Kids at College

[Ulick]

Thats an awful bit of shite coming from your mouth. sounds like nothing but propaganda, you must work for UU? I currently go to queens and i must admit the help you get is pure shite, you thrown 3 grand a year at the lectures and they act as if your a piece of dirt, absolutely no help whatsoever with seldom exceptions. come exam time the odd lecture will more or less tell you what questions are going to come up. feedback is piss poor and all lectures seem preoccupied about meeting a publicist to see when their next book is to be printed.

£3k per year? What are you doing, an unfunded PhD?

[tyrone exile]

sorry i meant £3,375

[Ulick]

sorry i meant £3,375

Per year?

[tyrone exile]

sorry i meant £3,375

Per year?

yeh. why?

[Ulick]

sorry i meant £3,375

Per year?

yeh. why?

I thought tuition fees were for per course, not per year of study.

Edit: Googled them there and they are by the year. Scandalous.

[tyrone exile]

no, sure if that was the case you wouldnt mind failing a year here and there

[Ulick]

sorry i meant £3,375

Per year?

yeh. why?

I thought tuition fees were for per course, not per year of study.

Eh? It's £3000+ for the 24 weeks.

Crazy - and to think most of the lecturers are off running their own side businesses for half the week on company pay. 

[tyrone exile]

sorry i meant £3,375

Per year?

yeh. why?

I thought tuition fees were for per course, not per year of study.

Eh? It's £3000+ for the 24 weeks.

and thats not taking into account the reading week alot of courses have and the odd email you get from a lecture saying he/she cant make it this week.

[tyrone exile]

i have 9, only 6 of these are taken by lecturers, i have a few modules a year with over 100 people in them, and its not like my course would be over subscribed.

[AhJaysusRef]

End result is false module marks are presented when final degree classifications are awarded.

How do you know that this happens? Was this the case for you or did you know of a friend who had their marks rounded up?

I have to call a bullshit on the bit in bold. How the fcuk would they know?

Because a 2:2 is between 50-59% and a 2:1 is 60-69%. The gap in knowledge from the upper end of the scale to the bottom is almost 20%. That is a big difference in terms of marks in exams and therefore a big difference in knowledge. Someone who gets 69% knows a lot more than someone who gets 50%.

Thats an awful bit of shite coming from your mouth. sounds like nothing but propaganda, you must work for UU? I currently go to queens and i must admit the help you get is pure shite, you thrown 3 grand a year at the lectures and they act as if your a piece of dirt, absolutely no help whatsoever with seldom exceptions. come exam time the odd lecture will more or less tell you what questions are going to come up. feedback is piss poor and all lectures seem preoccupied about meeting a publicist to see when their next book is to be printed.

No I don't work for UU. Did you study there before you went to Queens? Your little rant shows UU provides more help to students from lecturers who know what awaits a young scholar when they graduate.

[tyrone exile]

End result is false module marks are presented when final degree classifications are awarded.

How do you know that this happens? Was this the case for you or did you know of a friend who had their marks rounded up?

I have to call a bullshit on the bit in bold. How the fcuk would they know?

Because a 2:2 is between 50-59% and a 2:1 is 60-69%. The gap in knowledge from the upper end of the scale to the bottom is almost 20%. That is a big difference in terms of marks in exams and therefore a big difference in knowledge. Someone who gets 69% knows a lot more than someone who gets 50%.

Thats an awful bit of shite coming from your mouth. sounds like nothing but propaganda, you must work for UU? I currently go to queens and i must admit the help you get is pure shite, you thrown 3 grand a year at the lectures and they act as if your a piece of dirt, absolutely no help whatsoever with seldom exceptions. come exam time the odd lecture will more or less tell you what questions are going to come up. feedback is piss poor and all lectures seem preoccupied about meeting a publicist to see when their next book is to be printed.

No I don't work for UU. Did you study there before you went to Queens? Your little rant shows UU provides more help to students from lecturers who know what awaits a young scholar when they graduate.

I agree with you that UU offers alot more help, most people would, however they way you were talking is like UU is the top university in the UK. yes they do prepare there students with real life experience such as placements, especially in construction courses, however especially lately, alot of students arnt able to get a company to take them on for a years placement and end up working in a shop making a bit of money, going back into there course knowing even less. what university you should go to completely depends on what kind of career you want, if it is something to do with construction or hands on work i think UU is the best, however for careers like law, accountancy politics etc, a degree from queens would definitely stand you better.

[The Gs Man]

Coleraine? Obviously his A'Level results weren't the best.....

Any need for that comment?

Nope.

jaysus lads I was jokin. Sure Im a Poly graduate myself...

Apologies!

[take_yer_points]

The vast majority won't do anywhere near that but will get decent grades because staff will fiddle the spreadsheets to ensure they are making expected targets.

I would be interested in seeing an example of this.

It difficult to prove because lecturers are responsible for compiling their own assessment results. However if you put a freedom of information request into the minutes of external examiners meetings, over, say three consecutive years, and if they are complied correctly, you'll see from the discussions even the staff themselves don't believe most of the marks.

Lecturers are indeed responsible for compiling their own assessment results, which at UU are then moderated internally prior to an internal preliminary exam board and which are then moderated by an external examiner prior to a formal Board of Examiners (the external examiner may only moderate a sample of the student work but will usually look at a cross section of high/medium/low standard work and will also usually look at all borderline work to check if it should be marked up or down). The external examiner will attend the Board of Examiners which are chaired by an independent person as well as having representation from the university's exam's department. I very much doubt you will find anything in the minutes which states that staff don't believe most of the marks - I think you'd find the exact opposite in fact. I think you'd also find that the vast majority of external examiners will be very confident in any marks and classifications awarded when they submit their reports.

At a Board of Examiners some border-line classifications can be questioned, discussed and subsequently may be marked up. Where this happens it will usually have been discussed at the preliminary exam board and the request to review the classification will have been presented to the external examiner who will review the student's work and will be able to make an informed decision on what classification the student should receive. This is by no means doctoring the broadsheets (not spreadsheets) to improve staff performance - the indepentant chair, external examiner and exams department representative make sure of that.

It difficult to prove because lecturers are responsible for compiling their own assessment results.

If it's difficult to prove then how do you know it goes on?

If a student is awarded a 2:1 grade and they actually got a 2:2 but their lecturer rounded their grade up, it would become apparent to any employer after a few weeks that the student did not have the level of skill that they suggested they did have.

If, as you suggest, the vast majority of students have their grades rounded up then surely employers should look elsewhere for employees.

However the stats don't lie. The vast majority of UU grads get jobs within 6 months.

UU is a great place to study.

A 2.1 is an average of all individual module marks over a number of years. The lecturer can't round up a pathway/degree award but if enough pressure is placed on them, they will round up their module marks so they don't face criticism at exam board meetings. There is no check on this (academic freedom which has been upheld in the courts). End result is false module marks are presented when final degree classifications are awarded. At the end of the day, lecturers are judged on their research, not teaching, so no-one is going to look too carefully at what they are doing and to be honest the lecturers themselves are not going to spend too much time worrying about it. If they're not hitting expected targets, then they change the spreadsheets to meet them. Simples.

Lecturers are not judged on their teaching? Ever heard of the National Student Survey? This is taking a step further next year with the Key Information Set as well (http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/aug/12/key-information-set-student-information). I think you'll find that plenty of lecturers are not hitting expected targets and are still not changing the broadsheets.

One thing that stands out to me as a negative practice in the HE sector is the use of postgraduate students being used as lab demonstrators for Year 1 students. I've heard the term "buying out" teaching on numerous occasions - this is where an academic staff member will use their research budget to employ a postgrad student to teach for them which allows the academic to concentrate on research activities - I think there is something very wrong with that - in particular if the post grad is not suitably qualified in the area of study in question or has no interest in the area.

Dougal, what's your son studying?

[thewobbler]

Having spent 4 years studying at QUB and 4 years working at UUJ, I can safely say that both institutions are monuments to wastage.

I wasn't taught anything in QUB. The lecturers tended to be old men with missing marbles, young women with no life experience, or grad students who were normally hungover.

The assessment earlier in this thread that UU us a more relevant university these days is far from the reality though. What a third level education should show, first and foremost, is an aptitude to learn and analyse. The subject isn't as relevant as the experience. And all I got from my time working in UU was a horribly narrow focus to education. Understanding the subject was nowhere near as important as understanding what the lecturers knew and liked about their subjects.

The vocational year is an interesting point. But if the value of it is so high, then surely there is an argument for bypassing academia entirely, and serving the engineering apprenticeship on site?


Anyways, anyone expecting to be enlightened through academia would be best off avoiding either institution. If you must choose one, at least QUB feels like a seat of learning and not a prison camp.

[pintsofguinness]

AhJaysusRef you've talked some shit on this thread.  Quite amusing.

Tyrone exile

what university you should go to completely depends on what kind of career you want, if it is something to do with construction or hands on work i think UU is the best, however for careers like law, accountancy politics etc, a degree from queens would definitely stand you better.

You were doing ok until the bit in bold.