Lectures end in April??

[HannibalLecture]

My DC says lectures finish at the end of April. Russell Group uni, Politics degree. No end of year exams.
Is this the norm for most unis?
What with the tuition fees we pay I'm feeling a tad short-changed!

Nope - usually end may or early June. Some courses may well not have exams though.

That sounds about right. Lectures finish end of April, then exams are mid-May into early June.

No exams seems odd but maybe they’ve just happened to choose modules where they’re assessed via coursework or exams taken throughout the year.

End of March at my ds's uni, a month off for Easter, a week or 2 of exams and that's it.

Not unusual ime. Does he have assignments to finish even if no exams,

You know, part of teaching is assessment?

Academic staff will be flat out marking from May to early June so degree results can be processed for finalists graduating in July and other years progressing into the next stage of their degrees.

I usually have upwards of 160,000 words worth of essays and dissertations to mark in a 3 week period in the summer term. This work has to be done no matter the state of my health, my other work commitments (such as PhD students) and the usual administrative matters to do with teaching (advising tutees, feedback tutorials, writing references for graduating students and so on).

It really varies. DD's uni and course (Eng lit) had no lectures or seminars after Easter. Just exams and assessments due. She chose options with no exams and in her final year her last assessments were due in IIRC on about 28 April and then 2 and 5 May. Then all done.

DS2 is doing STEM at a different uni and has a summer term with lectures into May and exams in June.

Pretty much that, Ds was at RG, had 5 weeks off at Easter, back for 2 weeks of teaching, then exams and was finished in first year around 25th May, hung around for a week chilling and then we collected him. Same for years 2 and 3 as well. Basically 4-5 weeks before the official end of term.

Yes but normally lots of exams in the summer.

If your dd has time off, tell her to get a job.

My lectures finish in April but I carry on teaching into the summer term. STEM

RG, if it makes a difference.

We usually have a three week break in the second semester for Easter (not for staff obviously, students) but this year because of when Easter falls we teach straight through and then the students get their three weeks before the exam session. I teach on both semesters and run our exam boards - the second semester will already be well underway when we are marking and holding our first semester board. It's relentless.

Presumably your DC will have some essays or similar if they don't have exams.

Thanks all!

Son only had lectures in first two terms each year. Third term, after Easter, was for revision and exams. Maybe the odd revision based tutorial but no new learning. That was RG. They actually do very little each year given holidays - lots of “personal” free time they can do what they want with, even during active teaching weeks.

Bear in mind that university teaching usually involves more than just lectures. There are also labs, seminars, tutorials etc.

The amount of time students need to spend working to complete a course is supposed to be equal, regardless of discipline or how much contact time they get.

And different subjects will need different kinds and amounts of contact time. The area I teach in requires students to read a lot - reading for each module might take up at least a day. We could all sit in a room and read each novel , play, or other text together and count that as “contact” hours. But it would be a stupid waste of my time …

Pretty normal for a UG course which starts in September.
Just because the lectures have finished doesn't mean the work has! There will be deadlines into May.
Then there is time for marking, moderating and exam boards in the summer.

Dd 3 is first year at KCL
Her lectures finished the week after Easter .
She has coursework that need submitting end of May

It is pretty normal (especially on a semester system) for lectures to finish in April, but it would be unusual if there were no deadlines or coursework later in the spring. At many universities May and June are assessment season, perhaps with some revision sessions thrown in but not new material to be covered.

It is also unusual for there to be no form of assessment in the first year: are you sure there isn't a piece of coursework they should be working on after April if there are no exams?

Also, part of the reason uni is different from school is that the students are meant to be doing significant amounts of reading and thinking between contact sessions. Of course they can just doss around and do the bare minimum, but it will come back to bite them as they will then do less well in the exams/assessments than those students who have been working through their reading lists, making notes, consolidating their learning etc. I make clear to my first year students that the contact hours are the tip of the iceberg in terms of the work they should be doing, and they are responsible for managing their own learning in between and coming to sessions well prepared and with a sense of what they need to get out of them.

Thanks all! Hopefully there will be some assignment or other to finish.
I know lecturers work hard but so do teachers (I am one!) and we teach right through until mid-July and start back at the end of August.
Anyway it is what it is.

Lecturers also teach throughout the summer.
We don't just teach UG students who start in September.
August is the only month I have no teaching but I am supervising master's dissertations and PhD students.

Teaching is also only about a third of my job role. University lecturer is a very different job to a school teacher.

It's not about teachers vs academics, they're very different jobs. Teaching is only about 40% of the typical academic's workload (although it takes up more time than that ime), and it's not like the teaching bit of the job disappears when the students do - as many of us have explained, marking and exam boards etc carry on months after teaching ends.

We're all pro education, it doesn't need to be a battle.

@HannibalLecture my DC is at UCL and lectures finish in April. They have exams in May/June, then done.

Make sure they plan to get a productive summer job!

Cambridge maths, 12-hour lectures and 2-hour tutorials each week, with only 8 weeks this term. UK universities are too expensive and uncompetitive.

Do you think those are the only hours the academics work? And that students are only paying for the hours they're in lectures?

What else could the academics do? Modules especially maths modules are hundreds of years of knowledge. You don't even need to prepare the lectures.