Teaching Hours Slashed

EXCLUSIVE

£34.88 PER HOUR is the staggering sum of money some undergraduates at this University are forking out to sit in a lecture with more than 100 other students.

Politics students who are forced to pay £3,000 in tuition fees spend an average of just 86 hours per year being taught by the University.

Twenty years ago, when higher education was free, Politics undergrads had an average of 200 hours in lectures and tutorials each year.

Social Anthropology students have also seen contact hours tumble – they spent 220 hours per year in University twenty years ago but now have to go in for as little as 120 hours.

With students forced to borrow £3,000 per year to pay for their studies, they are paying up to £35 per hour for a handful of hours spent in University classes.

The revelation comes in the wake of the University being publicly lambasted for its research focus by a major public school head teacher, as reported in Student Direct last term.

A Student Direct survey also revealed earlier this year that Arts and Social Sciences students are the least likely to be satisfied with their teaching.

While the University provides students with a library as well as classes, last year just £57 was spent on new books and periodicals for every student.

£6 million was ploughed into the library last year – with £4.5 million spent on journals and £1.5 million spent on books. However, this impressive sum represents a very small amount per student.

First year English Language students can typically expect to receive between six and eight weekly hours of teaching this semester.

Second year History student Lucy Parrot has only four hours timetabled a week and pays £3,070 a year in tuition fees - or £28.43 per hour.

She said: "It's definitely not value for money, there is no one-on-one time and it feels more like a DIY subject."

Lucy was taught just five hours per week in the first semester of this year.

"Seminars are just like another lecture. There are over twenty of us in a group. It's not fair.

"Sessions with personal tutors are just 'hi and bye', I haven't even seen my personal tutor this year."

A third year Religion and Theology student, who did not want to be identified, said: "It's ridiculous, especially as this is my final year." She has five hours contact time per week.

A first year Archaeology student has seven hours of classes a week, whilst a History and Philosophy student in second year had just four hours of contact time per week last semester.  

Student Direct complained to Vice-Chancellor Alan Gilbert last year that teaching hours at the University have plummeted, so he challenged us to prove it.

Last week we confronted Professor Gilbert with our statistics, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which will send shockwaves through the University.

The stunned Vice-Chancellor was momentarily lost for words when we showed him the evidence.

But he said the Teaching and Learning Review, which was due to be published next month, will look into the issues Student Direct has raised.

He also stressed that higher education teaching is about quality and not quantity.

"We are considering reducing the amount of modules offered in some schools so that we can improve the quality of teaching overall," he said.

"Since 1987 the University has received less and less resources for teaching. This is an outcome of that."

Gilbert was keen to point out that the University were also investing in other forms of teaching, especially by expanding the use of online learning.

Figures for some other subjects were unavailable due to the changes that the merger with UMIST in 2004 had on some courses.

UMSU Academic Affairs Officer Jeff Meddemmen was aware of the trade-offs that must exist in order to provide a high-quality level of teaching. 

He said: "While this finding is symptomatic of the use of undergraduates as commercial commodities that has been seen since the introduction of top-up fees, I think that rather than increasing the number of contact hours for students, I would like to see the quality of teaching improving.

"For example, while an hour in a lecture theatre of 400 is often not satisfactory for many students, an hour in a tutorial group of five would be an example of high quality teaching."

Additional reporting by Rob Cooper.