
My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me - IsaacL
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/dec/18/my-students-have-paid-9000-and-now-they-think-they-own-me
======
codexjourneys
This is definitely a consequence of charging ridiculous tuition prices. £9,000
is not much compared with US tuition prices, either. Students have become
customers, and I think it's absolutely driving grade inflation. If I were
paying $30,000+ per year for tuition, I also would feel like a customer. It's
a natural reaction and a highly negative outcome for academia, where rigor and
curiosity should be main drivers instead of A's-for-pays.

Anecdata from a professor I know: Students' parents also feel like customers,
because they are often the ones paying the tuition. So they call the
university and complain if their child gets a sub-par grade, citing the cost
of tuition. Bad incentives all round.

MOOCs as they evolve will be part of the answer and probably could replace
large lectures in a pre-college period before students get on campus. Maybe
college should be shorter (2-3 years) and focus on small-group seminars that
build on what students learned on their own via MOOCs. It could help lower
costs to more reasonable levels. Of course universities will fight this tooth
and nail because loss of revenue.

~~~
ghaff
While the use of MOOCs to replace large lectures and focus on one-on-one and
few-to-few interaction is eminently logical, this is something that's arguably
been an option since the widespread availability of VCRs.

I'm not quite ready to pronounce the death of MOOCs in the transform college
education as opposed to a new form of vocational training yet but IMO we're
pretty close. Whatever impact they've had on overachievers who may or may not
have had access to traditional higher education, they have failed to broadly
change education in any way and the major VC-funded examples haven't succeeded
financially.

------
AndrewKemendo
There is a clear misalignment in the actual goals of the three core groups in
universities: Administrators, Professors, Students.

Administrators want to grow the school budget and increase prestige for
themselves and the university. Professors want to do research and make an
impact in their field, and to their peers. Students want to be able to get a
job and have an interesting experience.

In _theory_ all three groups should have as a primary goal the expansion of
the circle of knowledge [1] at some level. Administrators by providing a space
for professors and students to do that, professors by partly focusing on
students' needs and partly by having separate research periods and Students by
expanding their own circles.

Reality is, it's all about money, just like everything else. Each group is
trying to get the most of it so they can do what they want individually.
Everyone is a customer in this scenario.

[1][http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-
pictures/](http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/)

~~~
Overtonwindow
Excellent response. I went back to university for fun recently at a major
research institution. I found that the administration wanted more money, and
professors wanted to teach less and research more. Students bristled at the
belief that a professors primary job is not to teach, but to research, while
the administration continued to raise prices, and add pointless classes; do we
REALLY need a 4 hour taught by a GTA lab twice a week on research methods in
psychology?

------
relkor
I am not paying for a "chance to learn". I am paying for a self-professed
expert in pedagogy, whose has spend devoted their proffesional life to the art
of shoving information into arbitrary people's heads. I go to the doctor
because I want a professional with knowledge of diseases to fix my cold, not
the crystal homeopathic healer that lurks on the street outside my apartment.
Teachers are supposed to be experts at matching students with explainations of
concepts.

If I just wanted a chance to learn, then I could go to the public library.
However there are many explainations of the same concept, so in the interest
of not wasting my time during the _most productive decade_ of my life, I go
see a proffesional to explain things to me.

If teachers cannot be bothered to perform their sole function, then I will
take my money elsewhere.

[edit] The attitude of teachers astounds me

> Moreover, when I was studying would I have ever had the balls to contact my
> lecturers and not only question their ability to grade my work appropriately
> but imply that my low grade was their fault?

Of course it is the teacher's fault. Examine the facts:

1) The student did not understand the material at the beginnng of the term
_otherwise the student would not be there in the first place_

2) The student then sought to correct this defficiency in their education by
contracting a proffesional.

3) The teacher fails to significantly improve the student's understanding,
despite many weeks of interaction with student (student fails exam)

4) Teacher blames student for failing to grasp their perfect explaination that
works perfectly well for themselves.

The cognitive dissonance is astounding. And teachers wonder why society is
only willing to pay them so little?

~~~
Karellen
You seem to be confusing grade school and university.

The lecturers and professors you will find at university are not experts in
pedagogy, and the vast majority will never have claimed they were. They are
experts and leading _active_ researchers in their chosen field. They have
devoted their professional life to studying and extending the state of the art
of knowledge in their chosen field.

If you want to study a subject at university level, it's likely that some of
the material that you would learn at university is _not yet in_ published
books, because the only people who currently _know_ the material are the
researchers at your university who just discovered it, and are trying hard to
find the time to write a book on it, around furthering their research, writing
papers for journals (which they need to do, and which books do not count
towards) and giving however many classes of lectures a week that they've been
told to get on with, without a vast amount of training.

In grade school, the material you will learn are basics of subjects that have
been understood for a while, and written and refined in books some time ago.
The material can be understood by people competent (but not necessarily
expert) in the field, and can therefore be passed on, or spoon-fed, by people
who are expert professional teachers. This is required in grade school,
because students in grade school are not yet adults, and generally don't yet
have enough self-discipline and self-awareness to put in the work now for
later benefit without being shepherded the whole way.

When you get to university, it is presumed that you are mature enough to have
the self-discipline and self-awareness to figure out partly for yourself how
to learn from the people who are the most advanced in the world in your chosen
field, rather than the best teachers.

That presumption seems to have worked out pretty well for modern universities
for the last 500 years.

Maybe university is not actually the place you want to be.

~~~
relkor
I seem to have missed the part of university where we were learning things
_not yet in published books_. If you think that undergraduates are reaching
the cutting edge of research as part of their reguarly scheduled syllabus, I
don't know what to say to correct this impression.

You seem to forget that not every university is Stanford, where there are true
leading experts that students can engage with _beyond the context of class_.
There is no global _university level_. The trope of students conducting
cutting edge research as undergrads is based on a few outliers who are widely
publisied. The experience for the vast majority of us down in the trenches
however is limited to the simplified model of physics that is safe for
undergrads. Basing your expectations for a university education on the
behavior of the top %0.001 of students is like expeciting your minivan to
handle as well as a Grand-Prix racecar.

My question to you is then "Why the hell did society decide to co-opt
researches into passing on the information, rather than create a new class of
specialists like society has done for every other field of human endevor?"

~~~
sklogic
> I seem to have missed the part of university where we were learning things
> not yet in published books.

You had an access to the teachers, who are all supposed to be active, well-
connected, bleeding-edge researchers. You had a fair amount of their time
allocated for you solely and more of that time for your class.

Now, it was 100% _your_ responsibility to extort all the bleeding edge
knowledge from them, to loiter around their laboratories, to get a summer job
as a lab assistant, and all that. This is what universities are for.

> like society has done for every other field of human endevor?

What? When did it happen, exactly? The master-apprentice model is still alive
and kicking in _most_ of the professions. There are no alternatives to it.
Dedicated pedagogues can teach you to read, write and count your fingers (on
one hand). The rest must be passed on by the _real_ professionals.

~~~
aries1980
> You had a fair amount of their time allocated for you solely and more of
> that time for your class.

Talking (and not teaching) to 200 ppl over 2 hours is not time allocation to
"me". That is something I could watch without the presence of the teacher.
There is no added value in this case compared to any MOOC class.

University courses should follow the possibilities what technology has to
offer and focus on really teaching. The rest can be watched at home.

> Now, it was 100% your responsibility to extort all the bleeding edge
> knowledge from them.

Yes, 18 yrs old kids have the power and character to chase and force teachers
without a backfire. You might be such character, but not everyone is such
persuasive as you, yet they can be a great scientist.

~~~
sklogic
> Talking (and not teaching) to 200 ppl over 2 hours is not time allocation to
> "me".

I'm not talking about the lectures (they're useless unless most of the time is
spent on Q&A). There is always a certain amount of time teachers must spend
with their students individually, upon request. Smart students use that time,
the others may not even know they've got a right to harass their teachers
occasionally.

~~~
aries1980
> There is always a certain amount of time teachers must spend with their
> students

Not at my university, or at any university my friends attended. In many cases,
you could just simply piss off the teachers asking tough questions or pointing
to errors in their thinking.

------
Fiahil
Each time I'm reading stories like these, I'm glad I avoided both sides of
what's described here. Clueless students that takes everything for granted and
will put the minimum amount of effort learning anything. And, the boring
teacher who thinks classes are only an unimportant part of the mandatory stuff
he has to do to continue doing what he likes.

Where I've been studying, they removed the teachers, the classes and the
grades (kind of). Learning is stimulated by peers and projects; correction and
'exams' are done by a computer (no negotiations with "unjust" grades, you
failed == you failed); classes are optional and you usually don't need them to
succeed on the projects. In results, you get interested people in classes when
you explain something, and if you do your job well, they won't come to bother
you after that. And from the students' side, you get motivated teammates that
won't complain and try to help each others when you are crashing on a crazy
deadline on a Sunday night at 11:42pm.

Damn that was great. I wish it could be easily done with other fields and not
only in software engineering.

------
yakult
tl;dr: professor has a few bad experiences with students and, combining them
with a choice anecdote from an unnamed colleague, proceeds to generalize to
not only the (presumably) hundreds of students he has taught, but students,
everywhere, in general.

Having been a student myself, I _could_ recount the time when a professor
chose to replace her all twelve of her lectures with student presentations,
then tested us on entirely untaught content; or perhaps the other time when
submitted assignments and tests were not marked or discussed, at all, so that
the only feedback was a numerical result at the end of the semester.

I _could_ choose to say that this is symptomatic of a system where research is
king and teaching is for peons and undergraduates are lower than dirt.

Or I could choose to say that perhaps some professors are just bad at their
jobs. Or, even, they just had a bad semester. The advantage is that I could do
this without cherry-picking the outliers.

What did the writer teach? I hope it is not statistics.

edit: that's some fast negative karma there. Those of you that downvoted, I
would love to hear your thoughts.

~~~
arbitrage
Personally, I tend to downvote people who whine about karma. I can get enough
of that crap on reddit.

Someone can disagree with you without having to get into an extended debate.
That's why the voting buttons exist.

~~~
emp_zealoth
No, that is exactly and perfectly wrong. Downvoting because you disagree is
against the rules. As a student I wholeheartedly agree - I have classes now
where a tutor comes in, tosses a two page pdf with an assigment in Labview
(which we were never taught or even got to use before) to do during class and
ITS GRADED right after that class. He also throws a hissing fit every time
anyone dares to ask him for help.

~~~
pc86
I'm sure you've brought this behavior up with the professor though, right?

------
etiene
Lazy people everywhere. Lazy students who can't be bothered to do something as
simple as an assignment and then complain about it. Lazy professors who repeat
the same lectures for over a decade, don't give any feedback and don't give a
fuck about what the pupils are learning. In my university we don't even get to
see the corrected exam we handed in. We receive a numerical grade by email and
that's it. I have no idea what that meant. It's disgusting... :(

------
UYChuH
I'm doing my PhD in a Russell group British university. In one of our big
group meetings someone asked about what was being done to encourage students
to take theoretical CS courses, because after first year (when they're forced
to take one) almost no students took them.

When someone suggested we "go ask the students" the Profs and Lecturers shot
it down saying "they'd only lie". I did go ask some of the undergrads and the
reasons almost universally that the prof who taught it in first year was a
harsh marker, bad lecturer, and that it wasn't worth losing the credit points
in years two onward when they could get a better grade elsewhere and come out
with a better degree at the end of it.

The staff don't trust the students and the students want to make sure they get
their money's worth; even if it means missing on some important stuff.

------
zenir
Giving a German view on that, where tuition is free: In Germany imho sometimes
the problem is that professors don't really care much about the teaching,
because they actually want to do research and teaching is just an nuisance for
them. But that it is kind of okay, because you don't pay anything and you can
always skip classes, as attendance is not mandatory. So basically if you don't
learn shit in that lecture just go to the library or study at home (or do bbq
in the park if you can afford it).

Now, I was under the impression the problem of shitty professors / lectures,
who don't want to teach or are bad at it, was solved in the US because people
pay a shitload of tuition. If the university has bad teaching, people don't go
there and the university doesn't get money. I read somewhere that e. g. the
MIT has a grades for their professors by the students and the professors get
into trouble if their grades are bad.

So from my viewpoint, students have the right to demand good teaching if they
pay money. But this doesn't give you a free ticket for a degree (if you just
can pay money to get a degree, the degree is not worth anything). A degree
comes with after you have a certain knowledge in a field (not fully accurate,
but that's about it). Professors should have to care of their students. It
might be just a small part of their workload and they actually want to just do
research but their university makes money with it. If their university gives
them too much workload and not enough time for teaching, the system of the
university is broken. This is imho the cases for many universities (I'm
especially talking about all the research paper print factories which call
themselves universities).

The article with the posters of the students is a typical example of getting
problems wrong (by going to extremes).

~~~
pc86
Context: I attended a small (1500 students, no grad school), private (read:
expensive), liberal arts college from 2004-2008 and dropped out. I finished my
degree in 2014 at the same institution because I was so close it was pointless
not to.

> _I was under the impression the problem of shitty professors / lectures, who
> don't want to teach or are bad at it, was solved in the US because people
> pay a shitload of tuition._

Some people pay a shitload of tuition, yes. It's somewhat like buying a car
(in the US). Nobody pays sticker price. There is a _lot_ of very cheap money
floating around (gov't loans, grants, scholarships), which is keeping the
price artificially high.

The sticker price of my school was about $35k/yr, or $140,000 for a degree. I
left in 2008 with about $22k in loans. The rest was grants and scholarships. I
did well in HS but not so well that you would immediately think people would
throw $120k at me for school. The important thing here is that _the school
actually received the $140k_. They've got zero incentive to control costs.

> _If the university has bad teaching, people don 't go there and the
> university doesn't get money._

This is true to an extent, but I had no instructional interaction with the
professors prior to my first day of classes. I spoke to a few as a visiting HS
senior, but even the professors were in sales mode at that point.

> _It might be just a small part of their workload and they actually want to
> just do research but their university makes money with it._

It's misaligned incentives (mentioned in greater detail elsewhere in the
comments here). The professors do not get any more money if all of their
students understand the subject perfectly and go on to become professors
themselves compared to if half the class fails. The only mitigating factor to
this is some universities place promotion/review weight to student
evaluations, but even then it's only an issue until one receives tenure.

My college was primarily a teaching college, and approximately 2/3 of the
professor workload was teaching, grading, and related. Some of the larger
survey classes would have a few TAs that would do reviews for smaller groups,
but a TA leading a class was unheard of. There was no graduate school (they've
since added a few Master's programs), so the TA's were just other undergrads
who had gotten A's in the course in previous semesters.

> _If their university gives them too much workload and not enough time for
> teaching, the system of the university is broken._

I don't think anyone will disagree with you here :)

------
jonathansizz
My lectures are designed to supplement learning that my students are expected
to have done prior to class. The lectures are a summary of the material, with
worked examples, a chance to ask questions to clear up misunderstandings, and
for discussion of key concepts.

Lectures are attended by dozens of students, so they cannot be a personalized
tutorial service. That's what office hours are for. My best students don't
usually need office hours as they are pretty much self-taught, but the next
tier down show up regularly and we sit down together and go through exactly
the material they want to focus on in the detail they need.

I tailor my pedagogy to these engaged students, not to the ones who expect to
be handed an A for a minimum amount of effort. If you don't work, you'll
deservedly do very poorly, and I'm not willing to waste my limited resources
on you. And, no, I'm not going to curve your grade up either, because that's
not fair on the good students.

Unsurprisingly, poor students don't show up to office hours, don't take
advantage of our free tutoring service, turn in material late, and regularly
miss lectures. All these failings are entirely their own responsibility, not
mine.

~~~
relkor
Then change the fee schedule to reflect this.

The problem I have is that your system does not serve 2/3rds of the customers.
Your best students are _pretty much self-taught_ , so why do you charge them
for all of the your time. The poor students do not show up either, so why are
you charging them for your time as well?

I am not critizing your specific method of teaching, just your fee schedule.
You admit that your services are basically useless to 2/3rds of the sutdents,
yet you charge twice that of a personal tutor service _for each and every one
of your students_. That is where the anger is coming from.

~~~
jonathansizz
I don't admit anything of the sort; you came up with the 2/3 figure.

My best students _are_ pretty much self-taught _within the academic
environment_ , which offers them a lot more than any series of MOOCs could.

Maybe around 1/4 of my freshman students shouldn't be in university, and most
of these leave during their first year. I'd be happy if admissions standards
were increased, as it would be better for all concerned if individuals lacking
the necessary ability and motivation didn't waste everyone's time as well as
their own money.

Once again, it is the responsibility of each potential student to determine
whether they should accept a place at a university, not mine. As long as
they're here, I'll give every student as much assistance as I can, but some of
them can't or won't be helped.

------
DanBC
> Moreover, when I was studying would I have ever had the balls to contact my
> lecturers and not only question their ability to grade my work appropriately
> but imply that my low grade was their fault?

It's not surprising that students want to get a second opinion on grading.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03bqlht](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03bqlht)

> More than 90,000 GCSE and A-level results were changed after challenges to
> grades awarded this summer - the highest on record.

> The figures represent an increase of 17% compared with last year.

> Results have a significant impact on both students and institutions,
> affecting whether or not pupils gain a university place and where schools
> appear in league tables.

(GCSE exams are taken in school by 16 year olds. A level exams are taken in
schools or colleges by 18 year olds, and are what is used to get entry to
university.)

EDIT: In 2013 there were 850,752 GCSE exams taken. So 90,000 incorrect grades
is more than 10% - and these are just the exams that asked for a re-grade.
When students have seen a serious error in their grades, or the grades of a
friend, it's not surprising that they realise that just asking for a regrade
could increase their marks.

------
sreenadh
Its a sad state of this world where there is a price for everything but no
value for anything.

I have had my share of teachers who proved that "those who cannot do, teach".
I read that in Sweden, you have to be in the top 5 percentile if you want to
qualify as a teacher. Plus a lot of teachers are so disconnected from the
professional world that the student are confused when I come to work which I
have experienced myself and seem over again as an "intern-trainer" at my work
as a Software Developer.

Education has been so commercialized that some universities look more like a
mall than a university. Cannot blame the students for expecting a degree after
all the money they have paid. In a lot of collages, the entrance exam is just
a scam.

This state is specially true in India where we are taught to respect in the
order of "Mother, Father, Teacher, God". Even God deserves less respect than
teacher. But there also, if you cannot find any job. Then the next option is
teaching.

------
sklogic
The idiots do not realise they're paying for a _chance_ to learn, not for a
_product_ to be delivered to them no matter what.

~~~
relkor
I would be happy to sell you a chance to eat, or a chance for medial care, or
a chance for housing. Education is as necessary as a public utility. To charge
any price for a _chance_ to learn while billing as a product (actually knowing
things about the world) is a pure example of fraud.

~~~
distances
Food can be guaranteed. Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on
the actions of the patient.

Learning can only happen with active studying. Nobody can push the knowledge
into your brain. All you are offered is the _chance_ to learn, and no
guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it.

~~~
balabaster
> Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on the actions of the
> patient.

Actually, the functionality of medical care _does_ depend on the actions of
the patient to do what the medical system instructs them to do. When a person
doesn't follow doctor's orders, there is a high possibility that the person in
need of medical care doesn't actually get the results they expect.

> All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating
> if you turn out to be incompetent at it.

While I agree with your sentiment and the principle of what you're suggesting,
most universities aren't packaging it like this. When you see the ads and you
read their propaganda... er, I mean their pretty glossy brochures, they are
selling it as exactly that: "Come to XU, get a degree in Y, our graduates have
a 100% career placement success." "Get a degree in X, the best value in the
country, no other University offers our graduation statistics." They might as
well be a play by play from the consumer manipulation handbook. So I can't
blame students for playing it both ways. I don't think students are stupid at
all, I'm sure many of them know that they're not actually buying the degree,
but they're all too well versed in how the media is being used to manipulate
things to their own ends, and the student playing dumb to that manipulation
and using it to their own ends is a classic example of using the University's
own tactics against them.

------
Overtonwindow
I think she hit the nail on the head with this one. Students, especially my
fellow Americans, seem to take university for granted. As a divine right,
received not earned, and free from hard work, obligation, respect, and
consequences.

------
balabaster
I can see both sides of this argument. On one hand, when you pay £9,000 for an
education, you expect to get exactly that - an education, not someone pointing
you towards a bunch of information that you could have found yourself with
half a dozen Google searches and the wherewithal to do dig through yourself...
for free. It brings to mind a quote from Good Will Hunting: "you dropped 150
grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late
charges at the public library!" So I completely understand the mentality that
when I pay you £9,000 for an education, I expect you to actively participate
in educating me - doubly so when every student in that classroom is paying
equally.

On the other hand, I disagree with the sentiment that students feel like they
are buying a degree. At least from my perspective, the degree itself is
largely meaningless. It's the education piece I'm after. I am buying education
via access to a pre-vetted, qualified and educated mentor that I can go to
with all questions I have regarding my understandings and misunderstandings. I
can do the learning piece myself, but I can't ask YouTube and online course
material questions if I don't understand it, or to clarify my understanding of
it... and I expect that as long as I meet my obligation to work hard to
understand the material you are presenting me with and submit the coursework
required for the course, I _am_ indirectly buying that degree - and that
withstanding, I _expect_ to get the degree that I not only shed blood, sweat
and tears for, but also paid £9,000 for.

As a person, I also demand respect, not because I think the world owes me
that, certainly not because I feel like I'm naturally entitled to it, but
because I understand just as you do that we all have lives outside of the
situation in which we interface. Sometimes those lives get in the way of our
best intentions, some days trying to juggle those lives and get to work on
time is all but impossible, and just as we are expected to afford respect to
those around us, I expect the same affordance, no more, no less. So if my
circumstances have prevented me from handing an assignment in on time, I
expect some consideration for those circumstances, just as I am expected to
afford the professor consideration for not attending class today because their
real life prevented them from doing that, and you know what, given that I paid
£9,000 to be in that classroom, I _do_ feel like some respect should be given
to that.

As a lifelong student, watching the exponential increase in tuition fees and
the attitudes of students towards educational systems _and vice versa_ , I
find it hard to blame the student. The education system is broken, tuition
fees keep going up, the quality of education remains mediocre at best, through
no fault of the professors who work hard and get pittance compared to what the
university makes off the students. The media constantly bangs the drum of
entitlement and consumerism into everyone from an early age; and the media is
really just a product of the society that we began building in the 1950's...
Guess what? Consequences.

~~~
relkor
You express this better than I.

~~~
balabaster
It's because I'm procrastinating because one of my tests is failing and I
can't figure out how to fix it :P

