Be Excellent To Each Other

I was just sat on the train, and the woman next to me pulled out a piece of paper headed 'Coursework - Law - Module A' and on that sheet was a list of names, with percentages and grades written next to them.

She then pulled a second clean sheet of paper out, headed 'Coursework - Law - module B' with the same list of names. She then proceeded to fill in the percentages and grades on that sheet, with no points of reference other than the first sheet. Pretty much everyone got within 10% for Module B what they got for Module A, apart from poor Adebola who got 32% less than the very high Module A mark.

Is this what teaching has come to?

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

Seriously, I was always pretty convinced that often our lecturers at uni never marked stuff properly.

Other than that being 100% bollocks, spot on.

I totally disagree. I had so many lecturers at university who blatently couldn't actually cope with the real world and for whom lecturing was a highly paid doss. Mrs Chinny had exactly the same experience (actually resulting in the two worst offenders being sacked).

If you can't hack your industry any more, get a cushy job lecturing. You can turn up late, not mark students work and have countless days off sick or at training courses.

The nadir of this was turning on the local Cheese FM to hear our radio station management lecturer covering the breakfast show and knowing full well the lecture was at 9 and there was no way he was going to be there.

I'm not saying there aren't good eggs, but outside of primary and secondary education it's a highly paid doss.

You have no freaking idea of the pressure academics have to work under. You are constantly having to fight tooth-and-nail to bring in research grants whilst scrapping through the worst internal politics I've ever seen in any workplace, ever.

It's not a case of lecturing being easy; it's a case of lecturing being bottom priority for most academics. And the personalities that make a good researcher and those that make a good lecturer being totally opposed, and good lecturing not being rewarded or recognised by the authorities.

I know a lot of lecturers....

actually, y'now what, I'll refrain.

I'm not talking about "proper" lecturers who probably only make up a small percentage of the total lecturer population. I'm talking about lecturers who aren't working in subjects requiring research and grants which is quite a large proportion of them. The ones who amble in, do some lecturing, hide in their offices and hand back work late.

I won't even mention the fact that one of our lot lectured for six years before being sacked for having no qualifications. Or the fact that he pretended to have cancer. Or the fact he actually came across as the most professional and by far the most hard marking of the lot and took the most interest in the proper academic side but turned out to be a pathological liar and a fraud.

Or the two Mrs Chinny had who lived it up on university expenses, turned up when they felt like it and went totally mental when the students questioned this. The head of faculty was too scared to disipline them and all the staff knew what they were like. They were fired eventually but apparently it had been going on for years.

I don't normally go in for drama, but I'm curiously interested to hear more about the pathological liar man.

PS - I want all of my future jobs to be total dosses, be they in academia or not.

The plural of "anecdote" is, of course, "data".

All of my lecturers were ace, by the way, with one exception out of approximately 20 (across two universities and a law school). And it wasn't her fault she was portugeuse and couldn't speaka the inglesi very well.

I didn't go to University or college for a degree, but did do my accountancy training there on day release. Our fees were something like £4k per student per year for 30 days in uni, and we averaged 20 people in the class. This was before the days of proper tuition fees

With one exception (the marketing lecturer), we had fantastic tuition throughout the four years. When we gave feedback, the university examined it closely, in that the lecturers we rated got shit marks from undergraduates, and the one who we thought was shit got great marks from the under/post graduates.

Turns out that the attitudes of the staff to the two groups was directly related to the amount paid by students. Most of the lecturers knew we were paying through the nose so gave us great tuition as they didn't want to lose the fees, whereas the marketing lecturer was a proper professor who was only willing to give proper tuition to people who wanted to study the subject, rather than guys like us who just needed to pass the module. I thought his was the better attitude, but was also selfishly happy that we got some pretty good tuition.

The amount of helpful attention we received at university was directly proportional to how interested we were in the modules. For a literature course, there were a shocking amount of people present who didn't enjoy reading, and it visibly depressed the fuck out of a lot of the lecturers. If all you care about are marks and job prospects, there are much more sensible degrees to do than English bleedin' Literature.

Which is absolutely fair enough. Why should a lecturer waste their time on you if you can't be arsed to show up or make any effort?

Can't really say that much as his sacking was after I left. He was a bastard hard lecturer who I did a Spanish module to avoid (because even if I did badly in Spanish, it would be no harder than his bastard hard marks). He seemed genuinely more of an academic than the rest combined though so we were more than a little surprised to find out he had been booted out.

Very true, but that works both ways.

Yep, but you're the one working towards a qualification, not them.

Well indeed, but in my experience the number of students who can't be arsed outweighs the number of lecturers who act the same by a factor of, oooh, infinity.

Oh, that's exactly what I was suggesting, mate. It was meant to be a hopeful antidote to Riles' post about the teachers whose interest seemed to be based on the size of a student's fee.

I agree with Chinny to a certain extent. A fair few lecturers will do as little as possible, hide in their rooms and take 3 hours lunches, but things are changing. I used to work for the Business and Computing Deanery here but they couldn't keep 2 techies on due to falling numbers.

Apparently the demographics of the country are bizarre at the moment with a major trough in the amount of uni aged kids on their way through (born in the early 90s i guess). This is causing major waves in smaller universities and the academics have been told "attract new students, do world leading research (or both) or you lose your job". This has happened in the Computing department (17 academics and 2 support staff became 9 academic and 1 support) and other areas are suffering. I reckon we'll start to see more specialised unis in the next decade or so. Where I work is known for theology and education for example, but you wouldn't come here to study science unless you were desperate. I attended Teesside which is renowned for Computing and Sports/Health Sciences. I see this as a good thing.

(Wow, what a load of waffle)

Agreed

I loved Maths all the way to GCSE and had dabbled in some basic elements of mechanics and just knew I was going to love A Level, in fact signing up for Further Maths from the outside and hence doing Pure maths to achieve this, rather than the career-useful stats side.

Two days before our Sixth Form induction, Mr Morgan died - all he taught was A level maths. For the first two weeks of the course we were given a shitty supply teacher under the understanding,( including letters to our parents) that this was a short term measure, and she wasn't of A level standard. We of course had her for the full two years - I have never had anyone in any walk of life who was such a terrible educator. No-one got higher than a C for Maths, or sat the Further paper. The Stats stream (in practice, those who were not as good at the outset) who were taught by another teacher all got As or Bs.

Oh, right. Maybe it's because I did compsci/physics BSc but we didn't have any of those at all -- in Cardiff Uni, at least, neither department would employ such a person. We had plenty of terrible lecturers, but from a different stripe (the career academics with no social skills).

Where were these demon lecturers you are talking about? Which Uni, department, and what level did they lecture at?

They don't.
Every year I have to deal with students showing up at the end of may and complaining they can't log in. I check the records and these numpties will have an attendance in the 10-20% range and no submitted assignments. A lot wise up, repeat the first year and carry on, but some literally bum their way through 1, 2 or even 3 first years (and student loans) before giving up and getting a job in MacDonalds.

We had one lecturer who had about 5 shit anecdotes that he would repeat week after week. After year 2 people were rolling their eyes and shouting out the end of the anecdotes.

I had to pity our poor Palestinian lecturer who was sent over from another department to help with writing style and how to delivery of work, writing style, etc. You know, first year stuff. She kept on going on about how she was looking forward to going back home (she was leaving at the end of term) and how it was a wonderful place and was safe now. About a month after she went back they all started beating the shit out of each other again.

As I say, thats the way it should be. But I was happy of the attention we got at the time.

I do however believe that the '50% of all youung people should go to university' aspiration peddled by our govenrment should be restated as 'As many people as possible get a really valuable learning experience in a subject that they care passionately about'.

You've missed one type of lecturer out.

The type who takes their students work and then flies off to another country presenting it as his own.

Oh, moddy-woddies?

Heh, didn't finish my point. These students are spotted quickly as wasters and pretty much cut loose. The lecturers will chase for a few weeks and then give up. Some students still manage to submit assignments and pass without attending much (erm, including me) but lecturers have the attitude that if you don't want to attend, they're not going to make you. It's your dime, dude.

Of course, there may be a difference of quality of lecturer depending on what establishment you're studying at... Nene, say, wasn't ever going to attract top flight lecturers.

That's assuming that university is about education, rather than preparation for the workplace. And given how much of a say the CBI gets on even secondary education matters...

Learning for learning's sake is totally not a New Labour thing.

Oddly, wifey had the time of her student life at Manchester Metropolitan University. It was when she did her Masters at University of Manchester it was a right royal fuckup.

My theory is the poorer, less popular establishments have to work their socks off, and the big guns just cost along on reputation.

'University of Northampton' I presume?

The good ones certainly do, yes. It's a bloody uphill struggle though, considering both the level of inverstment you're going to get (not that many tasty wonga wodges from the foreign students, for one thing) and the average level of student.



Is *that* what it is? I just remember Nene being the boogey man when we were applying for university places, with its "two Fs and you're in" application strategy.

A few people had a bit of a problem with me at A-Level because I managed to skip almost every Lit class in the first year and receive one of the highest marks the school had ever awarded for a daft last-minute Othello essay.

If you're doing enough research on your own, you'll always be fine. Of course, I quickly changed my tune when I was paying 3000+ pounds a year for my larnin'.

Oxbridge and the red-bricks are never going to run out of students but the smaller unis will struggle. In Liverpool alone your looking at Liverpool Uni, JMU, Liverpool Hope and Edge Hill. Further afield come the Manchesters, Chester (and it's satellite colleges) and numerous Lancashire options.

Like I said, there's a shortage of teenagers coming through and margins are already tight. Crappy lecturers *will* be squeezed out. It's already begun

At law school if you have less than 80% attendance on any subject you have to explain yourself satisfactorily to the college council or be kicked off. This is a Law Society requirement for their accreditation of the qualification, I think.

I remember looking at Aberystwyth in the same way. For the courses I was looking at, the minimum requirement was 1 UCAS point in 1998.

MyFinger went to Aber, as did my ex, so I've spent a lot of time up there. MyFinger at least did a politics degree though -- the international politics department of Aberystwyth is one of the few well-regarded deparments there. That and sports science.

I got a new job last year as an engineering apprentice which means I need to go to college and during my first couple of months I was getting really frustrated with the lecturers because it felt like a lot if them were ex engineers who took a lecturing job as a bit of a doss and the standard of teaching seemed to be suffering as a result. However, I have since come to realize that they are doing the best they can when faced with the sort of numpties that I have to take classes with.
I thought long and hard about taking an apprenticeship at my age since the wage drop was considerable but decided it was worth it in the long run since my work will pay for by degree and the wages will be better after my fourth year than what I earned previously.
What I didn't consider was the impact of spending two days a week in a class full of 16-18 year old neds. It is at times soul destroying.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is I have a lot of admiration for any lecturer who has managed to not physically assault any of their lecturees.

I'd hate to try and light a Bunsen burner while pole vaulting.

Yep, these days it has a good rep (good party town for it's size) but back then they were really desperate

edit (brain, silly): My brother was assistant manager of the Varsity there for 2 years so I've spent a fair amount time there too. I actually proposed there.

Eek sorry I've got a new phone and appear to lose all sense of sentence structure whilst using it.

Interesting fact! You are one year younger than me, or took a Gap year.

I hated all the rich cunts who did Gap years and then prattled on about how they spent time with the natives of Bongo Bongo land and how it was so wonderful to experience Bongo-Bongoan life for real rather than as a holiday, because you just don't see the *real* Bongo Bongo otherwise, do you? And they're *so* quaint. Here, one of the litle Bongo Bongoan children took a shine to me and made me this ethnic necklace from their own teeth

Cunts.

I did a gap year. I was a nuclear physicist.

Ah, I remember our studio systems and design lectures. Pretty much every other week we went to McDonalds instead to have a management meeting for the radio station we were running. Still got respectable marks.

One guy only ever turned up for the first lecture, and still passed it with a 2:1. Got his mates to collect the assignments for him. I wouldn't say it was a easy module, but anyone with the slightest technical knowledge about TV and radios studios could pass it. The non techy people struggled more, but I found it a walk in the park.

Gap year? Who do think I am, Grim...?

I'm 29.

See? *That's* how to spend a gap year. Apprenticed to an evil genius.

We're short of nuclear physicists, by the way. And the fact that all the new nuclear reactors are going to be deisgned, built and run by foreigns isn't going to help with this.

None of our lot did this although my mate did take a year off to work in the industry before his degree.

Ironically he did a world tour last year and is currently in Australia drinking it dry while also working in his chosen industry. Another of my mates also did a world tour and then went back to Thailand but that was more down to personal circumstances.

I feel exactly the same if you swap "Bongo Bongo life" for 'partying', "Bongo Bongo land" for 'University' and "rich cunts who did gap years" to "students".

FTFY. Meep meep meep.

I'm with Chinny.

There were a group of 3 lecturers who only looked after 1st year degree Students when I studied in Leeds, so had precisely fuck all responsibility apart from making sure they drank more than anyone else, tried for cheap thrills on days out with female students for better marks (no shit) and organising tutorials that gave you 0% useful feedback and 100% negativity about the state of the industry.

A couple of my Lecturers were great mind, and the technicians were pure awesome.

I recall a 3rd year animation lecturer who had just been laid off by Hanna-Barbera and was utterly bitter about having to teach at Teesside. God was he rude about students and their chances of getting a job.