WillIseemytutor has made front-page news in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THEd), the article headlined “Alarm at ratings website”. No prizes for guessing who are the ‘alarmed’ (the university establishment) that same constituency the Times Higher Ed ostensibly writes for.
This theme of alarm is later centre stage in their editorial (”if you can’t beat them, blog them”). Here we learn that the new internet media threaten the good name of universities, and most worryingly of all, resists effective ‘policing’ by the said same! So, what is to be done in this new nightmarish world? Apparently universities should also adopt tactics (like blogging) in the furtherance of their interests. What this analysis fails to convey is the assumption that given universities’ vested interests, everyone necessarily benefits from having a small elite controlling all messages. The great thing about online media - and I’m proving it as I write this blog [and yes, ignoring my typos] - is that it democratises what has previously been the province of a powerful few. This gives everyone a voice, and communicates messages which may otherwise go unheard.

No one should forget that universities are in the business of attracting students in what is now a marketplace. To do this they design and run marketing campaigns that sell a message (primarily through branding). Are we really expected to believe that these same institutions do not selectively portray themselves in the best possible light, in other words, are economical with the truth? If you were to gather together all the assorted glossy publicity efforts you would find no such a thing as a ‘mediocre university’, yet logic dictates they must exist, as ‘excellence’ (by definition) can not be the property of all. Everyone maybe ‘pursuing it’ ad nausea (i.e. trying to do better) but that is to say something quite different (and of little substance). Unlike our critics, we at willIseemytutor see our mission as championing the interests of the individual student, to enable them to better navigate all those competing claims and marketing babble in order to obtain the best education that is open to them.

What we do accept is the responsibility not to knowingly mislead anyone. Whilst our site is in its testing phase (alpha) we are continually reviewing data quality to ensure best information and welcome feedback from institutions.

One last point, our use of staff student ratios (SSR’s) has been criticised as a means of comparison as ’simplistic’ and ‘alarming’ - we beg to differ. We think it’s a ‘killer stat’ for reasons I won’t rehearse again here (please review this blog for the argument and see forthcoming FAQ’s).

What is a trifle confusing is the contrast between the lead stories on the front-page and the back-page of the THEd. The headline story on the back-page (”UCU set to sue over workload burdens” - apparently overworked academics are breaking the EU’s 48 hour working time directive). Why? Well, it turns out that 47% of surveyed staff cited rising staff-student-ratios as a cause. What this (inadvertently) shows is the importance of SSR’s in every dimension of higher education - our point exactly!

Think your skint now if your an undergraduate? Well going to university is set to get a lot more expensive if the findings of a survey of the top brass (VC’s) across UK universities is anything to go by. Apparently undergraduate fees will have to rise to £6,000 per year, and as high as £10,000 for some science courses (the current fees are pegged at a maximum of £3,000 per year). Its all set for 2009 when the government will have its big ‘review’, read here price rise!

Why the rise? Well the VC’s argue that fees are still too low, for instance Amercian universities recieve an average of £11,500 per student compared to England’s lowly £7,300. Few would doubt the linkage between the resources available and the quality of graduate produced, but unlike the American system we are unlikely to see a market in higher education just yet. This is because our maximum leviable fee will likely become a flat fee as has happened with the current £3,000 (with the exception of 1 university) your not going to get Harvard prices just yet … unless the top universites decide to go private that is.

Dare we say it but how you choose your university will become ever more important, and that means examining the critical staff/student ratio; Americans have been tuned to this for many years, the British need to catch on!

Here is a quote for you from Baroness Walker, then Minister for Higher Education in the run up to the 2001 election, she said when responding to numerous press speculation at the time “There is absolutely no question of top up fees being introduced in the next parliament, as your story suggested last week [THE] …. if elected, we would continue to rule out top-up fees” (Letter 1/6/2001)

This, if ever proof we’re needed, that you can’t trust them as far as you can kick them! No wonder many people consider our so called right honourables to be a bunch of lying toe-rags with posh sounding titles.

It seems to me that the problem in political life is not, as our MP’s seem to think, that there is too much cynicism about politics these days, rather given their records, that there is not enough!

This site is all about the championing of students to enable them to get the best deal from all the competing universities out there, so we were dead chuffed when we heard about this little exercise by a team of consultants:

They posed as prospective students to test how good a customer service universities deliver in practice. The first victim was Sheffield University, who recieved a pretty poor grade all in all. The consultants headline findings were: 1 in 5 phone callers who asked for info recieved nothing, 1 in 3 callers leaving voice mail requesting a call back weren’t called while 30% of phone enquirers failed to get through after 3 attempts. Furthermore, 7 departments took more than a month to send requested material, with 1 department taking a staggering 3 months to reply.

In a response notable only for its obfuscation, deceit, and marketing babble, the Director of Student recruitment and marketing (thinly disguised propaganda to you and me) Jane Chafer stated that these results failed to highlight “the many areas of excellence within the university” and that she realised students expectations of the university were “changing” and that they wished to “continually improve and challenge themselves” to “enhance the service they offered” - all of which means their going to try better, but deny their crap.

What do these poor results show at Sheffield? We think they illustrate that staff-student ratios matter, and effect all areas of university life!

Edit: spelling (a pedant)

Well the dirt is out, staff bullying is rife at Sheffield Hallam University, it’s offical. Nearly a whopping 100 staff working there reported that they had been bullied ‘always’, ‘often’ or ’sometimes’.

And if your not being bullied, harrangued or belittled at Hallam, then your getting stressed out - the report also highlights the need for ‘urgent action’ over staff stress levels. All of this is hardly an advertisment to attract the academic cream to Hallam’s less than hallowed halls.

In fact, Sheffield Hallam must be pretty pissed off that their internal survey report got leaked, some disgruntled staff getting some payback on their managers no doubt. However, in a flourish of doublethink which would make Orwell proud, the VC Prof Green tried to make a virtue from a necessity by arguing the mere fact the survey was conducted proves how serious Sheffield Hallam takes the matter .. yeah right, wonder if they would have sanctioned it in hindsight. No doubt their trawling through the email system right now on a witch hunt for the whistle blower.

And of course, if it’s such a lousy place to work, what’s it like to study there?