To make a formal complaint?

[OngoingConfidence]

I have essentially finished my degree (just not had a graduation ceremony yet) and feel highly dissatisfied with the level of help I received from my tutor. I understand that your final year of university is meant to be very independent, especially with a dissertation, however, I do not feel that I received even the bare minimum level of support from my project supervisor/tutor. I'd asked many times throughout semester 1 and 2 if my tutor and I could schedule progress meetings and she'd frequently reject, similarly to if I asked her to look at drafts of things I'd written. I'd ask them for a meeting each time I managed to see her and she'd still say no and I'd ask why. Her response was that she was busy.

I am also quite annoyed with the fact that my tutor has shown blatant favouritism towards students in the group (the high achievers) and spent a lot of time helping them and guiding them with their dissertations. I only managed to get one progress meeting with my tutor and this was literally 3 days before my project was due. She essentially said it was rubbish (without saying it directly) and that I need to put in a lot of work over the next 3 days. I feel deflated and I'm not looking forward to my grade.

I want to make a complaint to the dean. I'm not expecting anything from it but would like to highlight this to them. Moreover, I'd like to get this done before receiving my final grade so it doesn't look like I'm kicking up a stick over a (possible) shit grade.

AIBU to go straight to the dean or should I try and discuss this with my tutor first?

I'd take it up with the Dean, doesn't sound like your tutor would be receptive to a discussion with the way they've behaved so far.

I would, if you’re right then the dean needs to know to protect future students.

Thanks guys, I will start putting together my complaint

If it was as bad as you say, then yes put together a complaint.

That said, the student perspective and the tutor perspective can be very different. Some students seem to expect us to be available at any time that suits them.

I set expectations for students at the beginning of the year. That includes that they need to email to request a meeting. Fine to put a suggested time in but there is a fair chance it won't suit me. You say the tutor declined the meetings. Was that because you sent an invite for a specific time? When students do that I will, 9 times out of 10, decline. However, I will respond with a time that suits me.

When you asked face to face for the meeting, was it for a specific time or did you ask when suited her for a meeting?

I also tell students that if they want me to review a draft, they need to schedule it at least 2 weeks in advance and allow a week turnaround time plus time for them to implement changes before a deadline. I still get students sending me stuff on spec at the last minute. Sometimes I review it, sometimes I don't. If it's scheduled, it's in my diary. If it's not scheduled, there may not be space in my diary.

So basically, how your complaint is handled will depend on factors like the above. I have a student this year who could complain that I refused to review a draft. However, it was less than a week to the deadline and they had already sent me a previous draft less than a week before the previous deadline. I reviewed that and reminded them of the policy. They would not have a leg to stand on if they complained.

Hi, so my tutor didn't have any policies regarding when we could send them drafts, we were just told to email them over or share them during scheduled meetings. With regards to meetings, we were basically told "if you need a meeting let me know when and I'll see if I'm free" so, very relaxed overall. Fair enough my my tutor was busy at days or times I'd request but they'd hardly ever say "I can't do that day/time, how about this?". I felt like I had to literally beg for a meeting (ended up only have two over the whole of my final year) but she'd happily dedicate time to other members of my group if they were high achievers or if she intended to have their dissertations published

There should be guidance on expected supervision levels in your Programme or Course Handbook. I've written a number of these, and they should all contain the guidance on turnaround times for review (i.e. no less than 1 week before a deadline, and it would take 48 hours to review), and also, how much supervision you should get (again, for example. 4 hours for your Dissertation.)
Whether the supervisor referred to it, or not, that is the thing to hang your complaint on. If you didn't get what was in that document, then that's your case.

If you are unhappy with your award, you should also have recourse via the Appeals process, where you should be able to appeal on the grounds of a material irregularity.

Good Luck!

Great advice.
I wouldn’t go to the Dean personally, I’d go to student services or whoever is responsible for course quality issues in your course / department. If you’re not sure who these people are, look on the university website and search through the staff in the department and for the course as well as the central University.
You need someone whose job is to act in the best interests of the student. This isn’t the primary role of the Dean, who might be more sympathetic to the academic staff member and/or might not know the right person to refer your complaint to for action.

Without outing myself too much; I spend about a third of my time at this point of the year on appeals and complaints. They are all done in the name of the Dean, but I (professional services) do all of the work behind the scenes.
If you can speak to the Academic Registrar (or the like - might also be called Assistant Secretary, Director if Professional Services, Head of Teaching Operations) for your area (my role is based in the School), they will know all of the Regulations, guidance, and who to speak to. Our role is to ensure the appropriate application of the Regulations, and if in doubt, err on the side of the student. So, check with your academic support area (usually whoever processes marks, etc.) and they will put you onto the right person.

Thank you :) x

I'd raise it definitely. I graduated last year as a mature student and I know that there are students on my cohort who had a fucking scandalous amount of handholding with their dissertation module - endless drafts and re-drafts to the point it was more the lecturer's work than the student's. Fine, all well and good - but then you had other supervisors who played by the rules and gave the specified supervision and support versus the 2 or 3 in the cohort who were having weekly and daily feedback on different drafts and it WAS fucking unfair in terms of having no semblance of equal support going.

However what also happened was that those who were one notch down from having their supervisors on speed dial did, despite all of that, get pretty generally cruddy dissertation marks as it turned out. I'm not jealous incidentally - I was very much in the camp of using the guidance to get through ethics approval and then "oh fucking hell leave me alone I can't do this shitty drip feed 500 words by Wednesday and then the next 500" camp and had a quick chat with my supervisor who was fine to roll with that and just leave me to get on with it - I may have um, not shown him a single draft and banged it out in about a fortnight - but that's the way my mind works and I'd done a dissertation before and got firsts in the module both times (at the moment my boss is like "can I borrow you to do my PhD like that"!)

I did appeal one module mark for my degree - and I kind of dithered over doing it - but it was a blatantly discriminatory placement mark, I had strong evidence that marking processes had not been followed so I could appeal it very very factually and not based on feels (and she'd written an evaluation that I had MET all the chuffing criteria so I could cross reference each point), I had a split placement so I also had another half of the mark where I could indicate the gaping disparity - and my final degree mark was sitting absolutely shit-bang on a borderline. That appeal got the disputed submission re-marked by university staff, a significant percentage uplift and my entire degree class uplifted to a first, certificate re-issued... the lot. I appealed because I knew it wouldn't sit well with me if I hadn't queried it.

You can raise it but I would wonder why you left it until it was too late for anyone to improve the situation to raise it.

If this has been a consistent issue since the beginning of the year then you could have raised a complaint and potentially actually got the support to help you before you got to the point where you had submitted the work and we're just waiting on a grade.

Sounds awful OP - I experienced something similar and I wish I had made a complaint. Good luck :-)

Do you have a paper trail for your requests to meet etc?