More university dick moves...

[SckizoBoy]

OK, rant time... I'm doing two things at the moment. One, a guy's homework, and two, a letter of complaint...

Why? The chap got stabbed a couple months ago and it took him half a term to recover from it... yet his uni won't give him any extension on his coursework and he's already missed loads of lectures...

Thankfully, it's chemistry, and I'm pleasantly surprised how much of it I remember... and squeeing at the first year style-y questions!

So... uh... topic of discussion... *shrug* what dumb policies does your department have which they idiotically stick to regardless of how stupid everyone knows they are?

 

[Wadders]

We have to sign attendance sheets every single damn seminar - it's university, not secondary school where they take registers. Not only that, but postgraduates such as myself and undergraduates have to sign separate registers if they are in the same class. Its almost like the admin dept. want to drown themselves in paperwork.

Seems a bit petty to complain about that when your mate got stabbed though! That's some heavy shit! Its ridiculous that he's not allowed an extension - I', pretty sure there should be processes in place where he can appeal that and at least get some marking concessions or something.

 

[capper42]

This was at University of Exeter in the UK, a place which now actually has the balls to charge students £9000 a year for the same courses as before. They recently spent a few million quid building a giant glass roof to go over the library/on-campus shops, just because they thought it would look good on the prospectus. It took a few years to build as well, so the students who attended in the interim spent their entire university years learning in what amounted to a huge, ugly building site.

Universities seem to spend the majority of their resources in attracting new students. Whilst I see why this is important, obviously, I can't help but feel neglected now I'm in my third year.

£9000 is an extortionate amount of money, I'm so glad I came a couple of years before that was put in place. £27,000 is a crippling amount of debt to start your working life with.

 

[Ryotknife]

This was at University of Exeter in the UK, a place which now actually has the balls to charge students £9000 a year for the same courses as before. They recently spent a few million quid building a giant glass roof to go over the library/on-campus shops, just because they thought it would look good on the prospectus. It took a few years to build as well, so the students who attended in the interim spent their entire university years learning in what amounted to a huge, ugly building site.

Universities seem to spend the majority of their resources in attracting new students. Whilst I see why this is important, obviously, I can't help but feel neglected now I'm in my third year.

£9000 is an extortionate amount of money, I'm so glad I came a couple of years before that was put in place. £27,000 is a crippling amount of debt to start your working life with.

15k dollars? that is chump change in terms of debt. Most people in the US get 4x that amount, with doctors getting about 10x that amount.

Thankfully due to a loophole I managed to come out of college with a measly 15000 debt which i paid off in 4 years even without an entry level engineering job.

EDIT: whoops thought 9000 was total debt, so it looks like you get about 45k debt in terms of dollars, that is closer to what we get over here.

 

[capper42]

snip

Yeah, it's about $45,000, more if you include the maintenance loan, but that's different because that money actually goes directly to the student.

As was said before, the cost of university here has tripled recently, from a reasonable £3000 to a ludicrous £9000.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I had to go to lectures, let me back up abit-

I studied 3D model related degree and the lecture we go to were more about moderization in buildings or design in general therefore the lectures has nothing to do with our course at all and a complete waste of time (no we never once design buildings or architect related or anything about changing a style to a design). This applies to everyone in the Design deparment so while interior design or architect groups get the benefits, we didn't. We were pretty much force to go to it since we get told off for not attending it and needless to say, there has been a few times that I dose off to sleep.

 

[Wadders]

My university charged £3250 per year. During my last term I got 2 hours of tuition per week. One lecture, one tutorial.

I believe the excuse was that because third year is dissertation year, they wanted to focus on "independent study time". Well you know what? I could study independently and not have to pay £3250 for it. Yeah, basically tuition was just an undergraduate degree processing cost.

This was at University of Exeter in the UK, a place which now actually has the balls to charge students £9000 a year for the same courses as before. They recently spent a few million quid building a giant glass roof to go over the library/on-campus shops, just because they thought it would look good on the prospectus. It took a few years to build as well, so the students who attended in the interim spent their entire university years learning in what amounted to a huge, ugly building site.

I also spent a year on exchange at University of Toronto. Not only were the tuition fees half the cost of those at Exeter due to the way the program worked, but I also got a glimpse at what you're actually supposed to get at uni. Toronto had the fourth biggest library in North America, and each college had its own individual library. The smallest library on campus was still bigger than Exeter's main library. I also got to do five modules per term (compared to two per term at Exeter), with way more variety in what you could choose to study, got sixteen hours tuition per week, and free access to the main leisure centre as well as the gym in the student accommodation where I was staying. They even had programs in place to help international students find work on campus, since you can only work for the university when you're on a student visa.

Rant over. Conclusion? Exeter sucks and Toronto is absolutely ballin'.

But back to the OP's story. Got stabbed? Walk it off, baby! This is a learning sphere, not a bleeding sphere.

Yeah we get shafted in England as far as value for money goes. Some courses have 2 or 3 times as many taught hours, yet charge the same, madness really, but if you want that nice bit of paper at the end of it all, suck it up!

I'm paying £4995 for an MA, for which I will have 5 hours teaching a week. Now I know MA's are supposed to be regarded higher, but it's just ridiculous. My taught hours are basically just verbal re-runs of stuff I've already learned while sat in my room/ the library reading.

Also, correct me if I'm mistaken, but dont Scottish people get University for free if they go in Scotland? And the Welsh get their fees half price if they go to Uni in Wales. If they can cope, why can't we? What the shit is our excuse?

Incidentally, the qualification for being Welsh, thus getting half price fees, is rediculous. I have 2 friends, both born in England, in the same hospital as myself. However, because they have lived just 3 or 4 miles from me over the border into Wales, they qualified for a 50% reduction in fees, just for having a different postcode - theyre no more wWelsh or less English than me or anyone else. Another dick move really!

Tired myself out with all that ranting. Bedtime.

 

[Vuliev]

EDIT: whoops thought 9000 was total debt, so it looks like you get about 45k debt in terms of dollars, that is closer to what we get over here.

Speak for yourself--those of us that go to private universities can end up with triple, even quadruple that amount. Granted, we (well, most of us) get access to top-notch equipment, facilities, and teaching, but it still hurts to think that I will be a small-house-mortgage's-worth of debt when I finish.

 

[Doclector]

My faculty has a policy of never giving any leeway in the case of technical failure, even if it's the uni's computers that let you down. This being on a media course, it's dumb as hell. The film industry has completion insurance for exactly these kinds of reasons. When the industry itself is prepared to admit that things just fuck up sometimes when your uni isn't, you know somebody screwed up.

There's also this one tutor who gives boring lectures about the most pretentious crap all the goddamn time. Of course, when work piles up, his classes are the first to lose attendence. What does he do? Threaten to send letters home of course! Seriously, he did. It's hilarious, the more he tries to get people to respect him, the more ridiculous he becomes, and he never fucking learns, he never gets that the reason people ignore him isn't because people aren't punished for not listening to him, it's because his lectures are all boring wastes of everyone's time.

 

[Ryotknife]

EDIT: whoops thought 9000 was total debt, so it looks like you get about 45k debt in terms of dollars, that is closer to what we get over here.

Speak for yourself--those of us that go to private universities can end up with triple, even quadruple that amount. Granted, we (well, most of us) get access to top-notch equipment, facilities, and teaching, but it still hurts to think that I will be a small-house-mortgage's-worth of debt when I finish.

cripes I went to a 30k a year university as well (for 4 years). Without the loophole I would have had 40-50K debt. Hard to imagine 4x that amount unless you are in the medicine field. I suppose those that go for master and PhD, but those are usually optional in most fields.

Did they stop handing out scholarships since i left?

actually now that I think about it i DID have 15-20k saved up before I went to college from my summer jobs, so that probably helped.

But now im debt free, and it is a wonderful thing (no house though). It is amazing how little you can live off of without debt.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

One of my law subjects required everyone to hand in paper copies of assignments when it would have been much easier for everyone involved for them to have just made use of the online submission system, which was available to them and was used by every other law subject. Not a huge deal but it was pretty annoying having to trek into uni just to hand in a couple of pieces of paper and then go straight home again on my day off uni.

Also there is that frustrating policy of if your electronic device/computer/USB memory stick etc fails or breaks then they just say "shit happens, you get a zero, deal with it." I understand that it prevents people from making up stories "I did my homework it just uh got corrupted" to get away with not doing work but I've seen it screw over innocent people who have put in a lot of work.

 

[jetriot]

That cost is nasty. I pay less than $3000 a semester to go to the University of Wyoming. I looked very carefully for a school with low cost in state tuition and moved here to take part in it. Luckily it takes nothing to become a resident. I was previously a student at CSU and left after my Freshman year when they charged me a $4500 fee for failing to sign a check out form when I left the dorms at the end of the year. I tried to fight it and all they did was pile on fees while I fought until 4 years later it was an insane $95,000 which was obviously not payable. All the while my schooling was held hostage and I was unable to attend. Eventually I had to declare bankruptcy and start from scratch. Thankfully I was at an early point in my life which made it simple to do.

 

[thiosk]

As I hope to attain a research faculty position at a prestigious research oriented university, I'll just say that of course the *snicker* undergrads *snicker* are the most important *deep breath through teeth* people on the campus and the university *eeeeep!* really do give a damn about them.

 

[capper42]

That cost is nasty. I pay less than $3000 a semester to go to the University of Wyoming. I looked very carefully for a school with low cost in state tuition and moved here to take part in it. Luckily it takes nothing to become a resident. I was previously a student at CSU and left after my Freshman year when they charged me a $4500 fee for failing to sign a check out form when I left the dorms at the end of the year. I tried to fight it and all they did was pile on fees while I fought until 4 years later it was an insane $95,000 which was obviously not payable. All the while my schooling was held hostage and I was unable to attend. Eventually I had to declare bankruptcy and start from scratch. Thankfully I was at an early point in my life which made it simple to do.

That's an awful story. Just shows universities really don't care about their students. I thought the $4500 fee was ridiculous but then it reached $95,000!? Insane.

 

[IckleMissMayhem]

Also, correct me if I'm mistaken, but dont Scottish people get University for free if they go in Scotland? And the Welsh get their fees half price if they go to Uni in Wales. If they can cope, why can't we? What the shit is our excuse?

We're fucking paying for it, that's our excuse!!!!

Am applying for a course at Uni at the moment, luckily it's externally funded/run, (at at a local uni, so I can live with my parents!) so the £9000p/a won't apply. Good job, else I wouldn't be able to afford it!

 

[thePyro_13]

Capstone units. No new coursework, just assignments borrowed from other units. Mostly group work, all done on-line. They charge the same amount for them as they do for normal units. They're compulsory. I have a feeling they're designed to fail as many students as possible.

 

[Khinjarsi]

I too am at Exeter. And fully regret coming here. We do have slightly more hours than boots, but in no way do I feel we get our money's worth. That's without tacking on the cost of living here. The glass roof mentioned has since leaked (leading to flooding in the new building) and the revolving doors still don't work. There's too much spent on new students, fancy titles and new shiny things and not enough on buildings that could do with an update and on existing students. At least I'm not paying 9k for this joke of a degree.

 

[Zantos]

We have to sign attendance sheets every single damn seminar - it's university, not secondary school where they take registers. Not only that, but postgraduates such as myself and undergraduates have to sign separate registers if they are in the same class. Its almost like the admin dept. want to drown themselves in paperwork.

You know why that is? I brought it up in a meeting as to why masters students can't be trusted to just turn up. They said "terrorism". They didn't clarify how or why attendance sheets were preventing (or for that matter they could have meant supporting) terrorism, just terrorism.

My working theory on this is just a liability thing. Because there is going to be some dick who tries to sue the university for not teaching them properly when in fact they just didn't go to any lectures or do any of the work.

OT: Ermmm, mine was pretty good really. People get extensions if they're in hospital and can claim special circumstances if they've had to miss a lot of lectures for medical reasons. Or even resit the year on a first attempt. The lecture theatres spend about 10 minutes every hour being a total meat grinder, but you get used to that.