To take a university staff member to task?

[Sheeny98]

Has anyone found university as a mature student particularly challenging due to the way you've been treated by lecturers/ or course convenors?

Has anyone here had any altercations with staff at university? Coming on here as I'm livid and it can't just be me... surely. If you have, could you share your experiences and outcomes?

I think you should proceed very carefully if this tutor is going to be the one grading your work

Hi, OP —

Academic here. I am sorry about your illness. Your situation is tough.

First, I wonder what country you are in? Your mention of A’s and the specific reminder by the lecturer that ‘this is an Honours course’ don’t quite sound British. Expectations and cultural norms may vary a bit. I’ve taught in American and British universities so I will stick to generalities, and those systems.

Gently, I agree with PPs about the asynchronicity of email. I rather wish we had such a regulation! It is to disabuse (mostly young) students of the notion that they have a right to a quick reply when emailing us in the evening or worse. But we could not function without encroaching on our personal time to respond to student emails.

Of course all student queries should be treated with respect. It is wrong that yours wasn’t. If you separate out the (really nonexistent) email issue, is it still as bad? I am guessing ‘yes’. Is the trouble restricted to this communication or is there history? Is this lecturer aware of your health issue?

Regardless, I don’t see anything here that rises to the level of an appeal. Appeals are for disputes over formal decisions. However in your shoes I would show this message to someone I trusted at the Office for Students with Disabilities (whatever it is called) for advice. Of course the Student Union is also an option, possibly a very good one - IMO SUs are a bit variable.

A complaint is a different matter from an appeal. You’re entitled to make one. The question is whether, like many issues in the business world, this is best resolved informally. If there is no history your msg may have caught the lecturer at a bad time. Or, there is a possibility that the tone was different from what you intended. Everyone has surely sent a few such emails unintentionally. This is why I think showing both messages to someone for feedback is your best bet. Good luck

I can so easily imagine two scenarios, both of which happen regularly.

Academic is fed up with ridiculous student emails asking information that's plainly available in three different places if the students would just go and look for it. Students complaining they don't understand the material, but they haven't been coming to class or when they do they don't even bring something to take notes and just zone out. At this stage in the semester, the staff member may not have access to disability forms yet and even if they do, probably won't have who's who straight in their heads yet. So the staff member sends a brusque reply.

Is it noted in your paperwork that you don't attend in person due to your medical needs? I've never seen that, although it may be possible - I suspect we wouldn't accept that as a reasonable adjustment and would recommend the student withdraw until they are well enough to engage in person. Not my area of expertise though.

The rules for students and staff emails are different. I don't see the problem with that.

On the other hand, some academics exist on a different plane to the rest of us and treat students and colleagues appallingly. Not all, not most but some.

The suggestion of having someone you trust read over the email exchange is a good one. Your email may not have read as you intended, as PP said we've all been guilty of that at one time or another. If the other person agrees with you, forward it politely to the programme director and ask for a chat.

I’ve completed courses at four different universities. All decent Russell group settings. Admin at all was appalling, like wouldn’t go down in the private sector appalling. Having worked commercially subsequently, I absolutely agree with you OP, in that many lecturers/academics lack the skills to deliver their product appropriately. You’re ultimately paying for a service that isn’t being delivered to standard. Hopefully your track record speaks for itself and the idiot who wrote to you in that tone is pulled up. Saying students can’t email after certain times is just ridiculous and shows how the uni simply don’t understand email! That in itself would worry me!

when I went to see her during office hours, she had her PhD work all over her desk and computer

That's probably because she was trying to complete a PhD at the same time as teaching full time. As the vast majority of junior academics are required to do as a condition of keeping their job. And don't you want to be taught by people who are research-active? What a bizarre thing to complain about.

Saying students can’t email after certain times is just ridiculous and shows how the uni simply don’t understand email! That in itself would worry me!

This is because students will email staff late at night expecting an instant reply (i.e. chase you up three hours later). I also have had students email me on Christmas Day or Boxing Day and then chase me up when I didn’t reply the following day. Needless to say, in all these cases their panic was driven by their own failure to engage with the course or use appropriate time management for their coursework. It’s possible to schedule emails, and that is what is done in most functional professional contexts, so this is a good skill to learn.

This sounds like a bad situation. How do you know how uni staff talk to them?

@curaçao OP can request someone else in the department can mark it. That's what I did. (Why are you called Curacao? Do you like the drink 😋 or are you from the Netherlands Antilles? 🙂)

@ButDaddyILoveHim believe it or not, I cared more about getting a good grade and being treated with basic respect than her achieving her PhD. If she didn't want to interact with students she shouldn't be tutoring

Yes but you called to someone's office and complained that they had their work on their desk. Why on earth would her research not be on her desk? It's a really random complaint.

@Floogal no one is asking you to 'care' about her getting her PhD. But it's utterly unreasonable (and ridiculous) to be annoyed about a university academic working on their PhD when you walk into their office. That is literally part of their job.

@ButDaddyILoveHim it does matter when it was student office hours, and I had made an appointment prior to going in (I didn't just drop in). I wanted adequate feedback, not to be hurried. It isn't unreasonable (as the point of the OPs thread in the first place) to expect a decent level of support from the tutors, especially as students are also customers. I could have done the course on Open University and saved money.

@Floogal Uptake of office hours is variable. We all do other work until students attend.

Does your complaint go beyond this?

Cross post, @Floogal. If you were rushed through an appointment (or even a drop in to office hrs, if no one was waiting) if your tutor didn’t make room on the desk for your work -.these things are wrong. Your PP wadn’t clear

Maybe the double quotes thing was just her highlighting which part of your email she was responding to? I do that all the time or put my comments next to their email in a different colour. Have you got someone you trust to be honest with you who can read through both your email and her reply?

I don't know about any specific incident related on here, but as a university student you are a paying customer (or someone is paying on your behalf).

If you do not get the service you feel you are entitled to you should put in a formal complaint.

Every single tutor's email signature at my university has their working days on with a line saying that they will respond during their working days. Plus some spiel about 'if I send this at a wierd time there is no requirement at all to respond outside office hours'.

You were under no obligation to sign into your uni emails that late, nor is she obliged to send them (but she can).

Take it up with her/the dept lead during office hours.

First, I wonder what country you are in? Your mention of A’s and the specific reminder by the lecturer that ‘this is an Honours course’ don’t quite sound British.

As (especially in the form of A followed by a number) and specifically Honours courses certainly sound British - completely standard for a Scottish university. It may not be /English/, I don't know.

PS Of vital importance, our duty to students has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are customers are not. The attitude that paying for an education should entitle one to better service is only a short, dreadful step from the attitude of (a small number of) American parents who complain to university administrators that ‘I’m not paying for Bs’.

Although I am generally very supportive of student rights I believe grade, degree or marks inflation is a big problem. It is preventing employers and PG programmes from taking meaningful information from degree classifications. It is an interesting coincidence how much worse this has got during the period of fees and the massive increase therein.

Thank you @Precipice I am (a) foreign and (b) in England

If she replied at 10pm with a terse email she's probably under a lot of stress and pressure and may not be reacting rationally. In this situation I'd prefer to give someone the benefit of the doubt and move on.

I did a masters as a mature student, there were a couple of others but I was probably the oldest, about twice the average age as far as I could tell. There was one other person with a child but his was a young baby and his wife was on maternity leave. My DCs were mid and late primary aged at the time. The one time I asked for an extension, I hadn’t realised DH was going to be away with work and I had some child care complications. I was told I couldn’t have any extra time as the other students could feel that was unfair and complain.

I had some other issues that were partly linked to expectations and partly because I’m not that sociable. The course organiser wanted everyone to go to the pub on Fridays, nice idea but I’d just spent much of the week with 22 year olds and if I was them I wouldn’t be desperate to spend more time chatting with me. I can see why he was encouraging that though. It was quite a “techy” course where it was good to discuss and learn from each other and the others clearly did a lot of that out of hours with those on the course they were in halls with/had made friends with as you would expect whereas I was outside that to a large extent.

This is good advice. If you have health problems and you are in your final year and doing well academically, the last thing you really need is to get embroiled in a complaint against staff. Especially as it seems to involved you objecting to her tone, which as Pp have said can be very subjective.

It could be that one of both of you are reading things into it that the other did not intend.

I suspect you are angry and upset and I’d advise you to do nothing until you are feeling calmer . Draft a reply if you want, to get it out your system, but don’t sent it. Leave it sitting in your email and read it again early next week.

The reality is that most people who make a complaint don’t get what they want out of it , and it takes up a lot of time and emotional energy, which I suspect you don’t have.

Im sure that you are also angry and frustrated at your health issues which have stopped you fully participating in university life. That must be very hard to bear.

@GasPanic OP is entitled to a basic level of respect from her course convenor as part of the age old implicit contract between teacher and student. It goes back to the ancient Greeks.

I am genuinely curious why you and other PPs are linking this to British students’ current roles as ‘customers’? It is, or should be, much more basic than that.

That wouldn't be grounds for an extension at my university either. I know it's hard, I have young DC and work FT but outside of medical issues students are expected to manage their time.

Yes the notion of student as consumer is awful.