I'm sitting in the university library on a computer. I am here not because I am so passionately dedicated to my studies that every waking minute I spend scouring through complex textbooks, but because my the University of Wolverhampton decdided it would be a brilliant idea to have all of my lectures on a Thursday.
Now, admittedly, I only do three lectures per week (I would normally have 4, but because I'm doing a dissertation this semester, I get to forego one session of class time). Nevertheless, I start at 11am Thursday morning, and realistically I wont leave tonight until 8pm. That breaks down as 11-1, then 3-5, and then 6-8. I literally had to do the 6-8pm (Global Culture) one, and 11-1am (Life Writing) was one of the modules I was really looking forward to. So then it came down to a choice.
What I really wanted to take was Media and Sport, but, to my dismay I found that it is run at exactly the same time as Life Writing! The other option I had was Television Soap Opera on a Monday, and because I detest soaps, I couldn't face it. So now, I have a full day of lectures.
To be honest, it isnt too bad, its not strenuous or anything, and in some ways its kinda nice only to have to come to and from uni once a week, but what annoys me the most was that I couldnt take a module I wanted to do, because the university had scheduled them all for the same day and time. Surely they could have done better, if they could be bothered.
Now, perhaps, the reason all of the lectures are on the same day is simple, perhaps it works out financially for the university of employ staff to work on the same day, maybe if they cram all their lectures into Thursdays, they can close part of the university for the week and not have to pay for staff.
I dont know whether this is the case, I havent even done any research into the posibility, but given this uni's current financial crisis in which we are told they can no longer afford to print off module guides to save money, it wouldn't surprise me. Not one bit.
This brings me, however, to something else that I recently learnt that seriously annoyed me. To give the full story I'll have to give you a bit of context, here we go:
In my first year here at university, we had a student union bar. In the second semester, I was there pretty much every week. There was a pretty nice atmosphere. You didnt get Oceania-esque fights, and it was certainly better kept that the admittedly sometimes grimy (although brilliant) Planet.
At the beginning of year two, we were told that the student union would be not be running, and as of the time of writing, this situation has not remotely been resolved. The reason we were given for this was that the finances of the bar had been mismanged; specifically, they had ordered too much stock and hadnt sold it, and had lost an awful lot of money.
Jump forward to around later of half of year three's first semester. The Student Union held its first meeting for ages, in which we listened to speeches from the union officers about finances, and the future of the uni and the union. It was all good, we even got milk and cookies just for turning up.
However, one of the final agendas of the meeting was the decision that the number of university staff was going to be cut. We knew about this already, but we didnt know what it meant for the change in the structure of the university.
The way it works at the moment is that we have to complete 8 modules a year, 4 per semester. But now, the university has decided it will be simpler (and presumably cheaper) to have 6 modules per year instead. Now, as soon as the large group of students sitting in the meeting were told about this, there was virtual outrage. No-one had a single good thing to say about the idea, a guy next to me even saying that had he known about the proposed changes sooner, he would have applied to change university.
"Are you asking us, or telling us?" one student asked a member of the Student Union Committee.
"Telling, I'm afraid" he replied.
Supposedly they had done extensive research into what students wanted from university, and they were simply acting on the results. Well, none of these students agreed. I'll talk a little about this in another blog, but anyway, I've gotten away from the point.
The point is that these are just two examples of catastrophic mistakes that the union has made/allowed to happen. It was to my horror, then, to learn that the four main members of the committee were being paid 16 grand a year, each. There are four of them equalling 64 grand being spent on the students union committee who have clearly done a terrible job. Not only that, but as I have said, a large number of staff are being cut from their jobs. I dont know about lecturer salaries, but I bet at least a two or three (maybe more) could be saved if we got rid of this failing student union committee.
Makes me glad I'm leaving this university this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment