Students and Universities - Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120 - 139)

MONDAY 23 MARCH 2009

MS CARLY ROWLEY, MR TOM DUTTON, MR ADAM HODGSON, MR JOEL MARTIN, MR GEMMA JEROME AND MR EDWARD NUSSEY

  Q120  Graham Stringer: If you are stuck with something that you completely do not understand, can you nip in and see your tutor or lecturer? Are they available at short notice?

  Mr Nussey: Well, I have had that experience quite a lot in this third year, so I might go to my supervisor in labs, but he is part-time so sometimes he is not available and my tutor may not be available, but now I am in my third year I know quite a lot of the lecturers and I feel I could walk into any of their offices and talk to them. A lot of them are more than willing to go through in depth any problems that I have.

  Q121  Graham Stringer: Gemma?

  Ms Jerome: Again timetabled lectures, about eight to 10 hours a week, and that stays fairly consistent throughout the four years of my particular degree. On top of that we are expected—I think it is in the prospectus—to do about 20 to 30 hours of personal study.

  Q122  Graham Stringer: Do you or did you, rather?

  Ms Jerome: No I did not, but then again that is down to individual study style. I find that I do things rather well last minute. It should be noted that in civic design there is a lot of group work, so you have to schedule that in and you have to timetable that for yourself. You are expected to spend at least 10 to 20 hours in your group outside of study time. Then we have a PDP system at the University of Liverpool, so you are expected to meet with your personal development tutor at least once a semester. To add in the context of higher tuition fees, that has definitely impacted on students' perceptions.

  Graham Stringer: Can I come on to tuition fees later.

  Chairman: We will come back to that.

  Q123  Graham Stringer: You have been very honest and admitted that you did not do the 20-odd hours a week and I guess you are not on your own. What are the consequences if you do not go to lectures?

  Ms Jerome: Depending on your subjects and your department you can receive emails of concern and then there is an academic appraisal system where you have to then go to a board and explain your lack of attendance. Otherwise there is a record of attendance at each lecture, and you have to sign in, unless you get your friend to do it.

  Q124  Graham Stringer: If you miss two or three weeks are you under threat of removal from the course?

  Ms Jerome: No, there is a definite structure of assessment, so you go through some kind of system to check why it is that you are not attending, so there is more of a support system there rather than just penalising.

  Q125  Graham Stringer: Joel?

  Mr Martin: Yes, we have eight hours a week, at least I do, of scheduled lectures, contact time. Also there is the honours project which is the same credits as the modules that I do. I tend to treat university as a nine-to-five job, although that does not mean I will be working nine until five every day. Some days I will only be doing pure revision for maybe one or two hours, but it is the fact that I am always engaged in the process of working throughout the nine until five timeslot that I allocate myself.

  Q126  Graham Stringer: What are the consequences for you if you do not attend lectures?

  Mr Martin: To my knowledge people who do not attend lectures do not tend to get confronted. I am not sure. I have noticed that some people just vanish from our lectures and do not seem to show up.

  Q127  Graham Stringer: And they are not expelled from university?

  Mr Martin: I have never heard of a single instance where that has happened, no.

  Q128  Graham Stringer: Adam?

  Mr Hodgson: Technically I have 15 hours contact time per week, that is three hours per module and five modules per semester. In final year that varies because there are projects. It depends on the lecturer as well. Some lecturers have slightly less time and some lecturers will always do three hours a week. I do not always go to my lectures. I do a lot of other stuff in between university. I am very involved in the Student Union, for example.

  Q129  Graham Stringer: What happens when you do not go to your lectures?

  Mr Hodgson: Nothing. I am again missing my Monday afternoon lecture to be here and this will be my third week in a row that I have not been there.

  Chairman: We are guilty!

  Q130  Graham Stringer: We are a relatively good excuse!

  Mr Hodgson: To be honest, every time I miss a lecture I always feel that I have a good excuse for not being there! The amount of work I do outside lectures is normally limited to course work. Because it is maths there is not always a need for independent study. We are not set anything like homework to do in between lectures. I personally have no other contact time for anything else apart from lectures.

  Q131  Graham Stringer: Tom?

  Mr Dutton: Again eight hours a week, that is two hours per module, four modules. Obviously my course is split into two with two modules of English and two of philosophy. Outside of that philosophy is all the time really, is it not, you are learning!

  Q132  Chairman: That was the right answer as well, Tom.

  Mr Dutton: When am I not doing philosophy? As long as my brain is ticking over, there is something happening in there. The English course I am doing at the minute is quite varied. One of my modules is the history of the English language which is obviously a lot of history. I have always been into history since I was young anyway. There are a lot of books and a book called the Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg, which was a book I started reading over last summer, and that was before I knew what the module was, so it is stuff like that, I suppose you could count. My other module is called, let me think, sorry, I am not good on the spot—

  Q133  Graham Stringer: If you do not attend lectures or if people on your course do not attend lectures, are there any consequences?

  Mr Dutton: You probably get an email asking why. I have had two lectures I have missed today but I have emailed to say I am doing this.

  Q134  Graham Stringer: But if you miss for two or three weeks?

  Mr Dutton: If the miss two lectures the faculty will be on you.

  Q135  Graham Stringer: And if you continue to miss are you under threat of expulsion or withdrawal from the course?

  Mr Dutton: I would not know.

  Ms Rowley: I have about eight hours contact per week. I also do a dissertation so I do not have contact time for that per se, I have to have individual tutorials with my supervisor, which are usually a few weeks between each one. It also does not take into account that I do performance and have to practise my instrument each day because it is the practice that goes behind the scenes, if you like, that goes towards the recital at the end of the year. Approachability of tutors, I find that I can go and talk to any of mine and they will give me the time. I think that is because I have gone and asked for it. I think it is one of those situations where you have to make it for yourself. If you want some extra support then you have to go and find it and then they will respect you for doing that. In terms of absence and things, I have been told, and I am not sure what they call it, of something like a card system or a points card system, and if you miss perhaps two lectures and you are not explaining why you have missed them, then you are given a yellow card. Then if you continue to miss it goes to a red card. Then you will have to present yourself as to why it is that you have been missing things. And if you cannot adequately explain then it could be that you are kicked off. Also it is taking into account now not just your attendance but your participation, which I think is really important for something like literature, because you have to read the books in order to take part in the seminars and the lectures and so forth, and if you are not reading and not participating in the seminars then it just makes for less productive learning, I suppose, so they are taking that into account as well.

  Q136  Graham Stringer: Gemma mentioned fees before and I would like you all to answer as quickly as you can the question about whether top-up fees have influenced you at all in choosing to go into higher education and whether they would influence you differently if the top-up fees rather than being just over £3,000 were £6,000? Do you want to start Carly?

  Ms Rowley: I am actually from the old system. I did a gap year at the time when it was just going to top-up fees, so I actually pay the old fees. I cannot really speak for the top-up fees' effect on me but my brother, for instance, is 18 and he is looking at going into university now, and if it were a case of paying £6,000 a year I am not sure that he would be able to contemplate the amount of debt that he would have to battle with at the end of it. I think university is just so important for all young individuals. It has made me a different person and I do not think it is fair if we have to put it up to such an amount that people cannot take part.

  Mr Dutton: It actually works out the same for me as it would under the old system. When I left home my mum cut down her hours of work, in all her wisdom, so I got the maximum grant. If it was a lot more I cannot really see how it is going to benefit anyone because if you double the price it is not that unrealistic to suggest you might get half as many people coming in.

  Mr Hodgson: Again I am on the old fees system. One thing I want to say is that obviously the people in the year below me are paying twice the amount and yet there is absolutely no visible difference as to the kind of university experience they are getting. They get the same amount of lectures, they get the same lecturers, they get the same amount of support, so I would be hesitant to support in any way increasing those fees because I do not see how that would benefit any student at all. I have not seen the benefit between the £1,200 fees to the £3,000 fees.

  Mr Martin: Even when the fees were raised by £75 two years ago it came as quite a shock to me. The fact that now there is talk of maybe charging £6,000, I know if that were the case when I was deciding on going to university, it really would have influenced me. From my point, I was always going to go to university, that was always the way it was going to pan out, provided I got the grades to get in, but money would have been an issue if it was that expensive.

  Ms Jerome: What I was going to mention briefly before is that there is a complexity of issues surrounding fees, and I think that there is a connection between students' engagement in education and the money they are putting into it. If you work out that you are paying £25 a lecture maybe you are less likely to miss one. The fact that we do as students—maybe it is our parents, maybe it is through a bursary or maybe it is through a grant—pay for our education means that there is a problem of seeing ourselves as consumers. I know that that can go either way, negative or positive, and usually somewhere in the middle. If you see yourself more as a consumer, are you less likely to play a part in the decision-making process or do you see it as the duty of your institution to make decisions on your behalf because you are paying for them to do that?

  Q137  Chairman: Do you think that you are a consumer?

  Ms Jerome: Personally I do not perceive education in that light but I know plenty of people who do. It is primarily connected to the fact that they are paying for their education. If it is a question of the fact that higher education needs its standards to rise, if it is an issue that money is going to directly affect the quality of the education that we are receiving then obviously that is unquestionable and that is important, but I think the question is who should pay for that, and if it is through fees then it is obviously—

  Q138  Chairman: The point that Adam made, and I think it is a very good point that he has made, is that the rise from £1,000 to £3,000 has not had a commensurate increase in the quality for the consumer or the client or the student, if you want to call them that. Do you honestly believe that by moving the fees to 6,000 there would be a doubling in the quality or an improvement in the quality? Do you think that is realistic?

  Ms Jerome: I do not think it is necessarily where that money is going to go.

  Q139  Chairman: It must go somewhere, must it not?

  Ms Jerome: It must, yes, but then again money comes from our RAE results and if an institution like Liverpool is considering departmental closures based on RAE results, and yet they are still getting more money for their results, it just suggests to me that there is a wider agenda of what institutions want to offer, and it is not necessarily about the quality of the whole spectrum of courses.


 
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