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 that you're being unreasonable about the email time. I work in a university and because I have DC after school, I flexi-work and do most of my emailing between the hours of 7pm-midnight. The policy at my university is that as a student you can't email staff out of hours and expect an instant reply (the same policy applies to me - I don't expect replies outside of 9-5).

I also think that her talking to you that way would be bad even if you were 19.

Practical step: if you want to escalate, forward it to the course lecturer OR HR and say that you are unhappy with how you've been spoken to, and want to make them aware. They will know who to send it on to.

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.

Surely that applies to the lecturer being paid to do this job more than the student paying to do the course? You know, the one who is more likely to have been given work equipment and therefore be using Outlook (which schedules emails) as her email client, rather than Gmail (which doesn't). I mean she's literally being paid to be in a "functional professional context" as you put it.

I think it's preposterous that the uni tells students no emailing after 6pm. It's nannying. The way to cultivate mature decision-making adults would be to say "don't expect a reply outside office hours and you'll look silly if you follow it up". In the big wide world, you can't control when people email you, but you can control when you deal with it. It's also setting the students up to fail in the world of work where they will regularly need to deal with emails after 6pm, as this staff member exemplifies.

I am so sorry that you're wrestling with serious health problems, but I'd like to ask you whether the course convener (do you mean your professor? your lecturer? the leader of a seminar?--the lingo is different from that in my own country) actually knows about them and about the accommodations you're allowed. Sometimes (from personal experience) there can be delays in information getting from the office that deals with student disabilities/special needs/academic accommodations to the instructors of a course. Is it possible that from her point of view you are simply the student who mysteriously doesn't show up (and is therefore not in a position to ask follow-up questions about assignments or requirements one on one) and who is then asking her about material that she actually went over/clarified at more length in class? There may be a communication gap issue here.

This is the fundamental problem in academia today. Students view the education that they're getting as a "product" which they have purhcased. It just isn't like that. The lecturers are there, the materials are there, it's more guidance to learn for yourself. Everyone saying that the emails wouldn't fly in private sectors - university admin staff are not customer service reps. They run the course, that is their job.

I do agree with the OP that there is no neeed for rudeness. But the idea that you are owed politeness because you have purchased something that includes the admin staff being your PA / customer service assistants is nonsense. But of course they should be polite to you because it's basic human manners.

@Floogal Her having her PhD on her desk will be because doing her PhD is part of her job.

But the Open University is the same as any other university - you will also be taught by people who research, and who might have their research on their desk when you come to their office. The only difference is the appointment is more likely to be online, in which case, their own research will be open on the desktop but you won't see it...

Fair enough but I think it was a cop out to say “other students would complain”. In the work environment I’d just spent a couple of decades in this would have been accommodated for someone who clearly wasn’t taking the piss. I was managing my time but unlike the other students I had to managed other people’s time as well. I’d already done two post grad qualifications by distance learning with the 2 DCs while working full time and I expected the issue to be judged on its own merits rather than against other students. My view may also be coloured however by knowing the uni has an established rep as having poor student support (and I had bugger all help from my dissertation supervisor who was clearly way too busy to have been assigned the task but that’s a separate issue).

Fully get the struggle of the juggling act with kids, it's brutal.

The problem is that we have to approve 100s of extension requests and need to be consistent across all of them. Both out of fairness and so the chancers don't end up with grounds for appeal. There isn't much scope for being more flexible when we know people aren't taking the piss like there is in the workplace, it's black and white. This is the list of grounds for extension, this is the list of acceptable evidence.

which is against university guidelines students have been given, we're not supposed to email staff after 6pm

She’s not a student though and so she will have different rules.

Its like when customers aren’t allowed in once the store is closed but the workers are - as it’s different rules.

You wouldn’t be treated as a lecturer because you’re not one.
They wouldn’t be treated as a student because they aren’t one.

I went to uni as a mature student and found the lecturers gravitated more to the mature students and we had a better relationship.
Some lecturers admitted to us that they preferred the mature students as we genuinely wanted to be there and worked hard and were more mature.

There was one man who was an absolute dick though.
He thought he knew better than the lecturers and would be on his phone googling questions/answers and kept asking them, trying to catch the lecturer out.
When the lecturer hesitated or said they’d speak to him in private as the class had already overrun, he was really rude to them.

So I guess it depends on your email to determine whether she was BU or not.

Tbh the fact that you think she was out of order for emailing after 10pm “because students aren’t allowed to” makes me think that you were the rude and unreasonable one.

@LongHairedDrummer absolutely. Of course basic respect and politeness in all communication should be a given. Unfortunately these days many students (not all, obviously) have a 'we pay your wages' attitude and expect academics to be at their beck and call. I've had many a 10pm email with follow-up at 9am the next day wanting to know why I'd not responded yet, etc. I spend a lot of time signposting students to resources that are readily available on the VLE etc when they just could've logged in and looked themselves.

I have also met many students who were, like a pp, apparently astonished to learn that teaching their one module was not the entirety of my job. I have won several student-nominated awards for my pastoral support and my teaching, so I'm far from disengaged from student needs, but the expectations are beyond reasonable at times.

It's not necessarily even their fault. The commidification of higher ed teaches students that they are paying customers and what they are paying for are academics who will provide them with a First. It's fundamentally wrong, and it serves absolutely no one.

I don't know what I would do now but the same thing happened to me over 20 years ago when I was 18 and at uni. It made me feel horrible. Just so you know you aren't alone. University lecturers can be a nasty breed.

I'd ask to speak to the Head of Department. She's been really unprofessional, especially in amending online docs then accusing you of lying.

If she is prepared to speak to you like that I dread to think how she interacts with younger students.

@StaunchMomma Depending on how further reading of the emails by OP and hopefully a trusted partner goes, your advice could be good or not. Putting ethics aside, would be very stupid for a lecturer to modify documents in the VLE and lie about when this was done, as the School can uncover this in the event of a complaint. I would expect all academics to realise this, but maybe not.

OP is facing big challenges, and email is a breeding ground for misunderstanding. She needs to assess carefully before making a decision. Only someone with more specific knowledge than she is sharing here can help her wisely.

@ColleenDonaghy to be honest, in the main I didn’t find juggling the kids an issue and perhaps through being older I had a wider support network so didn’t need to go to the uni for any other type of support. I went away on the field trip and slept in bunk beds in a dorm of six, didn’t love it but it was part of the course and what I signed up. I was just disappointed that one time there was no leeway when they knew my situation was slightly different than the majority on the course. There were 3 mature students on a course of at least 60, only 2 with kids, and I could see why there wasn’t more.

I think you have a basis for complaint, but that's it. You can complain to the faculty or via disability services, whichever you think most appropriate. But you may not get an outcome you are happy with. There will be a complaints process.

I know someone who was hired as a lecturer on the basis of MSc and relevant industrial experience, was then told a few years later to get a PhD at employer's expense or face redundancy. No idea how legal that is, but he did his PhD whilst working to keep his job. Problem there is the institution moving goalposts, not the staff member.

apparently astonished to learn that teaching their one module was not the entirety of my job

I'm amazed by how many researchers seem to think that fixing their one research group's specialist computing issues is the whole of my job. No, I work across the entire university doing that.

The mutual respect between student and lecturer/ dr/prof seems to have disappeared.

I went to university in the 1980s -no fees and grants. My tutors were always ‘available’ to me.

My children do not have the same relationship with their university ‘teachers’.

Surely you just choose not to respond to emails between 18:00-07:00.

not sure what to advise other than omg, and all the best and positivity op

I completely agree with this but like many things it's not all academics and not all students.

60% of my students are great, they are interested in what they are doing they are polite in the way they communicate. I would say about 30% are just disengaged. Don't show up and don't really engage with the material. Then there are about the 10% that not only don't show up and engage but also complain because their grades reflect it. (To be clear I am not including students like the OP who has medical grounds for non attendance. )

Like with students you have some academics who view students as an inconvenience to their research and you have some academics who genuinely care about our students and their education and want them to do well. Then you have many somewhere in the middle. I don't know the answer but I would say scrapping university fees would help and properly funding free 3rd level education but let's face it that's never going to happen so I emphasis yo my students that you get out of uni what you put in with the hope they become the 60% of students who engage.

I went to university in the 1980s -no fees and grants. My tutors were always ‘available’ to me.

The job of an academic has changed massively since the 80's. The workload is much bigger and we simply can't be 'available' to all students at all times. It's just not physically possible.
I once had a student complain that I wasn't available for a 1:1 at a specific time and refused to rearrange a meeting to see him. That 'meeting' was my PhD viva.

Surely you just choose not to respond to emails between 18:00-07:00
My university policy is to respond to email within 2 working days. If I didn't answer emails on evenings and weekends then students could be waiting weeks for a response.

I’m not sure what you see in your story to indicate that they are well equipped to deal with vulnerable young people as opposed to “genuine adults”.

I’m an academic, my work load planner gives me 30 mins per student per semester (so an hour a year) of individual support time including personal tutorials, academic support and answering emails. You can imagine some students take up their hour in a week!

I obviously can’t then say to the student don’t contact me again ever about anything……..but then anytime I spend dealing with that student is taking me away from another part of my job and ultimately being done in my own time as I work way over 37.5hrs a week.

I did joke with a colleague this week that I’m going to start timing all student interaction and keep a spreadsheet and stop all support when I get to an hour!

Saying that I would always be professional and polite to students. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever been anything other than that even when I am frustrated with them. However I have had to “tell students off”, it’s not a part of my job I enjoy but if their behaviour is unacceptable and especially impacting on others then I am going to speak to them, and I would treat a mature student the same as an 18yo. I have before had a mature student crying in my office after I had to speak to them but her behaviour needed pulling up. I didn’t shout, I don’t believe I was unprofessional but she was certainly aware of my disapproval. Maybe she went out thinking the way I spoke to her wasn’t right 🤷‍♀️. It’s difficult because you’re not at school but sometimes we need to enforce school type rules. I am respectful to my students and I expect the same back.

Same university, subject tutor used to hit on me constantly, directly asked me out at least twice and informed me that he could familiarise himself with hand writing to identify whose exam papers he was marking. The subtext was very clear.
My honest opinion is that they have no idea how to deal with genuine adults. The sex pest tutor I felt able to deal with myself as I'd come from working in a very sexist industry and was well equipped to deal with tawdry men. I think a younger, less experienced woman would have felt pressurised to date him

How long ago was this?

Rudeness is never acceptable. I would get someone I trust to read the email and see if they think it is rude. Then if they agree, I would ask for a Teams meeting or call with the lecturer to discuss the issues in the email. Keep it polite.
If the content was really that obnoxious they may be regretting it now..