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?

If the tutor is genuinely good, at the end of the course/after all marking is complete, maybe send an email to your tutor saying thank you for the course. Also with a brief mention along the lines of being sorry to see the bizarre level of (however you would describe the content of the 1,500 word email) put across by a fellow student when (whatever happened).

I didn’t say that at all. It was a response not to the OP but to a different post talking about how students should be treated as consumers. You know the thing about MN threads is that sometimes the conversation as well as answering the OP moves on/evolves along an interesting line of discussion. 🤷‍♀️

Yeah I know what you mean about MN threads. No problems with it my end

I would be really annoyed!

If my group had done 2/3rds of the work and now wanted our group to suffer because of THEIR mistake I would be so annoyed and I too would send them an email.

Although, it would have been much more polite than what she sent and I probably would have let you join but that’s probably because I’m too nice.

I think the sender has probably had other issues with the uni, she may have had a drink too and she just snapped.

I agree with her point, I don’t agree with her execution.

Meant to add:
My first response would be to ‘invite’ the student to my office to discuss the tone of the email. All that the student needed to write was ‘I’d rather not, as we’ve made good progress and can’t rework it now’. That would have been fine. This student’s response is not fine.

Some valid points in there, made badly and rudely. Imagine if the recipient ends up being involved in the student's reference for further study or work though 😉

I do see his point if they genuinely had nearly finished though and the point on response time expected is fair.

It would be better for you and the other student to do your own work now and agree with the tutor to have it taken into consideration that you are a group of only 2, when it is marked. I would rise above it and write back to them (student plus lecturer and rest of both group if they were copied in) saying so, in the opposite kind of manner to that which the other student has used.

I mean all the student needed to say to the lecturer was “actually we’ve already met, distributed topics and started the work and we can’t see how this would work”. So a polite thanks but no thanks which Most lecturers would accept and sort something else out instead.

Not medical students but similar area, students complaining about not getting exactly the placement they want, when they want it. In the middle of a global pandemic.

He’s obnoxious and OTT but he’s not wrong. I’d be angry if I was in his situation. I hated group work at uni and bad planning and changes like this would stress me.

Yeah, the module co-ordinator (who was also CCed in by the guy, should have said!) stepped in and said me and the other girl could work together as a pair. We've been given a slight extension to accommodate for the smaller group and the time when we weren't sure if we'd be working with just us or not.

Male student. Female lecturer. At a guess so much of the work has been completed because Mr Mansplainer has decided what work his group are doing.
The sort that thinks collaboration means do as I say.

The other two students in his group are female so I guess that supports your theory.

pretty much any humanities one? 6 hrs a week is very normal.
Humanities basically subsidise more practical subjects hugely.

and OBVIOUSLY I know that out of that £83 quid isn't just paying for the tutor and also go towards administration, maintenance etc.

But out of my hypothetical 10k per year I personally would not have benefitted from any of the following:
'security, (never saw any security at my uni!), additional grants for struggling students, support workers, therapists, international student support, disability support, etc.'

In terms of estates, a humanities student who only requires a small classroom pays the same tuition fees as science students needing labs and access to teaching hospitals/media studies students with access to fully equipped studios etc.

Some students and courses hugely subsidise others. It's not stupid to think that given the huge amounts they pay for comparatively little, they are out of line for expecting a basic quality standard in the few things they actually get!

Maybe he’s already pissed off because he’s done all the work himself. From what I’ve seen, the most capable person in the group has no choice but to do the work themselves because otherwise their grade will be affected.

I despise exams and a lot of my UG lecturers would get rid of them completely if they could (the accreditation board does not agree, unfortunately) But I have SpLDs, my hand writing is appalling, I make stupid spelling mistakes with very basic words, my memory recall is shocking in a formal exam setting yet I’d have no problem answering the questions verbally or typing them up. Neither are an option, though.

I heard a lot of complaints about online exams and how they couldn’t just Google the answers Well, no shit. They are complex questions and even in a 24 hour open book online exam format, if you haven’t even attended lectures let alone revised, you’re going to fail.

Maybe he’s already pissed off because he’s done all the work himself. From what I’ve seen, the most capable person in the group has no choice but to do the work themselves because otherwise their grade will be affected.
I doubt it because the most capable people wouldn't be stupid enough and arrogant enough to send that sort of email.
He sounds like someone who is confrontational, likes to throw his weight around and would probably be terrible in any form of collaborative situation.

Of course there should be a decent standard of delivery, I don’t think anyone’s disputing that.

What’s being disputed is the view that all someone is paying for is the lectures. Even if all a student does is do the course, the cost of recruiting a student will include, marketing, open days, admin staff to process the application, the computer system to store and process information, induction (all the staff who have planned, developed materials, printed materials, delivered information), enrolment (again, admin staff, computer system).

Even if you don’t see security staff, who do you think opens and locks up buildings, keeps them secure, provides first aid and emergency support, not to mention cleaning and maintenance staff.

He sounds like an arse and he should have left it in draft and looked it over the next morning before sending. But I am sure many people have sent a rage induced email at some point.

But looking back on my time at uni and the way some of my lecturers acted and communicated with students was an absolute joke considering they are in a professional role. I remember spending over an hour writing an email to a lecturer with key points I wanted addressed and I got a one line response which didn’t even address anything I had mentioned. I remember constantly having to chase emails to get at best a vague point in the right direction. And also turning up for meetings where they hadn’t even looked at my work I’d shown up to discuss. Some were obviously better than others.

I now work in a professional job, if I had such poor time management and communication skills I don’t think I’d still be in my job.

There were 300 of us on my course. If we all paid £10k tuition per year, that's £3 million pounds every year. Just for that course. Although it would be more because of higher fees for non-domestic students. It would not cost the university anywhere near that much to run that course, even when factoring all the extra, non obvious charges. However, it probably costs the university far MORE than £10k per student to run their media studies/medicine courses. So some students get a lot more for their money than others, and you can understand why they then query this, in the same way if you were charged £15 for your pint you'd be annoyed that your friend was only charged £3 for the same drink.

Is it ideal to think of education in purely transactional terms - e.g. what do I get for my money? Maybe not but by increasing tuition fees so drastically that's what you get. Students aren't stupid - if universities could charge £3000 to run a course in 2010 then charge £9295 to run it in 2011 they are going to query what more they're getting for the extra £21k . And if the answer is 'nothing' or ("we spent your tuition fees on the £27million state of the art new biology lab, which you'll never set foot in because you're studying classics") of course they'll start being annoyed, and take it out on the only people they do interact with, whom they see as representative of the university.

All I know is I wouldn't do my (humanities) course today if I had to pay the current fees - because it just wouldn't be worth it. My love for the subject and interest in learning wouldn't be enough to justify being in debt for (for most students) the vast majority of my working life until it gets written off in my mid fifties. And no amount of 'oh but think of the lucky biology students in their new lab' or 'yes but 0.1% of your tuition fee goes towards paying for the security guard so factor that in!' would change my decision!

I also don't agree that consumerism/love of learning are necessarily completely mutually exclusive. If I go abroad, I look forward to trying the local cuisine, hearing the language, experiencing the culture....that doesn't mean that I don't also expect my hotel room to be clean, etc.!

He's an arse. It will affect his work, life and relationships to behave like that.

if universities could charge £3000 to run a course in 2010 then charge £9295 to run it in 2011

Just to point out that pre-2012 (when fees went from £3k to £9k) unis couldn't afford to run a course at a £3k fee - the Government topped the fee up to around £9k. Come 2012 that top-up was removed and the cost went to students.

You beat me to it. You can blame the government for this, not the universities.

Well if it is a PG course then it is likely that it is very expensive and you do have the right to expect their best practice. When my son did his PG in 2015 it was 23k for the year so these things are not cheap. I do recall him saying how he hated the group tasks as there were always the bossy ones, lazy ones etc.

As a lecturer I also suspect this is the case

If the group has finished two thirds of their work in 4 days, they're probably not doing a great job

Just like working as part of a team in the real world then!

We certainly don't view our postgraduate students as being entitled to a better experience than our undergraduates at all. The undergrads get the same effort from staff.