Who are Universities accountable to?

[Hattiedoodah]

An administrative issue has arisen with dd’s University - she has two exams scheduled which overlap (final year) so that she will effectively get half the time of the other students to complete the exams. She’s tried to resolve it with the student education service team and her faculty but has hit a blank wall as they said the exam timetable is set and cannot be amended. Who is the next person up the chain? I know with secondary school, ultimately if the staff won’t address a problem then you can go to the governors. With University - who is actually accountable for the fair running of the University? This seems so blatantly unfair I can’t believe the University is refusing to address it. Thanks.

Where have I claimed a ‘rich understanding of autism’, OP? A reasonable grasp of the issues, yes.

I do apologise for a rather slight level of sarcasm in the phrase concerning your DD’s academic excellence, but that’s one comment, not one of several as you suggest. It was within the context of a reasonable suggestion, as @Unihoolie understood. Also you can see I am not the only one who thinks you aren’t being objective towards me.

I’ve got a good amount of experience in this area and have been trying to point you to a pragmatically successful outcome, because I am not confident you will get the ideological one you seem to be seeking.

I am unaware that anyone has doubted your DD’s academic excellence. We get that you’re specially proud of it because of what she’s been through and I am sure that everyone shares my sympathy on this count. For a view on our perspective, why not (re)read @Unihoolie ’s eloquent last paragraph?

@unihoolie I've worked in HE a long time and never met anyone who wasn't putting students first, it's upsetting to think parents may feel like this when we spend so much time working with their children so they have the best experience and come out with the best degree possible.

The University’s response hasn’t chimed with this I’m afraid. Dd wasn’t even going to raise it originally because she was sure that the University would not care and not change anything. That is the impression students are being given. I think DD’s main dept are better, she is doing a degree containing more than one subject. This is one of the other departments, she says they are notoriously lazy and poor on admin. Anecdotally, she says one lecturer sends students pre-recorded lectures each week by OTHER lecturers, he hasn’t done one in person lecture, his assessments are always group projects (less marking). She is full of praise for most of her lecturers but there are still some crap ones out there who don’t care about their students.

The whole tone of the academic responses on this thread has been that the university may be finding the overall situation reasonable (and may or may not see a case for extra support for particular students). Leaving things largely as they are cannot be conflated in a blanket way with thoughtlessness. The policy a PP posted from Leeds Business School is evidence of this. Simply counting out the number of 48 hr time slots available M-F in a two or three week exam period as weighed against the number of modules (six?) taken by each student will give an idea of what the Registrar is up against.

The behaviour of the lecturer you describe is appalling and professionally deficient. But unrelated.

OP; can you acknowledge that your DD isn't supposed to spend 48 hours on the exam? That is only the window of time available to them to do 3 hours of work? I'm not sure what you're missing in the excellent advice given by others here.

Ditto. Last year’s 2nd year were very difficult at times, but this year, they’ve adjusted back to much more like pre-COVID cohorts. I had one delightful group. But they are still quite - umm - fragile, and tend to expect mitigations for what most people would consider to be really quite ordinary life circumstances where things aren’t entirely perfect.

Which bit of the advice have I missed? I’ve taken advice on looking up the guidance - found out how Uni does it and dd is going to clarify if it is on her timetable. I said at 23:23 that dd understands how 48 hour exams work (and by default I therefore do too). You should at least read what I said! I’ve thanked people for their contributions and answered their questions for clarification where I can. It doesn’t mean at the end of the day that I have to agree that this situation is fair because it absolutely isn’t.

What I’d like answered meaningfully is if the University is only expect 3 hours of work, why give 48 hours of time? And whatever the answer is to that question - why won’t a student getting more time to do research or revisions or have time to rest etc (VITAL for students with ASD) be at an advantage to one who has less. At the end of the day it’s a crappy situation and I’m surprised academics are so ready to defend it.

Dd is a great student, she is super keen, very hard working and passionate about her subject and has been singled out for her academic excellence by her department so I slightly resent the implication she is a Covid cohort difficult student.

@Hattiedoodah many if not most of the students I teach I could describe like this. Your DD is precious to you, but not so different from many students. But they are a different bunch to students I taught 10 years ago, and even those students would not have survived the kind of undergraduate experience I had - which I loved and relished! My current students, as passionate and able as they are, lack resilience and tend to overreact to what in the past would be considered quite ordinary life experiences. I worry about them going into the workplace, frankly.

So I think you need to realise that we academics and professional staff do know what we’re talking about. Your DD is of course unique to you. But she is one of a whole cohort, and those of us who are experienced university professionals see and teach and care for hundreds of students. A university cannot be organised around one student. We are trying to explain the university’s likely strategy and policy. If you don’t want to accept this, that’s your choice.

Universities make reasonable accommodations in line with the DDA and the EA. We take this very seriously. Take home exams over a longer period than 3 hours are one way that universities have adjusted their practices to accommodate everyone.

Your DD’s “perfectionism” you may see as an advantage or a special ability in her, but maybe the learning for her here is that she should try not to let being perfect get in the way of being good enough. Not letting the perfect destroy the good. This might be one of the most important things she could learn at university.

You may not like what you’re reading, but it’s offered in good faith in order to help you help your DD. And being rude to knowledgeable and professionally compassionate academics such as @poetryandwine and @titchy is not on. They’re giving you excellent food for thought.

The 48 hour window merely gives her a choice as to when to start the timed exam, that is how it works at my place.

Revision should already have been done, the 48 hours is not intended to facilitate her having seen the questions and then going back to research further to answer them.

@Hattiedoodah bottom line, I agree. Regardless of why some may not use all the allotted time, it should either be a straight 24 hours or 48 hours. If a number of students are affected, then it seems the university needs to do better to make the adjustments of either 24 hours/48 hours for all or alter the exam clash

Old time poster but regular name changer here: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought @poetryandwine was a former academic and not a current one?

Yes the comment @Hattiedoodah made about poetry or not caring was harsh and uncalled for.

BUT -

I have had several personal tutees with ASD. To a person they have been wonderful, and each of them has struggled with perfectionism. I know from sitting with DS officers on a number of Mitigating Circumstances panels that this is a typical (not to say uniform) ASD characteristic.

@poetryandwine I find this comment cringingly patronising, even if you didn't attend to be. I'm surprised more people didn't call you out on it, but not surprised the OP told you that you didn't properly understand. As a mother of a young person with autism & ADHD I would be rolling my eyes if any professional said something like this. It has usually meant someone smugly thinks they understand more than they do. This comes from my own lived experience, and I wish it didn't, so I can see why the OP reacted as she did.

As the OP said, but it never really got picked up, her DD having the combo of autism & ADHD is pertinent. I have ADHD myself and it's very relevant to how the DD is viewing this. A key trait of ADHD in particular is "time blindness". And a key trait for both is a heightened sense of injustice, so in this case being stuck on how others get 48 hours when the DD here will only get 24.

I get completely what the academics are saying about how the course tutors will expect the students to only spend X hours of work on the exam within the 48 hour period, and that the OP's DD has probably been spending longer than expected. However it is her time to spend, she had a set expectation of how much of a time window she'd have, and if you give people with ADHD in particular a time limit, they are usually going to go up to the wire. They/we usually struggle with managing time and need clear deadlines.

The issue is that the DD has traits with make her struggle with adapting to this change in her expectation and how she manages her time. Disability Services are the way forward, as others (including The Academics ) have said. Hopefully OP they can help her plan and adjust, if not able to change the circumstances.

Thanks, @WriterOfWrongs , that’s very interesting. FWIW I believe I was the first person to suggest tat, as you have validated, Disability Services is the way forward.

Can you articulate why the italicised comment is ‘cringingly patronising’? That would be very useful. I did not mean to suggest that everyone with ASD is delightful, if that’s what you’re getting at. I know many counterexamples. But my tutees have been.

@WickDittington I am a teacher. I am very well aware of how precious each parent thinks their child is and how academics won’t feel the same. However she is the the top 2% of her year so there aren’t many others like her in this particular cohort. She’s not always been the top of everything, her A-levels and GCSEs were good but not stellar but with her degree she has found her passion and an area to excel in.

I don’t perceive DD’s perfectionism as a positive trait - quite the opposite, it has her tying herself in knots and always feeling like she’s failing.

You are exceptionally lucky to have cohorts full of bright, motivated students. My family is full of teachers and there’s definitely a mixed bag of students in each year.

I totally agree with the resilience of teenagers - the world they are having to navigate is so unchartered and complex they are all unravelling. As the generations above we don’t know why or how to help, it’s going to take a long time to get back on an even keel if we ever do.

@WriterOfWrongs thank you for your post, it showed an enormous depth of empathy and understanding, it was appreciated.

@poetryandwine from my point of view it was a bit like the equivalent of saying you can’t be racist because you have a black friend. You were pigeon-holing every autistic person, which is an enormously complex and varied group into ‘well I know some nice ones’ and ‘I’ve been on a panel’ (which will have dealt with a variety of students, not just autistic ones) and equating that to having a depth of understanding about autistic students and their needs and challenges (whilst also totally ignoring the ADHD part). You only saw your tutees in a singular setting where they were no doubt masking as much as they could, I promise you, you had no idea what your students were really like.

I hope that OP and anyone else who think I was pigeonholing people with ASD by stating truthfully that my own ASD tutees have been lovely feels differently now that I’ve clarified I’ve known some utter jerks with ASD.

But my lovely tutees have shed enough tears and thrown enough missiles in my presence that once again I feel OP’s last sentence sells me, a complete stranger to her, short. OP you are awfully presumptuous about me.

Also no where did I ‘equate that to having a depth of understanding…. ‘ Just please stop putting words in my mouth OP. If you dispute that you are doing that, refer back to my own words.

I haven’t avoided the ADHD side of things for any particular reason.

Having spent 20 odd years in HE admin, and knowing how much my academics cared about all their students and wanted them to do their best, I think @poetryandwine sounds amazing, and her students are lucky to have her.

@Hattiedoodah wants a situation for her dd which i don't think she, or her dd, still gets. Good luck with the exams though.

@murasaki what do you mean by "...wants a situation for her dd which I don't think she, or her dd, still gets"? Do you mean the OP and her DD don't understand it?

Hi, as you asked :

yes your wording of "I have had several personal tutees with ASD. To a person they have been wonderful" felt cringeworthy to me. It felt patronising. I think you recognise know though that it was awkwardly worded and I appreciate you didn't meant it like that.

The next point was "each of them has struggled with perfectionism" when in the post from the OP you were replying to, the OP didn't mention perfectionism at all and gave a much more complex picture of her DD's executive functioning issues. It came across as simplistic and as if you understood, when while I think you're well-meaning and caring, your repeated talk of guidance and the expected amount of time to spend on an exam implies to me that honestly, you don't really get it (and you're clearly you're not the only one, you get it more than most). And that's a not a problem, but someone thinking they understand fully and knows best is problematic.

This is how I see it as someone who has ADHD and has postgrad degrees - so has experience of further ed system - and an 18 yo with autism & ADHD. I don't know if it's how the OP's DD views it of course but it might help her in explaining her POV and for academics on here to understand how she'll view it and how this could be an issue for their own neurodivergent students:

*if universities have a policy that 2 overlapping 48 hour exams won't be regarded as a clash, then this should have been made clear to all students in advance, and expressly clear to all autistic/neurodivergent students. That will make their expectation clear. The expectation an autistic or ADHD person has is critical. It shouldn't be up to these students to read it in the fine print, it's something that should be made clear. If it had been made clear to the OP's DD, it's very possible (having a daughter with the same conditions) the DD would not be objecting. Because her expectations had been managed and she'd had time to process it.

*regardless of what the guidance says about how time should be used within the 48 hour period, that is NOT how an ADHD/autistic student will view it. Because difficulties with time is a key part of the conditions. I would also still view it as 48 hours. Doesn't mean I'd work the whole time period at all. Far from it. But my brain would be focused on the 48 hours and not the guidance of say 3 hrs.

*having 2x 48 hour exam periods to juggle unexpectedly, and therefore halving their amount of time for each, will cause someone with ADHD and ASD to feel overwhelmed and panic. Again, it doesn't matter the the guidance says it should take (eg) 3 hours. That is not how our brains work.

*yes the university may give 48 hours when it won't take that long because 'life' will happen and they consider having another exam as being one of those situations akin to another student say experiencing a power cut - but it's not the same IMO because the scheduling of the overlap came from the university, it isn't something that 'arises' naturally.

There's usually a head of education in a department. Contact them. They can make arrangements.

Yes @murasaki - what don’t I understand? What does my dd who is in her third year of doing 48 hour exams not understand?

I’ve said we both understand very clearly that there is no expectation to work for 48 or even 24 hours on the essay.

@poetryandwine thank you for confirming you know some arses who are autistic, I think you’ve definitely reassured me now that you know enough about autistic and ADHD students to understand the issues my dd has with this exam overlap.

The course I lead doesn't have exams, but from my knowledge of HE, I think you have had some good advice.

I think nobody will pick this up until tomorrow, from those whom your DD has emailed already.

I think it's unlikely that you'll get a blanket change for all students to the exam timetable for this exam period.

I think the SU gave good advice and your daughter should look for a 'late submission '/extra time claim due to her ADHD/ASD.

I think your daughter should pick this up with her personal tutor/student services/head of dept to see what can be done in advance of summer exams.

I see what you're saying. It would be fairer to give all students a 24 hour period and ensure no overlaps. Or perhaps they could offer a choice of which 24 hour period. I don't know how it works with exams of this kind and if the university can set this up. I can see there is a mismatch between the intention of how these work and the reality of how students tackle them. I have to say it is not a comparitive test between cohorts who have to sit 3 hours in an exam hall and this format where students have more than the 3 hours to research, refine and polish. Not an ideal system.

Do check the assessment policy and complaints procedure if your DD feels she wants to go that route but the important thing just now is to get the best outcome for this set of exams, so the mechanisms they have are what the SU outlined.

It's ridiculous. I work at a uni. And we would move it. No clashes.

I can assure you all the students use that 24 hours or 48 to the max even though we are aware we are not expected to.

So someone who doesn't get it due to university actions (a clash) will thibk it unfair.

However most of us would just accept it's allowed per the rules as plenty of time in that period to do both. We'd just privately consider it's unfair (never arise with us as we only had 24 hours so no clashes and more slots to stick each exam in-just unfortunate if you had 2 in a row but not likely to occur if you stuck to models in your core discipline.

The problem is that in a three week exam period, which is the norm, there are a maximum of only six 48 hour slots which won't overlap. With even a small amount of multi-disciplinary courses it's impossible to timetable with no overlaps for anyone. Unless you start to count weekends in the timetabling - which is then detrimental to some groups of students (not to mention staff who have to work weekends).

Being pragmatic - if she's in the top 2% of the cohort, she's still going to get her 1st even with this overlap.