Paul,
Please forgive a flaming response on Friday afternoon but I must say I
think this is utter nonsense. The possibility that a full-time student
could neglect their studies, while working and then claim mitigating
circumstances is a nauseating case of having one's cake and eating it.
It is not a service to our students to believe that they must be
protected from their own inability to discern what is an appropriate
balance between their educational needs and their need for a reasonable
standard of living while studying.
It is our place as institutions to deliver provision in such a way that
students can do both; that is essentially what modular credit
accumulation systems are about! We do not sacrifice either students'
futures or academic standards to the belief that everything must be done
within three years on a shoe-string budget for the convenience of
institutions. We must gear up to ensure that students who have to work
can pursue their studies over a flexible period of time, entering and
exiting as financial pressures fluctuate.
To suggest that it is a mark of a mature institution to take a student's
inability to prioritise and balance their work and study into account at
an exam board is a disservice to every member of university staff who
believes in academic standards and to every student who is working to
achieve a worthwhile qualification. I need hardly add, but I shall,
that your approach is utterly patronising to the students themselves.
What is higher education for if not to encourage some free-thinking
intelligent individuals capable of resisting social pressures and making
effective judgements about their futures?
Bryan Thomas
Quality Assurance Division
De Montfort University.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hubert, Paul [STU] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, January 15, 1999 4:33 PM
> To: Admin-student list
> Subject: Guidelines on employment
>
> I've read the replies on guidelines on employment with some interest.
> Passages quoted sound to me simultaneously sensible enough as academic
>
> guidelines as to what is required to be a full-time student and
> completely
> out-of-touch with the world in which many students live.
>
> Perhaps necessarily, many students arrive with only a vague idea of
> how
> difficult it will be to manage if they have to live on the levels of
> funding
>
> provided through the mandatory system. Most students will either not
> have
> lived away from the parental home before or they will never have tried
> to
> survive on such a low income. I include in the latter people who have
> been
> living on means-tested benefits, since they may still expect to be
> better-off
> as students but will probably be worse off.
>
> Institutions to the best of my knowledge do a very limited amount to
> promulgate the hard facts, and a very great deal to paint an
> attractive
> picture of their institutions. After all, their own income stream
> depends on
>
> it.
>
> The systems in place once students arrive offer limited help - access
> funds
> are essential at present, but can only meet a proportion of the
> demand.
> Delays can be extensive. There is help if things go wrong - but not
> everyone
>
> can have it. Whenever students have unexpected difficulties (whether
> of
> their
> own making or other people's) or, heaven forbid, have to repeat a
> period of
> study, they will have money problems.
>
> If the above is correct and working on the side is *essential* to many
>
> students, why not be honest about it? If there is a small pool of good
>
> quality jobs compatible with full-time study and a much larger pool
> where
> employers are taking advantage, many students will end up working for
> low
> money or unsocial hours for bad employers, possibly far away from the
> institution and all the hours they can get.
>
> As an undergraduate (or a post-graduate, come to that) I didn't have
> to work
>
> most of the time. But I know our generation was lucky and privileged.
> Unless
> the system is going to be dominated more than it is now by students
> with
> nice
> mummies and daddies to help them out in a crisis or the institutions
> are
> going to stop pleading their own poverty and come up with a
> substantial pot
> of money, this problem is not going to go away. Why shouldn't
> responsible
> institutions recognise that employment problems can represent
> acceptable
> mitigating circumstances? Perhaps more to the point, why can't this
> recognition be made openly and consistently?
>
> It seems to me that some of the passages from regulations and
> handbooks rest
>
> on assumptions of free intelligent individuals with full information
> making
> fully-informed choices without any kind of social pressures to distort
> their
>
> decisions, but it ain't so!
>
> Paul Hubert
> Advice worker
> Leeds Metropolitan University Students Union
>
>
>
>
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