F inalienable year students affected by marking boycott

[fUNNYfACE36]

How is your final year student being affected?
Dd(dutham) will graduate on the planned date with a transcript of grades so far ,but not receive a classification until October.

You really are missing the point though. Pretending to care is not actually caring. Your employer in professional services (which I have also worked in, by the way) doesn’t give a fig whether you REALLY care. Management in universities don’t give a rat’s arse whether you really care about the students or not. Newsflash: they don’t think we’re delivering a professional service, either. And we aren’t. If you want a “professional service”, you can contract direct with a private tutor — don’t bother sending your kid to a university.

So many posters on this thread who don’t really know what they want higher education to be. Do you want a deliverable product? A “professional service”? A surrogate mum or nanny? A carer? Some kind of benevolent 1950s film academic smoking a pipe and talking fondly of “education”? Make up your minds! You can’t pay for one thing then demand it be something else you think it ought to be instead, and have buyer’s remorse about it afterwards.

Sorry if that’s a shock. If you voted Tory then you can’t really complain tbh: they were perfectly explicit about what they were turning the sector into.

No one gives a stuff if people really care or not. As long as they deliver.

I’m not seeing that. Nor missing the point.

Care or not students are being let down.

In the south east where I am a cheap 2-bed flat to rent costs well over half of net income on 42k (around 20k of net income a year). That’s the case for huge swathes of the country now. Is this news to you, or have you just been in La-La land for the last fifteen years?

I have younger children and nieces and nephews and care very much about the future of education
I just don’t think the non marking of final year exams and dissertations is the answer
It is so terrible for the final year students,and a very low way for Lecturers to act

@Motheranddaughter if you actually value your child’s university degree, perhaps you could write to the vice-chancellor expressing support for her lecturers being paid more.

That is, if you actually do want to do something, and not just complain about it whilst desiring that your child reaps the benefits of a university degree (but doesn’t want to pay the staff a decent wage for it).

I’m surprised more aren’t talking about this. Sounds hard

I just don’t think the non marking of final year exams and dissertations is the answer

So what is the answer? What can lecturers do other than withdraw their labour?

Well that’s great if you have a better answer - I can promise you we’d absolutely jump at that - better than having heartbreaking conversations with students and losing half my income for two months so that my kids don’t get a summer holiday. We’d absolutely love a better answer.

But we’ve been working for years and years to find a better answer and nothing less drastic is working. This really is a last ditch attempt to make things better.

So please let us know what you think the answer is.

You do seem determined to blame lecturers. If you are hoping to help students I've made some suggestions up thread. Hope they will be helpful to someone else if not to you.

It’s shit this is happening, but this is absolutely nothing to do with lecturers. This is the university not stepping up and doing their job. They’ve had months to prepare for this, to put in contingency plans or even - who knows - actually negotiating to find a solution and meet us somewhere in the middle.

Please don’t confuse university negligence with what we are doing.

It may be hard, but it's far from universal or unfixable.

I am sorry for any students who are worried about it, but I would say relatively few have cause to worry. Those who have cause to worry need to speak to their universities.

I hope it’s burn-out and not something more malign that leads to your unpleasant langage towards your students. It sounds like you should leave the profession. For your sake, the university and the students.

Agreed.

I see no criticism of students in that post from @myveryownelectrickitten

There is a reference to "precious kiddos". I would read that as a criticism of parents who expect lecturers to treat students like children.

What the fuck has how annoyed the parents are got to do with her? She's made a choice, she doesn't get to police how people, including parents (who if they are anything like us, are really struggling financially to support two at uni at the same time), feel about her choices.

Nobody has said that. Wanting your kid to have their work marked is hardly expecting them to be treated like children.

That was the nasty interpretation made by an angry lecturer who need to leave their job. I can’t imagine they offer their students anything positive anyway; their contempt will be obvious.

And parents caring about their own kids is hardly a shocking concept.

Sorry that you don’t like reality - did you vote Tory, presumably?

There’s no point getting all sanctimonious: these are just the consequences of your own actions.

It doesn’t work any more to try to guilt-trip the serfs by suggesting if we don’t ”care for” your precious kiddies for peanuts and a pay on the head, we are somehow morally deficient. Do you think we care about your daft opinions on how lecturers should just grovel and doff the cap to the “service users” for shit pay?

Train drivers get paid more than most academics. Are you elsewhere on mumsnet bewailing the moral indigency of the RMT as well?

Everyone wants something nice for cheap. We all want to get something for less than the “market value”, don’t we? However, if you want to get on your moral high horse, maybe you should be teaching your kids that if you value education, you also value the people who provide it — rather than acting as though it’s your right to get something for less than it should fairly cost. That’s to you too, @Cazelet.

*peanuts and a pat on the head, that should read! 😂

Why are you assuming that anyone angry with lecturers for not marking final work must have voted Tory? You sound unhinged.

Never voted Tory and never will. That would be a bit stupid for me as a (non-striking) NHS worker.

‘Do you think we care about your daft opinions on how lecturers should just grovel and doff the cap to the “service users” for shit pay?’

This is just mad ranting. I am more concerned by your vile tone. Your anger and toxic manner is making you incoherent. Other lecturers here have managed to make clear points without resorting to contempt for worried parents.

Anyway hope you find a career that suits you better.

Or drunk.

It seems it’s not their first career going by pp

Go back to first or maybe that was anger inducing too.

You’re a Labour voter who doesn’t believe workers should have the right to withdraw their labour, are you then, Cazelet? Really?

it’s pretty unhinged to think £42k is some kind of lavish salary these days. Hasn’t been so for decades now. (And many lecturers are paid less, or are paid piecework, or in fixed term jobs well below that pay threshold.) Many in their 30s and 40s with several books or grants behind them, families, childcare costs.

But snippy comments about not being able to pay the bills are OK from you; but you don’t like a bit of snippiness back? Sounds like you like to dish out the moral opprobrium but don’t like it coming back. Try getting off the high horse for once, and think through the logic of your own position. If you hold university staff in such low esteem, why do you think we should care what you think? If you think we’re just there to give the customers what they should have, then perhaps you need to look better at what you paid for.

This is all very toxic and I am going to take a step back and focus on supporting my DC

😂 ah, a non-striking NHS worker complaining about other workers’ right to withdraw their labour? Righty-ho. I expect you are super keen on your current workload and pay, and being treated like a servant by the “service users”?