Higher fees
Tuition fees in Higher Education have risen 100 – 200%
recently. The six to seven hours a week, 22-24 weeks a year, students spent in
direct contact with lecturers – i.e. lectures, seminars and other classes - have
seemed even with lower fees not to be good value for money. Of course, there is
other contact – emails, meetings and one-to-one tutorials for example. We also alert
them to all sorts of opportunities and we direct their reading. For the 168
hours they spend in our company students are expected to spend about another 1000
on self-directed study.
If to become a writer, as many say, you need to practise
your skill for 10,000 hours, by the time our students leave us they are about a
third of the way there. Except: some of
their work is literature based. And oddly, a significant proportion of them are
published before they leave us. Is this because latent talent is being exercised
or because we’re teaching well? Hopefully it’s a mixture of the two.
Increase in contact time
We’ve increased our contact time by just over 30%.
This has its own repercussions:
More constraint on the timetable, so more early starts and
late finishes, and less chances of finding suitable rooms for every session
Staff are less likely to be able to take a research day.
Students are less able to fit in part-time work – and may have
to drop out because of financial reasons.
Student attendance
Where I work we have hesitated about insisting on attendance,
except in those interactive classes that only work with a good number of students
there – e.g. creative writing workshops. We do, however, rigorously chase up
non-attendees because we want to know that they are still with us and still on
track. More often than not good attendance is reflected in good results but
there are some who rarely attend who do well. Academic freedom after all? There
is a deeply-seated conviction that we should allow our students to work
according to their own learning style and some students – actually particularly
creative writing ones – prefer to work alone.
Teaching quality
We have another conviction that if we insist on attendance we
have to offer excellent teaching matched to individual learning styles. This is
actually impossible – many a school teacher has burnt out trying to achieve
this – you just cannot be all things to all people. Blended teaching styles are
a partial answer. The research-active university lecturer is all about a pool
of knowledge that is to be passed on and most students regardless of the fees involved
will recognise the responsibility they have in making the most of what
happens. That does not always translate
into attending class. We’re some way away, however, from what existed fifty years
ago and before that: dusty old professors reading out dry old texts from which
students were supposed glean the magic themselves. With fees the way they are
we’re expected to provide the magic directly.
It seems surprising then, that the very same students who have
made noises about wanting extra contact time do not turn up to class when it is
offered. We might worry that what we have to offer is not enticing enough. Or
maybe life and work happen to the students. Probably it’s a mixture of all
three.
Prompted to some extent by a remark from one student in one
of my classes I sent out a quite an assertive letter to my final year students
this week. I had been a little disappointed the week before by their attendace –
40% i.e. four out of ten. It was assignment week. More normally I get 70%% to
90%. I expected them in class unless
they were on death’s door and I expected them to contribute to the workshop. Six
pieces of work were submitted; I was expecting three. We had an intense workshop
but I nevertheless asked myself how much they were getting from it. Could they
manage without me? Possibly. They were pretty clued up. Was the insistence on attendance necessary?
How to recognise a
good teacher
Recently we had a colleague who had had a teaching award talk
to us. He didn’t use PowerPoint, nor any other visual aid and he gave out no hand-outs
yet he held out attention. He made the point that one good lesson is better
that ten mediocre ones. We need to inspire our students to want to go and find
out more for themselves, not just fill them with information. Why was his talk successful?
Because of his sincerity and his professionalism in telling us exactly what we
need to know. He was interacting effectively with the people in front of him.
I try to make my classes content-rich and question-rich. I
hope I’m managing it.
