Lecturer's child at open day for second time

[Igloo71]

I went with DS to our local uni's open day over the summer. The head of department had their child there (with, I assumed, dad helping out in the background - the little girl was running back and forth to a man who seemed to be a parent). She was interrupting throughout the event, but no issues at all, I assumed it was an emergency childcare situation. DS and I laughed about it afterwards and we both had completely forgotten about it until this morning.

He's now at the offer holder event and the child is there again. He's texting me to say it's completely embarrassing as she is talking to them about her department and the child is interrupting constantly, every 5 minutes at least. She is stopping her talk to speak with the child and my DS is just embarrassed on her behalf.

DS is adamant he will never go to this uni now when it had once been his top choice. I'm left wondering if this is the norm at uni's? I've got no idea if DS should be more flexible with his outlook, he's no idea what it's like being a working mum. But equally, she's got possible childcare on site from the uni students.

This isn't a Russell Group uni, but definitely a highly regarded uni and his offer is relatively high (ABB). What do we think?

@Igloo71

All of you academics need to really wake up to the fact that kids don’t know you’re giving up your time. Why would they?

Well, perhaps the nous to understand that people manning an open day at a weekend outside of the business week are working outside of their normal time is the kind of critical thinking skill that universities are looking for. Does your son expect that his teachers should deliver work at the weekend?

Honestly, a teenager of sixteen or seventeen aspiring to go to university ought to be able to work out that university open days are held at the weekend for applicants’ convenience and no other reason.

Christ, when I was at college one of the fellows used to have his seven year old son sit in at the back of the Latin tutorials. If you got something wrong, he would ask the child to correct your Latin. It was a good motivator not to be embarrassed at your crapness in front of a child tbh. Students these days have no idea

@nightwakingmoondoes your son expect that his teachers should deliver work at the weekend?

In my experience, many of them expect exactly that.

@Igloo71

I just asked him, he said he would assume it’s like parents evening at school.

No that's not a good analogy. That'd be akin to a student feedback session. That wasn't the case here, it was an unpaid, uncontracted favour asked by uni administration taking place outside work hours.

If your son is prepared to throw away his top university over this, then you really need to question him on why it was his top? Clearly it isn't because it's the best course for what he wants to study, otherwise he wouldn't be so quick to walk away.

@TheMerrickBoy

I'm jealous of the people who work in places where open days are run on good will - and intrigued! What happens when there isn't any good will, as indeed there isn't right now?

The admissions office staff (who are contracted to work for open days) do it and the students don’t get to meet any actual lecturers. 🤷‍♀️

Or they just get to meet the conscientious women and precarious staff who give up their free time because they feel they ought to; and not any of the senior or male lecturers who don’t feel they should. (No surprise here)

@nightwakingmoon I’d expect your employer to write your contract appropriately and to include X hours per year for those events, paid of course. As others have said, that’s not a student problem, that’s an employer problem

@nightwakingmoon yeah I suppose I should have guessed really!

When we do open days, we're not allowed chairs because sitting down would make us appear unapproachable. We stand up from 9-3 unless there are health reasons which mean we can apply for a chair.

[quote Igloo71]@nightwakingmoon I’d expect your employer to write your contract appropriately and to include X hours per year for those events, paid of course. As others have said, that’s not a student problem, that’s an employer problem[/quote]
Oh, like a reasonable and equitable workload model?

Lol.

@BobbinHood

Saturday or not it’s unprofessional to allow it to happen twice and to be causing difficulties at the day.

No one would “not allow it”. Admissions staff and heads of department literally have to beg people to do these goodwill jobs. If they can’t find anyone else to do it the HoD has to do it themselves. The alternative is no one does it at all apart from the admissions staff, and students don’t get to meet any lecturers.

To me it sounds like university contracts haven’t kept up with other businesses. It’s disgraceful. Assuming perspective students know this and being disgusted they don’t…. Maybe ask your visitors

[quote Igloo71]@nightwakingmoon I’d expect your employer to write your contract appropriately and to include X hours per year for those events, paid of course. As others have said, that’s not a student problem, that’s an employer problem[/quote]
You don't seem to understand that the University doesn't have funds to pay overtime. Student and staff problems really are a result of government policy. You should take it up to the tory government, as you're their customer.

does your son expect that his teachers should deliver work at the weekend?

Some students do expect this. Where I taught we had 48 hours to return feedback on student papers and queries. I once had undergraduate students email pages of questions late Friday afternoon with a note to explain that they would like answers by Monday. I told them that unfortunately that would not be possible.

It's been a long time, but when I looked round unis all the open days were on weekdays during office hours. I remember being allowed to have the day off sixth form every time I had a uni open day.

@TheMerrickBoy I agree, but where is that the student’s fault?

@Igloo71

To me it sounds like university contracts haven’t kept up with other businesses. It’s disgraceful. Assuming perspective students know this and being disgusted they don’t…. Maybe ask your visitors

You know there have been some strikes recently? This is not unconnected.

[quote Igloo71]@TheMerrickBoy I agree, but where is that the student’s fault?[/quote]
Where did I say it was?

[quote Igloo71]@nightwakingmoon I’d expect your employer to write your contract appropriately and to include X hours per year for those events, paid of course. As others have said, that’s not a student problem, that’s an employer problem[/quote]
How would that work then? My employer pays me to teach and to do research. They pay the admissions staff to run the open days. My job is not to do open days. Universities don’t actually have to run open days, you know! Or they can run them in school time and applicants would have to get time off school to attend (as used to be the case.) We offer open days at the weekend as a convenience to applicants and so that students from less privileged backgrounds can attend without missing school time. This is in order to help less privileged applicants; the private schools always allowed applicants to access university open days whenever. We give up our time out of goodwill for the applicants’ convenience because we believe in it. And you think I should have accept my employer adding another contracted duty to my working conditions when I already work 60+ hours a week? Unreal. University staff are not nannies for students.

Yes I am aware of the strikes as we visited Nottingham the other day as well and there was action at the gate. I must admit I don’t know why there’s action but I did suspect pay and terms. Is this part of issues being raised? Surely the unis are running the gauntlet of no staff at these days?

I also work 60+ hours. Just spent precious weekend time on this thread... Proposal and paper to write tomorrow and the Monday teaching prep. I met some parents on open days who think academics are lucky cos they spend their summers free 🤣

@Igloo71

To me it sounds like university contracts haven’t kept up with other businesses. It’s disgraceful. Assuming perspective students know this and being disgusted they don’t…. Maybe ask your visitors

It’s more like school students clearly expect universities to be like shops. Whereas in my institution 9k a year covers less than half of the full cost of providing the course, which is cross-subsidised by central funds and research grants gained through academics’ research.

The issue is that you are expecting a crammer and not a university. Which does many other things apart from undergraduate teaching, some of which will subsidise your child’s degree. Expecting us to jump to it like staff at JB sports, yet not even pay the full cost nor understand what universities do - yes, it gets people’s backs up.

We aren’t a business, we are a nonprofit charity where any excess income is funnelled back to provide the teaching. You have just got it wrong about what universities fundamentally are.

@nightwakingmoon and I say again, how are parents expected to know all the details about your contracts?

Strikes are happening because our pensions got an average of 20% cut.

[quote Igloo71]@nightwakingmoon and I say again, how are parents expected to know all the details about your contracts?[/quote]
They’re not, but perhaps you and your son could understand that sometimes there are bigger issues at play which are out of peoples control and display some empathy rather than laughing at them and thinking they’re highly embarrassing for the situation they’re in

May I just take the opportunity to emphasise this to the public: Whereas in my institution 9k a year covers less than half of the full cost of providing the course, which is cross-subsidised by central funds and research grants gained through academics’ research.

In other words, that HoD who was juggling childcare might've been writing a research grant on that saturday, which would've gone into subsidising your son's education?