A quickie

Today I had it suggested me that I apply for an internship with the Independent, on the basis that they're "starving and broke". I laughed, and then had a look at their website.

One particular article on higher education caught my eye. It was poorly written and seemingly finished halfway through, without concluding. The sole comment at the bottom (integrated via LiveJournal, rather than being a piece of built-in functionality - "broke" indeed) said, and I quote: "What a pointless article".

I then had a quick look at their list of columnists. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Johann Hari, Janet Street-Porter and John Rentoul all leapt out of the page, snarling through the plastic barrier of my screen. At least Rentoul's redeeming feature is that he's regularly cited by Howard Denton's pro-Labour blog, which is both insightful and free from the shameless attacks that feature heavily on other political blogs.

Oh well, beggars can't be choosers - anything's better than the Grauniad!

Lesson 1: Bad Admin, School of Arts style

Friends, students, graduates; lend me your ears. I have a tale to tell you, a tale of misery, woe and hardship.

Let’s say you’re paying £3,225 per year for a particular service. This service lasts for 8 months and takes up about 20 hours of your week during that period. As part of this service, you give the service provider documents which you expect to have returned. You also have regular daily meetings with your service provider, which, for mutual convenience, need to be scheduled in advance.

Now, what would your reaction be if your service provider only gave you the meeting schedule at 5pm on a Friday afternoon, with the first meeting to be held at 9am Monday morning? Or if they lost your documents and asked you to send them a fresh copy, which they then lose again? Or, even better, if they just lost your documents altogether, proceeded to deny any knowledge of posting them back to you and then claimed that it must be Royal Mail’s fault?

You’d cancel the contract and ask for your money back, that’s what. Unfortunately, when your ‘service’ is a degree course administered by the School of Arts, it isn’t that simple.

All of the things mentioned above are actual events that have happened to arts students in the last academic year alone. I have spoken to students who don’t know what marks they gained in last year’s modules, students whose courseworks have gone missing, students whose telephone calls have been ignored and students whose lectures have been moved or cancelled with zero notice; an unacceptable state of affairs.

The administrative branch of the School is doubtless under a lot of pressure. However, given that lectures finish in May and the new year starts in late September, it is totally unacceptable for the timetable to be issued the Friday before the start of term. I know full well that booking a room in the lecture centre takes just one email to Timetabling, with the allocation normally being confirmed within 48 hours – why should it take the admin office over four months to achieve the same result?

Module guides for the year have been issued. I am told by several people that they were issued a guide, and promptly issued no fewer than 3 pages of amendments to it. One of my own guides came with several repetitions of “details TBC” or “room to be advised”. A particular module guide came without the page which detailed coursework questions, which is one of the main points of having a module guide in the first place.

The rot runs deeper than this, however. Many people have had horrendous problems with enrolment. I spoke to a fellow student, who was unable to enrol for the whole of the summer. They emailed the School asking for help. They were sent automated replies, other replies promising help that never materialised and then asked the student to email them their module selections, so they could be manually put onto the system. None of these things were done. When this student phoned the office for some direct contact, their phonecalls went unanswered. As this student lives a fair distance away from Uxbridge, they were only able to get to the office in person on the first Monday of term. Clearly, had the School of Arts responded in a timely manner and sorted out this student’s problems, a face-to-face meeting to determine their academic future would not have been needed.

Sadly, it is not just people’s academic lives that are affected by the appalling administration of courses. One particular mature student commented to me that the late release of the online enrolment task – originally scheduled for early August, then deferred to late August, and finally deferred to September 1st – combined with the late release of the timetable (released late on Friday 25th September, lectures beginning on Monday 28th September) had interfered with her childcare arrangements. As those of you with young children of your own will know, your child’s welfare must take absolute priority; in this example, the School’s lack of organisation aggravates an already less-than-ideal situation.

I know other students who have commuted to campus from their homes, often an hour or two away, to discover their lecture has been cancelled or rescheduled with no notice. This travel costs people money, money which in the current economic climate they are ill-positioned to waste on needless journeys. It affects their work patterns, many of which have to be re-arranged to fit around the demands of a full-time degree course, and, on the whole, employers do not look kindly upon last-minute requests to swap shifts or not to work on a certain day. While students are paying upfront for degree courses, they deserve timely support from their University and academic School – not late release of essential information which people need in order to plan ahead.

Naturally, for those who are dependent upon the Student Loans Company in order to stay afloat during their studies, the difficulties with enrolment present a much deeper problem. As any fule no, receipt of your grant or loan depends on the university confirming that you are an enrolled student. Naturally, when your university then presents you with an assault course of obstacles to cross and hoops to jump through, with minimal or no support, people’s financial situations are put into jeopardy. A growing number of students have contacted me, bitterly complaining about their loans being delayed because of problems with enrolment; the blame for which can squarely be laid at the door of the School of Arts. They are looking at their bank balances and considering whether it is better to be a bankrupt graduate or a solvent non-grad. No student should ever be put into this position as a result of maladministration by their university.

To continue this litany of woe, there are further problems with module selection. Another student, who has requested anonymity, selected her modules on E-Vision, seemingly successfully. However, one of the modules failed to appear on U-Link. Upon questioning this, the student was told that she hadn’t selected the module and that it was now full so she couldn’t re-apply. In effect, the student was excluded from the module because of bad admin by the School, leaving them with the sole option of pursuing a module in practical work experience; something they had not planned for and had no previous intention of doing.

Hitherto, all the cases I have mentioned in this article have been examples of poor administrative practice, poor organisational skills and a clear disregard for the knock-on effects of decisions implemented weeks after the date they should have been. However, hard as it may be to believe, an even worse example of the School’s malpractice comes to light. Many returning students will be familiar with Professor Maureen Moran, who lectured for many years with the English department. She retired at the end of September, something that was known months in advance by staff and students alike. In fact, my sources tell me that the School is throwing a party to celebrate her distinguished career with Brunel University, and having been a student of hers I’d like to wish her the very best in her future endeavours.

Despite knowing the date of Prof Moran’s retirement, the School saw fit to allocate Prof Moran as a lecturer for modules commencing in 2010 and even to allocate her as supervisor to a group of final-year dissertation students! This beggars belief, that a staff member departing less than a week after the start of the academic year should have been allocated as a supervisor for a task that will last until May 2010. This malpractice is not fair on Prof Moran, and it is not fair to the students who have to continue their dissertations without support or guidance from their school. My source tells me that another lecturer has been appointed in Prof Moran’s place; the sum total of information he’s received about this is that the replacement’s first name is Jessica.

By exposing this litany of incompetence, I hope to shame the School into cleaning up its act. I did try to contact them, in the hope that they could show some evidence of mitigating circumstances. After being kept on hold for 20 minutes, I abandoned any hope of trying to phone them, and resorted to email. This went unanswered as well. For self-evident reasons, I’m not about to present myself at the admin office and announce that I am the one who’s displaying their dirty laundry to the University at large. Hence, unfortunately, there can be no reply to these situations from the School itself, because the School seemingly doesn’t want to hear from its students.

In closing, my impression is that morale amongst my fellow arts students is low. Dark jokes are made about coursework ‘only’ being returned after eight or nine weeks. The Gallic shrug is a common sight when one finds that a lecture has been unexpectedly rescheduled, or that vital information about the lecture was only released the night before via email. All of this leads up to School of Arts students castigating Brunel in public. This can only lead to bad results in the Student Satisfaction Survey, Brunel’s place in university league tables falling, and your degree – irrespective of subject – being valued less by employers. I have spoken to one student who plans to submit a formal complaint against the School and another who is writing an open letter to the Vice-Chancellor detailing his grievances. Let us hope that the School, or failing them, the University Senate, sorts this mess out before it comes back to bite us all.

The Death of European Democracy

It's happened.

The principle over which millions fought and died in the Second World War - that of resisting a European superstate presided over by an unaccountable dictatorship - has been betrayed. That which our fathers and grandfathers stood fast to defend during the Cold War - that of resisting a dictatorial superstate - has been betrayed.

The most shameful aspect of today's results are that this is the second time that the Irish electorate have been asked the same question. The first "no" result, in June 2008, should have been taken as an outright rejection of the EU Constitution. By rights, the EU's lawmakers should have gone scurrying back to their taxpayer-funded quangos to revise their iniquitous constitution and abandon the idea of one USA-style European superstate. Yet, like one of Torqemada's inqusitors, the EU continued to ask the question of Ireland, this time after bribing big business to keep EU-funded jobs in the country; and publically boasting about this despicable act.

So it comes to pass that the Irish, after this campaign of bullying and taxpayer-funded propaganda, have signed their national sovereignty over to the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats of Brussels. The only hope for the free peoples of Europe lies in Poland and the Czech republic, where ratification is yet to be carried out. Reports have it that Poland will ratify in days, leaving just the Czechs alone to derail the abrogation of sovereignty and self-determination that is the hallmark of the European Union.

The UK, under the unpopular Labour government, have already ratified the Lisbon Constitution, despite this breaking their manifesto pledge to hold a public referendum on the matter. The incoming Conservative government have already begun hinting that they will not hold a referendum on the Constitution as the anticipated ratification by Poland and the Czech Republic will effectively make it a "done deal".

All in all, a terrible day for European democracy and a betrayal of the values upon which British society was founded over a thousand years ago.