've seen administrator roles requiring a degree. WTF?

As far as disengaged students go, I guess a large part of it is that they're told they need a degree to get a job, so this is just something they've got to get through as the next stepping stone.

Marta I went to private school but my parents had nothing when they were growing up and neither attended university. My teachers literally locked me in a cupboard and begged me to submit an Oxbridge application. I looked at them like they had two heads. I just knew I wouldn’t fit in there. Needless to say I didn’t apply. I got into Russell Group unis not even knowing what that meant and turned down places at those in favour of going to the local former polytechnic (which was SHIT) because I thought all degrees were made equal. I really regret it now but university was a world myself and my family knew nothing about.

Even for my MA I got places, including two scholarships, to some of the best institutions in the world but couldn’t summon up the courage to go.

I suppose I didn’t feel good enough. I felt like “who am I to have these experiences?”. I knew I’d struggle to return home (North) once I’d lived in that other world. Even at interview days, I could see that the young people down South had been raised with far more confidence and an ability to talk themselves up. I’d been raised to not get too big for my boots and told that “nobody likes a show off”. So I spent my life underachieving and playing small.

@corythatwas I think whether students are unwilling to work or not does depend on the university. I have worked for several different types of university and there is definitely a very big difference in the attitudes of students. In my current post-92, it definitely is that the students think any expectation that they should work is unreasonable. Students who have prepared for classes are made to feel bad by their peer group to the extent that they actually pretend they haven’t done the reading. And many students get really quite angry at the suggestion that being able to figure out what the question is asking is part of the assessment. And senior management do respond to that by telling us to basically tell them the answer, how to write that answer and exactly what to read.

When I worked at other universities my experience was much more like what you describe. Friends working at universities with very high entry requirements tell me that the levels of anxiety and competition between students to be working harder than anyone else (because they are terrified they won’t do well) is really getting out of hand.

Chemenger, you're not in CBHE are you? This all sounds horribly familiar. After half term its level 4/5 calculus 😫

I don’t even know what CBHE stands for!