AUT action

[clarabelle1985]

thought i would come on here and vent bit of anger as i have no where else to do it. i jsut got an email from my uni saying im not getting my exam resutls until mid july now ment to get them in two weeks this mean sill be at camp and have to try get them grrr also means if i ahve resits i will have very little time to organise them. its not fair ont ehs tudents who have put a lot of hard work in to them. for u who dont have a clue what im on about the aut is a lectures union over here who are on strike meaning they will not mark our exams grrrrr anyway anger vented now thanks tho not much i can do to cahnge the sistaution

[CAMPFRIEND]

I hope it all works out for you!

[collissimon]

clarabelle,

I agree: university lecturers suck!

They're not marking any of our work, in 'action short of a strike', which means they avoid losing money, yet they're holding our academic achievement to ransom, to make sure they get more money that most of them don't deserve!

[powers]

I may have to disagree with you there simon- I think that the majority of my lecturers do deserve more money; most of them are doctors and professors and so have put a lot of study and investment into getting where they are; they have to carry out and publish research whilst dealing with an increasing amount of students which means that the unis have loads more money which should be spent on teaching standards, not a £4-million cafe development plan (little bit of venting from me there)

I do agree, however, that the action they have taken does suck, all my exams were canceled, which means extrapolating grades from a 5% piece of coursework or resits in August, grrrr

[collissimon]

Hey powers!

I'm glad your lecturers are earning their cash, I should have said that some lecturers of course deserve to be paid a lot more than they do at present, because some of them are excellent, supportive and innovative in their research.

At my uni, however, the Geography Dept. isn't very supportive, because it is a research oriented rather than teaching oriented department, which I think is wrong <rant!> This year, we got 4 hrs contact time a week, the most we've ever had is 11, and my uni is introducing the full top-up fees: I don't know why anyone would want to pay £3k for that kind of tuition! <doublerant>

No wonder they've undersubscribed next year!

[annknee]

Technically the lecturers are marking the work they are just witholding the grade- I know at my uni they are giving us the feedback without a mark on them and we can go and get our exact marks verbally untill the strike is over. And I dont have any exams so thats not a problem for me. I too see collissimons point about the top up fees- I do history and thankfully never had to pay a penny of tuition fees (yay to being poor!!) but the most contact time we ever had was in the first year, which was 10 hours, the year just gone- my final year- we only had 2 hours a week! It worked out if you were paying the whole tuition fees that it cost £35 an hour or something similar (we had 3 hours in the first semester and were history students so not that good at maths!). It does seem a little steep- stupid government!!

[HelsBels]

I was in full support of the strike. Yeah granted not getting assessed essays back and exam results being delayed was a little irritating but not life-threatening, and I'm always up for a bit of industrial action. Makes life more interesting.

As a fellow History student however, I certainly do not get value for money. 6 1/2 hours a week the year just gone, and 2 hours of that was electives. I prefer doing work on my own terms though so I don't mind, and at least we don't have to pay the top-up fees.