To think this response from my fellow student was quite uncalled for and OTT?

[Ahsoka2001]

I'm a postgrad student and for our next assessment we have to do a group presentation. They're randomly assigned and I was originally in a group of 4, but then it turned out the other 2 had been put in by mistake and I was left in a pair with just one other student.

Our seminar tutor emailed another group consisting of 3 students politely asking if me and my partner would be able to join theirs.

Then one member of the group replied at 2am with a huge email (almost 1,500 words) saying that no, it's not OK, because most of their work has already been finished on the basis of 3 people performing, not 5.

OK...I can kind of see what he means, but there's more. He said very bluntly to the tutor that as a "customer" paying £10K his personal time should not be interfered with due to her "poor management of forming the groups" (he thought he'd have to re-schedule free time to accommodate us joining).

Also, he said if she insisted I join his group he would discuss leaving the university with his personal tutor because his confidence in the quality of teaching here would be ruined. He seemed to be trying to tell her how to handle the situation himself e.g. "Most important for you is to consider the options below on how to handle this" and "Consider these points and discuss with your colleagues if necessary".

Also - "Lecturers are required to respond in 72 hours. You gave me less than 24 hours to respond to your email" and "Are you seriously considering inflating the group by 66%?"

^ Just to give you an idea of the email's tone.

Regardless of the tutor's management of things (some other students have had similar thoughts) I can NEVER imagine writing something like that to a lecturer as a student. Am I wrong, or was this an uncalled for response?

There’s actually a lot of research which shows that students who view themselves as consumers perform poorly academically compared to students who see themselves as learners. Maybe find him some of this research and send him a link

certainly the message from SLT is that students are not consumers and to nip any such expectations in the bud. Certainly lecturers are caught in the middle and morale certainly is on the floor.

i am actually thinking of transferring to criminology (I have a degree in that as well), as I am so fed up with some of my current students. Actually that’s not fair, it’s not really the students, probably more the subject…..it lends itself to students needing more support which yes we try like mad to provide but don’t get the staff to do it. Plus I’d like to teach a subject with a nice normal length summer break rather than 2 weeks! The thought of a summer with no students so I have time to prep is a total fantasy.

personally I’ve been a student at 7 different universities. I haven’t studied on a course yet without issues, some disorganisation, some not so great teaching, etc. I’m not saying it’s acceptable to have a poor course but I do think that the expectations of some sort of magical perfect course is probably not realistic.

Okay so his response was drastically over the top and inappropriate BUT I don't entirely disagree with all the angst about students feeling like consumers and being entitled if they don't get a good service - universities are run like businesses now. Students pay ridiculous fees today, and we (the tax payers) also further subsidise universities, all of which adds up to a LOT of money.

It's not inappropriate to expect a certain level of teaching and organisation for that. If I was doing my course now, I'd be paying roughly £83 per lecture/seminar before even thinking about books/living costs, etc. If you were paying that per hour for private tuition for your child, or your organisation was paying ten grand a year for you to do an external course, and it was crap, of course you'd have a right to complain. Unfortunately universities are no longer composed solely of the brightest students keen for knowledge being taught by wise old professors through clouds of pipe smoke - hundreds of thousands of not-particularly academic young people are going to uni because they know that jobs which by no means NEED a degree to do will demand one, so they ARE paying for a service. Similarly, some tutors (which from OPs comments sounds like it applies to hers!) ARE a bit shit and shouldn't be above criticism (albeit not in the format this guy chose).

How do you know exactly what he said, OP? Did he/the tutor cc you in, because that's also not appropriate of either of them!

He CCed me into the email.

£83 per lecture is crazy to think about to be fair!

Yes, really. 30K per year is about the average cost of supplies, staffing and running lab sessions, of which half the students don’t turn up to, even when they’re assessed as part of a module.

When the slackers do turn up, they have zero idea how to conduct themselves in a BSL2 lab, and they are the ones that complain the most, about the pettiest things. Nor do they understand why they got a 3:3 or a fail.

If I were the mother of one of them, I’d be fucking mortified.

What subjects have so few lectures that the cost would be c.£83 per lecture? My UG averaged around 15-18 lectures per week, 3x 4 hour lab sessions, seminars, workshops…

What a total arsehole. Humans eh?

Of course YANBU. You should be glad not to have to be in a group with such an obnoxious person.

we (the tax payers) also further subsidise

Yeah, you really don't. The amount of public money unis get is embarrassingly low. A couple of hundred quid for a science undergrad, that's it.

oh let’s not do the “per lecture” thing unless you’re also incorporating all the other things universities provide to students beyond the timetabled teaching sessions

I don’t agree with much of these responses. I fully agree his wording was off and ott. But I do think it’s time students made a point that they were paying customers and due some respect in terms of how they are treated.

the goal posts changed when people had to pay for their own tuition. It’s not free.and universities need to treat their customers as such.

so as much as he was a knob and ott in his phrasing, I agree with the sentiment.

Quite. Library facilities and books, librarians, all sorts of admin support and professional services (probably more of these than academics) marketing team, exams office dept, student support, well being, energy costs for every building on campus, graduation ceremony costs, ict support staff, cost of ict equipment. Probably loads more stuff.

Absolutely, all the estates, bills, security, finance, additional grants for struggling students, support workers, therapists, international student support, disability support, administration, cost of recruitment, compliance officers etc etc.

The fact of someone working out the cost of each lecture by dividing the annual cost by the number of lectures they had makes me laugh and eye roll in equal measure.

But I do think it’s time students made a point that they were paying customers and due some respect in terms of how they are treated.

out of interest how far do you think this should be taken? For instance if a group of students don’t want a 9am lecture on a Thursday because it’s student night on Weds and they have hangovers should they be able to say they want the lecture not till 11am?

what if they’re asked to do a presentation on a topic or in a format they don’t want/like? Can they insist on an alternative because they’re paying?

if they have a placement as part of their course and they were told before they start that their placements may be at location A or B should they be able to refuse to go to B and say they’re paying and will only go to A? (Even though travel expenses can be claimed).

if they fail an assessment and then fail a resit should they be allowed a third attempt even though university regulations say only one resit allowed because after all they’re paying for this?

if the university provide academic skills sessions by a subject librarian on topics such as literature searching and referencing and the students don’t engage/book onto these sessions even though they’re frequently reminded about them should the students be able to insist that such topics are delivered by the academic staff instead/as well as because they’re paying and this is what they want (even though the librarians are probably better placed/qualified to do this).

This is just a few examples of actual demands I’ve had from students.

This could just be the final straw for him
but it’s got nothing to do with you so don’t know why you care

Yep. I have friends who are Lecturers/Department Heads and whilst I’ve only just started PG (Masters) so haven’t even dipped my toe into academia, I get a lot of information from them when they’re discussing work (and probably trying to put me off!), that posts like this make me cringe myself inside out.

And I’m certain that most of them come from people who have never stepped foot on a campus and have no clue what a University actually provides, let alone all the background stuff.

But these demands aren't really comparable to the situation described in the OP.

Yep!

Agree he has a valid point.

That they want in person lectures.

But also want them recorded because when push comes to shove they don't actually want to get out of bed on Monday morning.

But obviously exams should be online, in person exams are a horrendous ask.

I have another. As customers are they buying a first? My biggest complaints from student are about their grades. I even had a student complain when they got a first because it was only a 75 and why wasn't it higher?

This attitude that students are consumers has contributed to grade inflation that is devaluing degrees.

This is just a few examples of actual demands I’ve had from students.

And do you think they're comparable to the OP?

@JenniferBarkley well half of them want face to face lectures and the other half either don’t want to get out of bed or say it costs too much to get to university. I do have sympathy for the commuting students and the cost of fuel but I can’t tailor the course to them.

There should be a student code of conduct - there certainly is where I teach. If I received an email from a student in that tone I would report them for a breach of the code. If I wrote feedback in that tone the student would rightly complain about me. I’m at that stage of my career that I can afford to push this. I would refuse to teach that student until I had received an apology for the manner in which the points were made, copied to those to whom the original email was copied.

I know of an UG student who wrote a similarly stroppy letter to his head of year (copied to the whole year group ) complaining that their course had been disrupted and labs cancelled and how difficult and distressing he had found it, that it wasn't good enough, they were paying customers blah blah blah . The complainant said that his counsellor had suggested that he write demanding some answers ASAP as he couldn’t cope with the change and uncertainty and it was bad for his mental health.

This was in May 2020 and he was a 2nd year medical student. The 5th year students had all been drafted into working on the Covid wards at their teaching hospital. Many of the teaching staff are also clinicians ( ie they treat patients part time as well as teach) so they were working flat out 7 days a week.

Other staff were doing voluntary roles within the NHS - one of the professors was working as a hospital porter taking bodies to the hospital morgue. Another professor was critically ill with Covid on an ECMO machine fighting for his life. Many International students were trapped in the UK and didn’t know when if every they would see their families again.

So yes the university’s top priority was 2nd year undergrad timetabling .

There’s no end to the entitlement of some students .