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Unexamined Opinions

11:06 / 16.05.05

So, anyway, I thought we could have a thread dedicated to unpacking our unexamined opinions.

Here's one of mine.

Okay, so I'm listening to Radio 4 at the mo' - there's something on about International Baccalaureates, and I've got to thinking, for the last few years I've assumed that our higher education system is pretty fucked.

It seems to me that getting into university is easier than ever*, and that degrees are becoming less demanding. Why do I think this? Well, the usual culprits are all present: personal experience, anecdotal evidence, hearsay and probably a bit of prejudice, oh yeah and maybe a smidgeon of yer achul fact.

The questions are, am I wrong? What evidence is out there for or against, and is it to be trusted?

*Perhaps not financially

11:40 / 16.05.05

Since the main way to rate success or failure in this field is achievement at standardized tests whose criteria and assessment are continiously changing, is there any meaningful way of testing this?

11:47 / 16.05.05

Well, that's a good question, and I'm not sure that there is. If that's the case, however, how are we supposed to diagnose problems within HE grading?

12:30 / 16.05.05

Allow me to throw my two pennies worth in here and regale you with the tale of teaching at a university. I've seen my class sizes grow at an alarming rate not matched by an adjustment in the assessment methods. So what I am currently faced with is three folding crates full of coursework from a variety of year groups, and a similar quantity of exams to follow. Corresponding to the increase in student numbers is a decline in the quality of the students overall. You still have your star performers, but the number of duds has exploded.

What does this mean then? Well, it means that I have less time to devote to marking each individual exam paper and coursework item as the deadlines haven't been shifted. The quality of my teaching has remained high (I'd like to think), but the fact that I can't sit down with a reasonably sized group and have a bit of a discussion is making itself felt (where before I taught 35 students, now I teach 120). At the same time the teaching staff are being pressured into accepting higher class sizes as more students equals more money, and god knows we're short of that in this particular Social Sciences department. Our degrees have not become less demanding. It's more a case of us having less time to weed out those incapable of performing.

If you have 120 students, it is just not possible to assess performance by assigning creative writing projects and similar exercises. My department as a whole is realising that there just aren't enough hours in the day to get through that amount of paperwork. So you inevitably have to take recourse in an adjustment towards standardised tests which mean you can at least get the marks in the system on time. It's a struggle between the standards of teaching one would like to uphold and the hard reality of the standards thrust upon you by the management.

12:54 / 16.05.05

Is there pressure (institutional and financial) to keep the student numbers up throughout the degree? My experience working at the periphery of the educational establishment would suggest there is. If so, do you find yourself being kind to underperforming students in order to prevent them from dropping out?

13:03 / 16.05.05

Seeing as teaching staff have very little input into the financial side of things, mos of the pressure is institutional (although rooted in the financial). And yes, there is pressure to keep the numbers up throughout the degree. Am I kinder to underperforming students? No, not personally. If a student has done badly they will get a bad mark from me. However I have on occasion been made to increase a mark through pressure from the administration. It's funny how they use language similar to the stereotypical mafioso making you an offer you can't refuse..."I think that on reflection you may find that there the potential for leeway in this case". Stuff like that.

13:08 / 16.05.05

So what I am currently faced with is three folding crates full of coursework from a variety of year groups, and a similar quantity of exams to follow.

You poor thing. Things seemed to have changed from 20 or so years ago when I remember my father coming home with a stack of exam papers. He would pour himself a big whisky, pile them on the arm of his chair, and plough through them pissing himself laughing.

13:19 / 16.05.05

I'd imagine that kind of pressure is pretty common - perhaps more so in depts which are underperforming.

Anecdotal evidence time.
Pappuce was at a uni which wasn't known for it Arts and Humanities degrees. Apparently there were many, many people in his class who were struggling with their workload because they didn't have the skills and/or ability to do the work, but next to none of these people failed.

Now, obviously Pap could've been wrong about his classmates, but you would've thought that 3 years spent in a classroom with the same people would tell you all you needed to know.

I should add that Pap actually took it upon himself to help a number of people with their essays. I remember how amazed he was that they made it on to the degree in the first place.

13:25 / 16.05.05

Pappuce was at a uni that wasn't known for it's Arts and Humanities degrees

Cambridge ?

13:27 / 16.05.05

Brunel

14:22 / 16.05.05

Arts and Humanities courses are considered a bit 'Walt Disney' at Cambridge as well though, aren't they ? I don't know if this is a view that's going to bear much scrutiny, but as I understand it, you can pretty much walk into that joint with a couple of D's in say, Art History, Design or Home Economics, just as long as you're not planning on studying a 'hard' science subject.

14:25 / 16.05.05

I applied to 'the other place' myself, of course.

14:42 / 16.05.05

And the fact that I 'didn't get in' is, I feel, beside the point.

14:51 / 16.05.05

It hasn't haunted my life like a cold, dark cloud that's always somehow there, in the corner of my eye, souring everything, always there in the corner of my eye as a constant reminder of the way thingsb could have been, if only... or anything like that.

15:29 / 16.05.05

(where before I taught 35 students, now I teach 120)

Wow, that is a really huge jump. Are the physical facilities strained as well? I'd imagine you'd have a major crush at the library, computer centers, etc.

15:44 / 16.05.05

Arts and Humanities courses are considered a bit 'Walt Disney' at Cambridge as well though, aren't they ? I don't know if this is a view that's going to bear much scrutiny, but as I understand it, you can pretty much walk into that joint with a couple of D's in say, Art History, Design or Home Economics, just as long as you're not planning on studying a 'hard' science subject.

From personal experience, I would say this is not true.

It is true that English, Social Science, History are a bit lighter on workload and feature far more "optional" components (though if you bum off lectures it's advisable to catch up in some way or other) than, say, the science ones. Plus your science-studying friends all hate you. But the bizarre association of Oxford with Arts/Humanities and Cambridge with science is really just a bizarre association these days.

There and again, most science students regard humanities as Walt Disney wherever you go.

15:47 / 16.05.05

So, Alec, why the unexamined opinion? What led you to believe that Cambridge treats arts degrees as Walt Disney?

17:00 / 16.05.05

Wow, that is a really huge jump. Are the physical facilities strained as well? I'd imagine you'd have a major crush at the library, computer centers, etc.

You wouldn't believe the scenes that take place on a daily basis in the library, which the vast majoriy of the student body seem to think is the communal meeting place in which to discuss your night out/new piercing/souped up nova at maximum volume. The campus has about two times too many people moving through it at any one point. But of course the students conveniently forget about this and thus I'm faced with a queue of people who "can't find a printer!" an hour before the deadline. I've given lectures in rooms where students had to sit on the floor because there's not enough seats.

I'd imagine that kind of pressure is pretty common - perhaps more so in depts which are underperforming.

Are you implying we're underperforming? Watch yer step, or yer goin' home in an amby.

Seriously though, we're hopelessly understaffed. Our staff to student ratio is 45 to 1, and this looks set to increase next year. Do we get more money? Heck no, because thanks to the RAE we were downgraded because we have to spend so much time teaching so we don't produce research. The university management sees this as us being lazy shits and so foists more teaching on us, dashing any chances we would have of ever improving our RAE rating. And thereby gaining higher levels of funding. It's rumoured that this is all a fairly transparent attempt to run our department into the ground so it can be closed and our resources redistributed among the departments that bring in pots of cash, like the engineering school or the biotechnology centre.

17:09 / 16.05.05

I meant depts where students are under-performing, and by pressure I was getting at staff being "encouraged" to lift grades.

18:30 / 16.05.05

Bobb;

My unexamined opinion is that it's 'easier' to get into Cambridge on an arts or humanitites ticket than it is do much the same thing at the alternative. It seems to me that Chemistry students, for example, at Oxford are possibly a bunch of jokers, and vice versa.

That aside though, I went to a bloody good university.

If... If my contemporaries didn't perhaps arguably scale the intellectual heights that some other people 'might' have done while taking heroin in straw hats in boats while discussing Thomas Hobbes, Plato and so on, they've all got bloody good jobs now. So what if they didn't get the opportunity to sleep with Emily Mortimer, at the time ?

It wasn't glamorous, where I went, it wasn't Brideshead Revisited, it was far from that, but the sound practical lessons I learned there - that you don't necessarily have a divine right to sit around chasing the dragon on a boat with Emily Mortimer, that these are priviledges that have to be earned, has at least given me something to aim for in life. All you Oxbridge fops though... I don't see where you can go, if you've already slept with Emily Mortimer.

I wouldn't swap my angry red-brick years for anything. They taught me everything I know about business.

Unless, y'know,