Apathy Sketchpad

Apparently, Oxford University is to introduce a contract between itself and students.

I remember some years ago when I was in sixth form our school tried introducing one of these. It essentially said that we had to try hard, and we were informed that we had to sign it or we could be expelled. Enough students simply refused to sign it that the whole thing was abandoned — nobody got expelled because of course that would put the school in breach of contract, as we’d already started the course and only now were being given this contract. Oxford have, rather more cleverly, applied this contract to future students only.

The aim is to stop students signing up to a degree course, flunking it, and suing the university for not teaching them properly. This is a fairly reasonable goal but they’ve gone about it the wrong way. Personally, I’ve never been to Oxford University, so I don’t know what the teaching is like there, but I do know that an alternative way to avoid being sued for breach of contract is to stick to the contract.

The fact of the matter is that the universities do not pay the students. The students pay the universities, and when you pay for something you have a right to get something of a reasonable standard in return. If I want to spend thousands of pounds on a degree course I have no intention of completing then that is my preoragtive. The day a university pays me is the day I will feel obliged to live up to their expectations (although as the government would be sibsidising your degree, you have an entirely seperate obligation to them to at least try to pass the course). (I feel I should probably also mention here that I personally was, in fact, paid by the university. I was on a scholarship scheme, however this didn’t even cover half of my tuition fees, and in fact was dependant on my attaining certaing grades anyway. It was not so much a case of “we’re paying you, so you’d better do well” as it was “if you do well, we’ll reward you”.)

Apparently, all this was sparked by a university paying out £30,000 to a student who complained about teaching standards there.

The student who sued them wasn’t complaining that the teaching was bad, he was very specifically complaining that the lecture theatres were overcrowded and that there were errors in the assignments given to him. That sort of thing is very easy to prove, or, if the lecture theatres aren’t overcrowded and the assignments don’t contain errors, disprove. I realise Oxford is a widely respected university with an excellent reputation, but there’s no guarantees. You can’t try out a university. You can’t go to more than one, at least, not without spending thousands of pounds at each. Most people have nothing but second-hand and often out-of-date accounts of universities to help them make their decision, and most of the second-hand accounts are from people who only went to one university, have nothing to compare it with, and generally had a good time because that is what univerisity is all about (as much as they told us otherwise). If you are supported by a grant for the first half of your course you have the option of given up on it and going somewhere else. With grants there was some motivation for universities not to be crap. As it is any student who feels their university is failing them has the following options:

Legal action — a great option, except that it is expensive, time consuming, hard work and potentially disasterous if you lose. Students, as a rule, couldn’t afford to do that.

Change course — and abandon the thousands of pounds and years of your life you’ve invested in the course. Most students can’t really afford to do that either.

Complain to the university — which is great news for next year’s students, but won’t change a thing as far as you are concerned. It fails to solve the problem at hand, and hardly seems worth the bother.

Lump it — most students in this situation choose this option. (We know this because the one whi didn’t must have had at least enough coursemates to overcrowd a lecture theatre.) It essentially means that they’re doing their own work, as well as work the university ought to be doing — say, proofreading the assignments. Then the University sees that people are managing to get good marks and assumes its teaching is up to scratch. But it’s the only way to come out of the situation with a degree and any money at all.

There’s basically no recourse for students when universities fail them, and since there’s no way to try out a university before committing to a three year course, there’s really no reason for universities to bother maintaining standards as long as they can maintain their reputation, and this is the problem with Oxford’s proposed contract. In its current state it makes students’ responsibilities very clear, but not the university’s. It essentially states “I, the student, acknowledge that it is my responsibility to try my best to earn a good degree, and if the university feels like helping me out then I should be grateful”. That won’t do. Worse still, if the university makes you sign a contract that clearly spells out that the university is free to choose how much teaching you are entitled to then they have a very easy get-out clause if you do complain about the standards or availability of teaching. That is an incredibly dangerous precedent. I only hope that prospective students do what current students are famous for, and refuse to accept any such thing.