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.

@titchy yes agreed, inspite of the University.

Yes, sorry, i rmeant that I'm not sure they get how the exam works, but as OP is adamant they do, so be it. Good luck to to the daughter in any case, it sounds as if she will do well however it plays out.

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).

In my experience, including Saturdays in exam timetabling is the norm.

This still gives only nine slots for 48 hr exams over three weeks. If the norm is six modules per student it remains a formidable timetabling problem, particularly for Schools with various flavours of Joint Hons students

We don't include weekends in our exam timetabling thankfully, I wouldn't be happy if we started asking that of staff. We are expected to be available throughout our assessments.

@Hattiedoodah
Your criticism of @poetryandwine is well out of order. I didn't find her tone patronising at all. Plus you need to be very careful telling other posters about their lack of experience, re hospitals and injustice. You have no idea what fights each of us have had to endure. I myself have had plenty of corkers, but mine are nothing compared to what some MN'ers have endured. It's not a competitive race here. If you want good advice, mn has plenty if you are open minded enough.

If an institution has a large number of mature students (likely to have kids around at the weekend) or a particularly deprived intake (more likely to need to work weekends) that will disadvantage such students.

This is very much the norm across universities.

Allowing ND students an additiona 48-hour time period to complete both exams would be the easy response by the university. However, this response is not in the best interests of ND students as one 48-hour time period is more than enough time to complete both exams.

Effective time management, priortisation and an ability to work under pressure are essential workplace skills. It's really important to encourage all students to develop build these skills during university, not just NT students. Not encouring ND students to develop these skills during university would be a seriously failing on the part of the university.

I’m sure it does to a greater or lesser extent, but you could say the same about teaching/examining on Friday afternoons.

@JocelynBurnell Your post above makes an excellent point.

The OP mentioned towards the beginning of the thread that her DD plans to start a Master’s degree in Sept. If there is a thesis element, problems with planning, executive functioning and perfectionism could impinge much more than they may on the present issue (even with mitigations). As the DD is obviously very capable intellectually, this would be really sad.

The university should be helping her to address these issues as an undergraduate.

I've been thinking further on this overnight. I suspect that the OPs daughter is a historian given the reference to the British Library. If this is the case then it I do think that she probably is disadvantaged as its likely to be a 48 hour turn around essay rather than a more traditional style write as much as you can in 3 hours exam. Its a different proposition to a STEM paper where at the end of the day you need to do a series of calculations that should ive you the correct answer miht take more than hours by the time you've checked and double checked your figures etc but not the same. Most history students will read the essay title and then go off and mull over it for a while to start to work out their line of argument, then go through their module notes pulling out relevant info/quotes and sources which is probably a lot of the first 12 hours if not more. Then they'll plan the essay. They'll probably start it the first night and then finish it the next morning - say another 4 hours. Then comes the painful task of cutting it to fit the word count, formatting and sorting out the footnotes and bibliography. That could easily be another 4 hours in itself. So 20 hours of work in a 48 hour period. With the overlap that will leave OPs DD with a serious time shortfall which other student's won't have. Its all very well the university saying she doesn't need to spend that time on the essay but other students will because they can and she can't so she is disadvantaged.

In case anyone thinks I'm exaggerating my DD is currently writing an end of module essay. Its taken her over an hour to track down a quote from Plato's Republic and work out whose translation it was from. So one quote of about 20 words in a 2500 word essay.

Its a far cry from the 10 hour essay papers in a week of my finals but just as demanding.

However OP I agree with the various academics' suggestion that her best course of action is the request for extra time for submission rather than tryin to overwrite the clash.

The 6 units being examined in one semester is overkill. Our uni examines 3 units. Not 6.

It's over examining.

Off-topic, but the BL isn’t useful for actual research at the moment. It’s holding up a couple of my projects - a bit of a disaster. Its systems are still almost totally unusable still after a scum bag Russian ransomware attack in October.

It’s a big empty study hall. So anyone going there to do real research cannot at the moment.

It's a nightmare isn't it. However as the Op's DD is an underrad I can't imagine she's after anything too esoteric

@JocelynBurnell - dd has worked really hard on these skills, hence her academic success, which wouldn’t occurred if she hadn’t but as I said before, I feel the 3rd yr examinations contributing to her final grade don’t seem like the right place to test them to the limit, particularly if most other students ND/or not, will, as it stands, have twice the amount of time than dd will to organise, plan or even be perfectionists!

@poetryandwine you can teach these skills (or address these issues as you say) as much as you like (I’m not sure if dd’s Uni has or hasn’t been supporting dd with them) but ND are always going to find them challenging. DD is going for a taught masters rather than a research based one which will give her more structure. As I’m sure you are aware there are many autistic/ADHD academics (what dd is aiming for) so I’m sure dd will be ok. She is going for a taught masters rather than a research based one which will give her more structure. My dh’s workplace has a much higher than average number of ND people, many, many of them educated to Masters level and thankfully thriving in the workplace. Phew.

@writerofwrongs - thanks for that excellent explanation of why @poetryandwine’s comment was cringe. I hope all the helpful academics read and digested it as it will help them support their ND students.

@WickDittington DD isn’t a Historian, she was at the BL studying with some friends who are at London Unis (which she is not) so not doing research but finishing an essay and doing some revision I think, but really awful to hear it has suffered from the malware attack 😱.

@londonmummy1966 - absolutely everything you said also applies to dd’s subject, spot on!

OP, I did learn something from @WriterOfWrongs . However if she was referring to me as ‘someone thinking they understand fully and knows best’, I also don’t think most people will have found that in the words I have written and I reject anyone’s possible claim of omniscience in finding an unexpressed meaning.

There is a lot of ground between complete ignorance and expert status.

I am glad your DD is doing a taught Master’s

@Hattiedoodah, have you ever considered that your own attitude is adding to your DD's difficulties? A more positive and encouring outlook could help her a lot.

*apologies for the repeating of her doing a taught masters!

@JocelynBurnell - Wow! I don’t agree with everyone on a thread so now I am a bad parent. You gotta love mumsnet! I am nothing but supporting and encouraging to dd. So no, my attitude is not my DD’s problem. In this case the incompetence of her University is and their unwillingness (so far) to accept their role in disadvantaging her and other students (ND and NT). I have kept my frustration to a minimum in front of her, you know, the way good parents do 🙄.

JocelynBurnell didn't call you a bad parent. She simply questioned your attitude. After reading through the thread, I'd question the level of your involvement. Your DD is old enough now to not really require you to be researching minutiae like this on her behalf. PP are also correct; how do you expect her to enter the workplace when you micro-manage to this extent?
Unis are giving extensive leeway to all students - online exams, exams that can be completed in 48 hours (!). Asking for more than this may be severely stretching the friendship.

Not read the full thread but I'm with you on this OP. From a non academic it seems patently unfair that some students get less time than others.

How am I micro managing? I helped dd write an email to the Uni about the timetable clash after she mentioned it to me. Independently of dd, because I had no idea how these things work, I asked on a parenting forum if anyone knew who was answerable at a University so that I could advise dd if necessary. That’s it. It’s the only time in three years I’ve had anything to do with Uni admin, she’s done everything else independently. Dd NEVER asks for help with anything so the one time she did I was more than willing to. Hardly the definition of a micromanaging parent!

I work in a university and am also a student there. I would expect the departments to work together to find a solution for any student with a clash like this.

I do think it’s worth the academics on here trying to step away and just think very, very simply, is it fair for one student to have 24 hours for an exam and another to have 48 hours for the same exam? If your answer is yes, it’s absolutely fair then I will have to admit I am going to have to review my thinking of both the concepts of time and fairness. My mind is genuinely blown to think anyone would say it is.

If Universities are unable to timetable 48 hour exams effectively and they only expect students to spend a couple of hours on an exam (dd got back to me on that, 2 hours for hers) then surely reducing the time period to one which would allow them to timetable properly would seem the blindingly obvious solution and one it’s difficult to justify not doing.

Anyway, as I am now being called a micromanaging parent with a bad attitude towards my dd (as I try to help her with a problem - what a terrible parent I am!) I think I should perhaps retire from this thread as it devolves into the usual mumsnet nastiness. Many thanks to those who have genuinely tried to advise, it is appreciated.
Hopefully some of the academics have learned from @WriterOfWrongs excellent insights about ND students as well.

If that's so, I'm glad. I just know of a few parents of ND kids (now's young adults) that have done just this and it's really not been the best for their development. One, in particular, cannot function in society on her own. If that's not what's happening here, that's fantastic.

There's no need to leave the thread because of my post.