Ways the university landscape has changed since "our day"

[ACJane]

I see a fair few posts on here making judgments about today's kids' university choices based on the higher education landscape of our own generation.

Rankings and general prestige have changed, workloads and expectations seem to have changed. Parental involvement is far higher - presumably due to middle and higher income parents having to contribute but also some extending of childhood.

What are the main things you think are different?
Personally I've been surprised by the changes to the top 10/15 Uk universities - a couple that were seen as lower "prestige" have rocketed (which is great but surprised me).

People complaining about their dc's Oxbridge workload is noticeable too - most of my friends who went seemed to have plenty of time for hobbies and drinking. Much less so now reading threads on here?

I wonder if the gap between Oxbridge and other leading universities is narrowing too due to the former being far more competitive to get into.

What changes have you noticed?

Equally technology makes life so much easier and quicker. Eg in 2003 to get the material to write your essay, you physically had to trek to the library. There might be 5 copies of a really helpful book…. But 50 people in your lecture… so unless you were quick you weren’t getting a look in

This is a huge difference.

I wrote my dissertation in the early 90s by hand. There was no option to use a computer. You wrote it all, added any diagrams and tables and then sent it to a lady who typed it all out for you. You had one chance to check it and correct any errors and typos and that was it - sent for binding and submitted.

Now you can write, check, rewrite, insert extra info so much more easily. The same goes for essays and assignments.

You would assume that the quality of work therefore improves but I guess so do the opportunities to plagiarise work (and get found out!).

That all sounds amazing!

my halls were £26/week and the posh newly built ones were £45. I was in awe of the students who lived there who had cars and didn’t shop from the reduced section!

I took all my washing home every term as i couldn’t afford to wash it at halls. Ridiculous really.

the student bar did 30p vodka shots on Wednesday nights. Good times.

I worked in a posh hotel at the weekends and stole loo paper and ate till I was fit to burst. My student house was a squat in Y3/4.

I have a DC who started at a Russell Group Uni last September. I have been shocked at the library facilities. I studied almost the same course at another Uni and when I was there you could always get a seat in the library to work. My DC tells me that unless you are there by about 9.20 there are no seats available in the library and lots of people try to work sitting on the floor. This would seem to be due to the massive increase in student numbers without an increase in the facilities available.

I first went to university in the late 1970s. I remember the shared rooms and shared bath cubicles on each floor. No or dreadful cooking facilities, and the bland food offered in catered halls, all for £23 per week. The best bit was that you could ask for a refund of meal fees of £3 if you were out for the weekend and the cash would buy drinks at the weekend when we stayed at friend’s houses.

On the academic side, it was less structured than it is now, less contact hours, and we were expected to do much more of our own research ahead of lectures. I think it was much more academically demanding and there were exams to be passed at the end of every year. The teaching was a combination of lectures held in tiered lecture halls with little or no interaction with the lecturer, and small group or individual tutorial sessions. They really did expect you to do a lot more independent research before the sessions, and we spent most of our time in the library, hence the term ‘reading’ rather than ‘studying’.

The lack of technology meant that re-drafting essays and the dissertation meant hours of work and a lot of effort.
Writing hand-written well-researched essays every week was par for the course.

I believe grade inflation is probably partly due to technological advances but more a symptom of fee-charging universities needing to attract more mediocre candidates. If you need a 2:1 to go on to do a Masters, then the university needs to ensure sufficient students make the grade.

I can possibly claim to answer this as I was at uni very late 90s (RG one that MN loves) and then was back at a 92 uni up until June last year.

The support has massively increased - but then so has the expected standard of information searching - whereas we could sit in the dusty journal bit of the library and just try to find a couple of articles - this time around we were expected to pretty much go beyond the textbooks from the outset, find the most bang up to date literature and really have it all absolutely spot on... so a session from the library staff about the "it's the building opposite the New Inn - come and find us when you've got deadlines looming" wouldn't really cut it.

Disability support has got fantastic. Likewise I had an incredibly supportive department this time around going through my own autism diagnosis - they really went above and beyond helping me network with previous students they'd had who had graduated with autism.

Accommodation standards are bonkers nowadays - we had shared showers and loos... these days they've got gyms and cinema rooms!

The standard of coffee availability is dramatically improved. The amount of emphasis on the uni bar is dramatically decreased. Likewise on-campus catering - expanded from one dodgy sandwich bar and a toastie bar on an evening to street food, pizza, salad bars and all sorts.

Our careers support was incredible - but it was a niche vocational course that's very in demand, but even now we'll get emails advertising job vacancies and asking for graduates to come back and speak to the next generation of students.

Blackboard is ass, turnitin is ass-ier though. I've actually found my current course to be expecting of much higher standards in terms of research, workload and quality of assignments than it was the first time I was a student - stuff that I banged out with a hangover that got first level marks last time around would have scraped a 2:2 with our harder marking staff these days.

Email actually gets used for a purpose these days - when I was at uni first time around it was a bit of a novelty and mainly used for sending absolutely shit jokes around.

I think the main change I have noticed is the babying of students. Adults of 18-21 now expect the same level of pastoral support and parental involvement as my generation had at age 14. They are not treated like fully fledged adults anymore and I think it does them a disservice. It means they don’t take in real responsibility or learn real life skills until after they have left. And it is OUR generation that is to blame for this - there is nothing inherently different about this generation of students.

students take their courses much more seriously than when I was at university though. Academically, things are much more competitive these days.

Student culture is very different - there seems to be a higher level of mature and foreign students and also an increase in students who still live at home with parents. There is more diversity in the way that students live. The culture is not as homogenous.

Many (not all) students seem to centre their feelings these days and struggle to put them aside when needed, this has really impacted on their ability to reason/critique/argue.

Cambridge, late 80’s. Different Universe!

I never felt particularly academically pressured (and that from someone who missed the grades and had to beg my way in!) and did loads of sport and experienced my first serious love affair. We had exams once a year in the summer term and nothing else went towards the grade, no ongoing assessment or course work. So you could seriously pass about with a bit of an effort late in the day and squeak through. Only 3rd year result was your degree classification.

Workload was basically a 9-5 experience with the odd afternoon off, including lectures and Supervisions. Typical to be in a library in the evening.

Nightclubbing wasn’t a thing, much more focussed on black tie dinners and Balls (but that may be a function of my social circle / sport)

We never had our essays graded in the way they are now - my tutors used A, B, C not the granular % marks our kids get. I have no ide of the breakdown of any of my end of year exams, just overall classification and we were never given a transcript. Our graduation certs don’t have a classification on so people have to take my word for it I got a 2:1 (honest!)

I was early mid 90s

Students are an awful lot slicker looking now (mind you that was true by the early 00s, I think we were the last generation of scruff). They have en-suites!! Some people even shared back then (I refused).
Grade inflation obvs.

Judging by those we hire - drink less, they are more career minded, they work harder. Living at home - that seems to be mostly (although by no means exclusively) at the more vocational end.

In the mid 00s - 2010s I do remember lecturers I met through work saying that that students were very helicopter parented and because of the drive to increase numbers some of them not academically up to it. Not sure if the latter is still true.

I don’t notice a massive difference in prestige of places in general (from a hiring POV) - if anything I think in some careers the value of a prestige institution is bigger than ever. Although rep for particular courses goes up and down, but it always did.

I think O&C probably don’t stand out as much for hard work as people work harder generally. But at least by the 90s a lot of people I know found both very tough places to be.

Overall though the 90s was so much more optimistic and hedonistic than now.. hard to separate that from what applies to students.

The ‘woke’ thugs/bullies/fascists have now got the upper hand. I went to Essex in the 1990s and studied literature. I really enjoyed it. The department was run by wonderful old American anglophiles, who’d come over in the 1960s when the place first opened.

I’m not sure I’d want to go there today, though. Actually, I’m not sure I’d want to study literature anywhere. Harold Bloom, the great literary critic, warned back in the 1980s that universities were heading into a new dark age, and that the canon would soon be destroyed. I think his prophecy is coming true. I actually got an email from Essex a couple of years ago informing me that they were “de-colonising” the university library. I mean wtf are they talking about??!! That’s the sort of thing you’d expect to read in Orwell’s 1984. I assume they mean chucking out books by great writers just because they don’t tick certain certain boxes, and replacing them with mediocre writers who DO tick the right boxes. Academics have a duty to teach the best that has been written and thought, regardless of who the authors were. Gutless cowards.

We used to stand in a line to clean our teeth... I upgraded in the 2nd year to a floor with a single bathroom (no shower) between 5 and a sink in the room. It was a 60s build, now demolished. The 1st year Victorian house is still standing.

32 hours of lectures, tutorials & labs per week and a lovely shiny new library with state of the art microfiche readers. No gym, despite it being PE centric, but 3 swimming pools. One of my fellow students went to no lectures in his final year, did his final year project over the Easter holidays, borrowed lecture notes to revise and came out with a 1st - not a good role model really but everything except the project was judged on the exams.

I went to a RG uni in the late 80s.
We were less demanding imo on accommodation. Many ppl shared a room, shared bathrooms. No computers, hand wrote essays and practical write ups.
Unis are far more marketed these days. I worked in a uni a few years back and they were very into having a media presence.
I kept my old uni prospectus and it's sad reading it. No mention of fees. No bs statistics about ratings or rankings.

Dd does have more work than I did imo - 2 lots of exams per year as opposed to 1.

I first went to uni between 1978 - 83 (medical degree), then did a second p/t degree between 2011 - 2018. I was also a uni lecturer (in title though I didn't give lectures!) between 1999 - 2020.

Sooooo many changes. Far more people going to uni - it was said to be 10% of schoolleavers when I first went, and now it's 50%.
A huge increase in international students.
A lot more emphasis from the unis on making money -- I'm sure this accounts in part for the rise in international students, but it means too that less popular courses are shed, even if they are well-renowned.
Much more recognition of the fact that many students will need support in various ways, and provision of support.
Far better university accommodation, but at a much higher price (even allowing for inflation).
Students seem to be less likely to drink, use drugs, smoke than in the 1980s. I'm told they have less sex too though I'm not sure I believe this! (this obviously refes to population averages and there will be plenty of people who buck the trend!)
Less truly free speech.
More consumer attitude towards education from the students themselves.

I think one of the things that universities should teach is critical thinking; to do that then surely we need to be exposed to various ideas and viewpoints. So it concerns me when I hear young students defend censorship against people thus: "I'm paying a lot of money for my education so I shouldn't have to listen to stuff that upsets me" (yes I heard someone on the news say that re a no-platforming row).

I went in 1998, first year of fees and last year of any sort of grant. I was at Manchester and in the cheapest accommodation at £41 a week self catered. My block had been newly refurbished, just checked online now and its the same curtains there but its now £111 a week. Good lord.
The courses seem to be a lot more intense in terms of monitoring attendance at lectures and on more seminars rather than 5 of you in the lecturers' office. I didn't turn up to one of my geography modules at all in first year and still passed the exam, I'm told this would not happen now. My sister is head of faculty at a post 92 and there's a real move away from exams to more collaborative working/presentations and group work. Which is more like working life. I was quite shocked that universities all seem to offer essay writing support as standard, not just to "STEM" students who traditionally didn't do much in the way of indepth writing.
Glad there is more MH support as this is where I was really let down, however there is less resilience from what my sister reports. Students emailing lecturers about squabbles between course mates etc. Not serious stuff but the sort of low level annoyances you jus accept as part of working with others. Also a lot more expectation of lecturers to do as the students ask, even down to course planning level. A definite feeling of "students as consumers" and expectations are much much higher on both sides.
For overseas students, milked as the cash cows they are. At both RG and post 92s especially post grads or those paying to be readers

I think I have seen 3 stages - mine 1979+, my older 3 children's (millennials they were born the 1980s) and 10 years after that the twins (Gen Z) who left last year.
I don't agree that the rankings are very different however from then andn ow - instead there are tables of rankings based on if the student feels pampered to where the university gets a high grades which are a load of rubbish. Don't go by a lot of the ranking tables. Look at the linkedin proifles of newly hired graduates at the employers where you want to work to see where they want and go from there.

In 1981 we Tories at my university had eggs thrown when we invited Tory politicians to speak and today universities remain as ever a hot bed of people rich enough to be left wing so no change there, nor any change with the left not liking free speech if it is views the left hates.

Lots of other changes however including double the number of students on son's Bristol course compared with 13 years befoer when his sister did the same one - numbers were uncapped for those with ABB and above about 10 years ago

In my day and now the poor got a free pass and loads of money - full grant and massive state subsidy and the middle class did much worse - tiny minimum maintenencer loan of £4300 today if you are middle income or higher and in my day tiny minimum grant with parents expected then and now to make up the difference. Loans of course are there for the fees now. Now 50% can go and in my day only 15% so more not fewer get to go so pros and cons of loan system of course.

My halls in Manchester are at least double the cost after allowing for inflation that they were in 1979 (I still have my finances from those years) yet for the same rooms so someone is coining it in

@CoffeeWithCheese Blackboard is ass, turnitin is ass-ier though.

i agree with you about turnitin. But Blackboard was amazingly good compared to the absolute travesty of Moodle or Aula. Universities used to provide information to the student. Now they’ve got to go hunting for it if the student apps are anything to go by. Frustrating is not the word.

Provision for students with special needs us much better, and that is a great thing.

The main change over this time has been the growing movement to treat students as consumers. The proposed changes to the UCAS application may be another positive outcome. But on the whole this m

Posted too soon

On the whole this movement has not been particularly good for education. Our courses have been watered down but our degree classifications, along with everyone else’s, are waaay up. The more explicit syllabi, the office hours, the endless VLE materials, presenting lectures for both in person and remote use - these time consuming things are very likely good. But the consumerist motivation them and the dumbing down of the courses even as results are up is not.

I was at a poly in the 80s studying science. It was a very different experience to traditional universities. No lecture theatres, no seminars or tutorials, it was classroom taught. The entire assessment was exams and final year research project, lab books and coursework were marked but didn't count towards the final grade. Apart from the final year project not much independent research or study - we only really went to the library to keep warm. I don't remember ever debating or discussing anything meaningful much either as part of the course or socially. Never wrote an essay. But still came out with a very useful degree.

You only got a place in halls for the first or final year, not both. The halls were fairly bleak made of breezeblocks and concrete. Shared rooms for some, shared bathrooms (ensuites unheard of), a TV room and a payphone. No bars in halls, some were self catered (including mine) some catered. SU bar was a complete dive, we rarely went there, socialising was in pubs and clubs.

Middle income parents did contribute, as grants were means tested. However we
could get housing benefit and sign on in the holidays without having to make any effort to find work - I worked in the summers but not at Christmas and Easter with only a couple of weeks off.

One big change is the pressure on second/third year housing. We sorted it out over the summer for September for my second and final years, Now the search starts well before Christmas for many.

1990-94

Grade inflation: To get into university, then BF had a EEE offer for Oxford and BBC for other RG, I had an EE offer for teacher training college. Now it would be AAA and BBB for teacher training college.

Rankings and better information: Two AAA student friends ( no A star in 1989) chose Bradford and Kent as their first choice universities. Your top Astar, Astar, Astar students would not have those unis on their radar now.

Gap years- not really a thing in the late 80s. I took one to work to pay my way through university as parents did not want / refused to contribute as they thought at 18 I should have a job, not still be in education.

Grade inflation: Not a single 1st awarded in my year of 120 primary ed teachers or BF English course.

Shared rooms, queuing for the phones, checking post pigeon holes 3 times daily, letter writing to BF, £16 rent a week for 2nd year accom.

Getting married. I got married the summer I left university and went to 4 weddings that summer of fellow graduates. Who gets married at 22 now?!

@diian I was thinking about grades for teaching - mine was CD for my first choice which was incredibly high in those days. All others were EE. My first choice is rarely mentioned on here so not sure of its reputation now, but it was one of the top teacher training places. Lots of friends went there not for teaching though.
The daft thing is that teachers then seemed to have better teaching skills than many ECTs now despite the grades

1991-94. Filled out both a UCCA form and a PCAS form. About 10% went to University, at my school about 10 out of over 200. There were good jobs for 16 year olds and most of my friends did well in banking, retail (one a head buyer now), accounting.

Crappy accommodation.

Grants were great but not if your parents refused to pay as there were no student loans. I had to work as much as I could to pave my way.

Out of 100 in my year and subject, 2 got a first and it was lauded as the first time ever!

Sent off for prospectuses in the post. DD has so much more information at her fingertips. I didn’t know anyone except teachers who’d been to university.

DD hopefully going in the autumn. All very different except for the excitement and feeling of being on the edge of a new phase in life.

Parental involvement is far higher
Definitely this. I visited prospective colleges (both universities and Polytechnics) by myself via a train, sometimes travelling with someone from the same 6th form college but usually alone. I sorted out a room to rent for year 1, never stayed in halls. The train and coach station was full of students moving in, very few people were driven by their parents and I know no one who owned a car. This was 1980/81. You carried everything you needed with rucksacks, suitcases and carrier bags. Other stuff you collected from 2nd hand shops etc.

There are more students going to university now, therefore the range of abilities is far wider. When I was a student it was clearly the brightest that went to uni, and if someone dropped out it wasn't because they were not capable, there was usually some kind of drama involved.

Nowadays, there are students attending university who should not be there. University is clearly not for everyone. They are wasting their money and it would be more sensible for them to do something else. Unfortunately they have been deluded into thinking they are university material. And universities are doing everything they can to keep hold of them and passing them due to 1. impact on metrics 2. financial pressures.

A by product of this also means that there are a number of academics who have somehow made it through the education system and are now lecturers. They are wholly unsuitable for the role and we have now created a cycle of incompetent academics who are failing to teach the next generation.

Mid-90s. There was no Freshers week. I think there was one club event put on by the uni but my flatmates and I got to know each other at the SU bar or in our flat. Lectures began 4 or 5 days after we arrived.

Socially, you could only go out late twice per week on campus and 1 night off campus (nightclub student night). It did mean there were guaranteed quiet nights in the flat. Even club nights ended by 2am. I don't remember ever being disturbed by noise. My DD had a hellish first year with some flatmates out clubbing in the city 5 nights per week, going out at 11 and home at 5am. Because they could catch up online with lectures, they happily slept all day.

Contact hours were around 8 although I learnt a language too and that added 7 more hours.

Essays were written by hand initially then I'd go to one of the computer suites late at night to type it up and print it out.

I never got parcels from my parents. I'd get a letter from my mum and best friend once a week. I rang my mum once a week on a Sunday morning from a payphone.

I think it was free to join the gym (else I'd never have joined) now it can be £300+ per year. Societies were so cheap you could sign up to loads at Freshers fair.

No-one had a mattress topper or ever complained about their mattress.

I had no clue about university rankings, hadn't heard of the Russell Group.

No-one I know did internships in the summer and either did studenty type jobs or they worked at their parents' place of work or parents' friend. No-one (at my uni) thought much about future career until final year.

Campus food was fairly cheap. We ate out on campus at least 2 times per week. My DD doesn't. Food and drink is more expensive.

I don’t recognise some of the comments in relation to DD’s STEM course.

Her cohort weren’t babied, they weren’t given guidelines on how to write essays apart from how not to plagiarise content. When one student asked if a topic was going to come up in an exam they were told that it wasn’t school and that they don’t teach to the exam and were meant to read around the topic.

I was at a poly in the 80s studying science. It was a very different experience to traditional universities. No lecture theatres, no seminars or tutorials, it was classroom taught. The entire assessment was exams and final year research project, lab books and coursework were marked but didn't count towards the final grade

DD’s course was nothing like this. She had lab practicals, lectures, seminars, exams in December, January and May, plus assessments. And in their final year they had to hand in their lab book complete with written up labs from the previous three years, submit a dissertation, present a Powerpoint presentation of said dissertations and also sit final exams. It was not an easy ride. 30% of their second year marks went towards their degree.

When I was a student (early 1980s) I knew my lecturers/tutors. DD didn’t know hers, and only spoke to her personal tutor once (she had changed her tutor in her second year because he first tutor never replied to her emails or turned up to meetings). There was no relationship or rapport between the students and the teaching staff. When DD needed a reference for her masters application she had to remind her personal tutor who she was.

Nowadays, there are students attending university who should not be there. University is clearly not for everyone.

I agree. It is as if university is the default option these days, and it shouldn’t be.

@Ifailed due to train strikes I had to go with DD to open days as she had no other way of getting there without me driving her.