More university dick moves...

[Khinjarsi]

Jesus. And to think, I would've been going there too if they had a media production course.

Plymouth ain't great, but they at least have a lot of good equipment for media. I hear some places are hideously under-equipped.

The problem with our lectures is that there's a lot of useless lectures. It ain't so bad when things are quiet. Nearer the end of term, with deadlines looming, some of the lecturer's response to low attendance start to sound a lot less reasonable.

We have one week left of term and of the three lectures I have, one of them is a workshop for the essay due about two days after, another is another workshop for the essay due two days after (both of which are supposed to be 3 hour lectures) and one is a review session because that's the deadline day. I expect noone to turn up. And they won't care. And they all assume theirs is the only module you take.

 

[Cpu46]

I had a teacher who put 3 questions in the beginning of the final exam and told us that if we got anything wrong on them he would multiply the entire exam grade by 0. Oh and 2 of the 3 questions had 3 parts to them. I only got one tiny part wrong and the reasoning was iffy at best. Also the final was a redicilous part of the course grade. Now I have a failing mark on my GPA and the possibility that the class in question isn't taught at my school anymore. The teacher used to be my advisor and I just got confirmation that my advisor has changed so... shit. Damn course wasn't even required for me to graduate.

Also I had to take an intro to computing class that was quite stupid. Online course that required us to read powerpoints and do quizzes every week. The quizzes Jumped between topics, half of the information on the powerpoints was missing, and the "practice exams" turned out to have actual weight on our grades. Teacher was unavailable for contact most of the time and when she was, didn't help at all. She changed the room number without updating anything or putting a note on the door of the old room.

Both of these classes were on the same semester, luckly I did great in my other classes to compensate but my gpa still dropped low enough to put me on academic probation... by only a few hundreths of a point.

 

[Idlemessiah]

Ah uni fees. You know you don't have to pay them back until you hit a certain wage threshold right? Those still at uni in the UK on the 3~k a year fees don't have to pay up till they're earning 15k a year. And trust me, you won't be earning 15k straight out of uni.

I graduated in July and all that's happened since has been that my part time job at Asda has become my full time job. That's what a 2:1 BSc in Archaeology gets you. I'm planning on emigrating in a few years anyway so the student loans company won't see jack outta me!

 

[Linakrbcs]

Huh, suddenly studying in Germany sounds a lot better. I paid £ 1000 a year for a 5-year chemistry course. That included a ticket for all public transport in the province (is that the right word? It's Bundesland in german, not sure how to translate it but never mind). We had around 5 hours of lectures a week. each with one or two hours of tutorials, and then a few hours of compulsory lab time every afternoon. Attendance in lectures was not compulsory, we just had to pass the exam in the end. Toward the end of the degree there were quite a few optional seminars and lectures without exams at the end, but still relevant depending on which area you wanted to specialise in.
At the end there were oral exams in the three main areas of chemisty (inorganic, organic, physical) and in our chosen specialty. After the exams we had to do a six-month dissertation project which mde up a third of the overall grade.
Of course, it wasn't perfect. The labs were quite crowded in the beginning, until analytical chemistry in the second term culled the weak and only those who'd passed (or at least survived) were allowed to move on to the organic chemistry labs.
Labs and tutorials were supervised by grad students, who sometimes didn't always know quite what they were doing, but mostly we still learned something.
I can't remember there ever being trouble about attendance or lack thereof. In one lecture, theoretical chemistry, we ended up with a dozen people, and the professor brought cookies every week.

Concerning dick moves...I can't recall any that stem from department policy, just the usual people being jerks stuff. It's not an easy degree, especially the lab stuff was very demanding, and there were strict rules about attendance, if someone didn't show up for more than a day or two or didn't finish their assignments they had to redo the whole thing.
It was always pretty fair though. The conditions were known in advance, and in general the supervisors were quite lenient. But it didn't matter why you'd been away, because no matter what the reson was, being away meant not learning important practical skills which you'd need for your future career.

 

[AstylahAthrys]

I'm transferring to a University from a small local college next year and oh boy the costs are going to kill me. For two years I'm going to be about $40,000 in the hole if I don't get any other kinds of help. I really hope I do. $40,000 is a lot of debt to have.

College is so expensive.

 

[dvd_72]

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.

From my understanding the attendance sheets are for the uni to keep track of who is actually going to lectures. Obvious, you may think, but why would they care? Well it doesn't look good for the university if students are dropping out without them looking into it and seeing if they can't help. This way, if someone seems to be falling behind they can at least try to contact them and try to get things resolved.

I guess my only gripe is how outdated a lot of the physics equipment at my uni is. I'm having to do a third year project with a mercury barometer that has air on the wrong side of the tube, skewing the readings which I then have to correct for. If I had a proper one that worked I'd be happy, and I would be ecstatic if they actually bought a digital one that's quicker and possibly more accurate than the broken piece of junk I have now.

 

[Fisher321]

Little off topic but related..

Why are Universities so expensive now?

 

[Chrono212]

I'd of liked some support from any kind of educational institute, instead of just their half baked promises and less than subtle hints that it all costs more than I can afford.

Not to mention the ridiculous prices it costs now as well as the absurd prerequisites most institutes insist on for the sake of insisting on prerequisites.

Of all the over-bloated, bureaucracy filled wastes of time there are in the world, the further education system is certainly one that needs a root and branch review.

Like the OP said, if they can't make a single exception in exceptional circumstances what's the point of anyone even trying to understand what these institutions are trying to do?

 

[Khinjarsi]

Ah uni fees. You know you don't have to pay them back until you hit a certain wage threshold right? Those still at uni in the UK on the 3~k a year fees don't have to pay up till they're earning 15k a year. And trust me, you won't be earning 15k straight out of uni.

I graduated in July and all that's happened since has been that my part time job at Asda has become my full time job. That's what a 2:1 BSc in Archaeology gets you. I'm planning on emigrating in a few years anyway so the student loans company won't see jack outta me!

Funnily enough, that's what my degree is supposed to be. Shame I learnt more at A Level. Definitely got taught more.

 

[Gardenia]

I pay rougly equivalent to 88 usd this semester. 12 hours of lectures, 4 hours of tutorials, and 2 hours of lab work every week. Paid 10 bucks more for a volountary exhibition.
Beginner's salary for someone with this 3-year course is roughly equivalent to 70k USD.
I'm ok with this.

EDIT: (I should add, that the low cost is because of SO-SHUU-LEEEZM!)
EDIT2: Also, you get a very low interest loan from the state (16k usd a year), 40% of which is subtracted from the loan if you pass all your classes.

 

[Bvenged]

snip

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.

The fees in Wales aren't half, they're nearly a 1/3. The raise of £3000 to £9000pa still applies to our Uni's, but the Welsh government stepped in to subsidise any increase for welsh nationality students only. I could go to an English uni and my government will still cover the increase in cost. Mine and my friends' courses are only ~£3000 a year now whereas English students at the same uni's on the same courses are paying £9000 because the welsh government doesn't cover them and the English Govt. were the ones who wanted this change.

Criminal, in my eyes, that anyone should have to pay nearly 3 times as much in some cases for the same quality of education, yet your sub-UK nationality can bag you a massive discount. For £9000pa I'd expect cooked meals and a place to stay, maintenance loan not-included.

OT: Uni should give a rebate. That is also ridiculous that they except your friend to continue as normal.

 

[angry_flashlight]

University Dick Moves eh?
Yesterday:
Prof: 'Okay class, here's your take-home final.'
Me: <reads sheet + due date> 'You're making us write 2 essays that are due in 3 days?' (Not counting the day its due)
Prof: 'Oh it shouldn't be that bad.'
Me: Why was this due in 3 days? Because my prof is going on vacation on Friday and needs all the finals in by then. In fact, I should probably get back to writing those...

EDIT: I should point out that this is exam season, with many of my classmates (including me), having exams and other essays due on these days, so yeah, no sleep for me. yay 0.-

 

[Doclector]

Jesus. And to think, I would've been going there too if they had a media production course.

Plymouth ain't great, but they at least have a lot of good equipment for media. I hear some places are hideously under-equipped.

The problem with our lectures is that there's a lot of useless lectures. It ain't so bad when things are quiet. Nearer the end of term, with deadlines looming, some of the lecturer's response to low attendance start to sound a lot less reasonable.

We have one week left of term and of the three lectures I have, one of them is a workshop for the essay due about two days after, another is another workshop for the essay due two days after (both of which are supposed to be 3 hour lectures) and one is a review session because that's the deadline day. I expect noone to turn up. And they won't care. And they all assume theirs is the only module you take.

Yeah, it's always like that. That, or "I know you're busy, but everyone is right now." My response to that is "And? How is everyone coping? Barely, or not at all."

It's hard to talk about this without coming off as a whining student, complaining that we have to go to lectures AND do coursework, but I don't mind these lectures being scheduled, if I have time and I'm not completely bed ridden with illness, I'll go to them, but it really annoys me when lecturers throw a goddamn fit when nobody turns up to lectures that aren't really important during a week with several deadlines attached to it. By far the worse thing, though, is that they'll consider every possible reason that people aren't coming besides "Your content isn't useful enough for people to waste three hours on, dumbass".

 

[Twilight_guy]

Why are you doing his homework? Yeah it sucks what happened but shouldn't he be fighting the university rather then you doing his work for him, something very against the rules that could get both of you kicked out? Ad for my time in college... ugh... can't think of anything off the top of my head. I don't think Comp Sci majors need Calc 3, but that's the only thing that comes to mind.

 

[Palademon]

The only particularly shit thing I can think of is that it is impossible to retake years.
If you fail a module you fail a year. So if you happen to have not gotten into the right mindset in one year, goodbye, thanks for the debt.

Also that our accomodations didn't allow us a pool table due to it being a flammable thing. But that I can understand, since I made a diagram demonstrating that how if a kitchen fire suddenly gets big enough to get out the door, we're fucked.

As for others universities I looked into:

No bursary unless you come from a partnered college.

Quoting 85 hours as week as a sensible and learning time

Almost everywhere treating a games course like a multimedia or web course, crossing over modules between them. Making multimedia people take a module specifically to do with games, and most courses not doing anything relevant such as modelling or programming until the second year. The exucse being that we have to learn "fundamentals"...by playing with circuit boards. And this is all taught by lecturers that assure people that they know what they're doing. One of the two leading lecturers got his PhD right after uni, worked one year at a company that makes games engines, them became a teacher. The other had some experience in the amateur game making scene in Germany...

 

[NightHawk21]

In an Ontario University so not too bad for me I guess (7k a year, and somewhere between 7.5k-8k with texts, not including housing cause I live only like an hour bus ride away). Getting a science degree in biology though is literally like a test in patience though. I spent my first year taking math (which I'm good at but don't like doing), a psychology (which I don't mind doing, but I'm not that good at), some anthropology (parts of which were interesting), 2 chemistry (which I am neither good at, nor like doing), and 2 biology. Right off the bat only 20% was biology which seems a little odd. It becomes frustrating though when the biologies are essentially what you learned in highschool with more details that you have the immense honour of memorizing.

Enter year 2.
More Biologies. 2 Chemistry, 1 Math, 1 Anthro, all the rest biologies (a mix of physio, cell bios, and ecology). Literally every single one of those could be summed up by saying "Here is this thing with pages of details, memorize." Super stupid.

Enter year 3.
Greatest year so far. 3 Biology (Microbial Genetics*, Bioinformatics*, Plant Physiology), and an archaeology. Finally, something interesting. It seems to me that my third year classes (the ones with the *) are finally teaching something relevant. This goes so far at the amount of material I have to memorize for Microbial Genetics seems like it would fit on half a page since every question is application based (ie. design an experiment to isolate this, make this. You see this how did it happen and how could you fix it). Plant physiology is still a stupid 2nd year course which it memorize the textbook and how everything in plants happens. Couple this with iGEM (which I would highly recommend any biology or engineering student to take if they have the chance), and you got a mostly great year so far.

So dick moves. The only two I can really think of is not giving us a break in the first term while the college literally 5 minutes away gets one, and teaching biology like you are inept. When we live in a world where all the information ever is a click away I shouldn't be forced to memorize a paragraph of details on a list of 50 different microbes.

 

[Idlemessiah]

Funnily enough, that's what my degree is supposed to be. Shame I learnt more at A Level. Definitely got taught more.

I never even took it at A level and I found it all suspiciously easy. In my last semester I only had 1 module too. 2 hours a week lectures and 2 hours every other week in labs. It was so easy I wrote the essay for it the night before submission in the middle of writing my dissertation, which was due 2 days after.

That's another thing, I wrote my dissertation in 6 days, and still got 71%. I think that really hammers home how unchallenging the whole thing was. I should have really done a hard science or engineering tbh.

 

[Khinjarsi]

Funnily enough, that's what my degree is supposed to be. Shame I learnt more at A Level. Definitely got taught more.

I never even took it at A level and I found it all suspiciously easy. In my last semester I only had 1 module too. 2 hours a week lectures and 2 hours every other week in labs. It was so easy I wrote the essay for it the night before submission in the middle of writing my dissertation, which was due 2 days after.

That's another thing, I wrote my dissertation in 6 days, and still got 71%. I think that really hammers home how unchallenging the whole thing was. I should have really done a hard science or engineering tbh.

We don't even have labs and we're supposed to be doing a BSc in Archaeology and Forensics. We did 2 hours a week of Forensic 'theory' last year and that's been it. And they changed the degree to award a BA but call it a BSc. My dissertation will be interesting at least. I hate to whinge about uni but Exeter is really not great.