tim's experiment

The neew 3-3-4 arreangement is now running into rough water, as was to be expected. The problem (I claim no credit for predicting this: it was obvious) is the way students are now admitted and shunted into particular programmes. Actually the whole problem is unnecessary. Universities could have kept the old system under which students applied for a programme and knew when admitted what they would be doing. This was not incompatible with a four-year programme, or with a common first year devoted to General Education. But the heads of universities decided that admission should be on a Faculty or School basis. A few cherished – or influential – programmes were exempted from this toxic innovation. For the rest, the students have now discovered that many of them will not be able to pursue the programme of their choice. And they are not happy.

There are two reasons for this. One is that if a particular programme is more popular than others the university concerned will simply set a quota. Students who are not admitted to this programme will have to choose something else. This is annoying. It is made more annoying because the choice is effectively constrained by the entirely arbitrary administrative boundaries between Faculties or Schools. A student who is refused for Accountancy, for example, will not be able to switch to Computer Science because it is not in the Business School. Some restrictions will depend on decisions made long ago by accident: is History an Art? Is Geography a Science?

Even more annoying, the selection will be on Grade Point Average, or in other words on performance in First Year subjects which, by definition, have nothing to do with your hoped for Major. In other words, back to Examination Hell, boys and girls. The old A Level tensions have not been slackened; they have merely been moved from school to university.

This brings us to another looming problem. The educational advantages and disadvantages of students spending the years between 17 and 18  in school or in a university are something that can be argued over endlessly. But there are other issues. Students under the stress of important examinations and difficult decisions under uncertainty will have problems. Some of them will encounter illness, mental or otherwise; some of them will have relationship problems, some of them may just need a friendly ear. In school this sort of thing is catered for as a matter of course. Teachers accept that they have pastoral duties as well as educational ones. Students who have been in the school for years will know who they feel comfortable confiding in and can advise more recent arrivals. There is a structure of houses and classes which provides a social environment.

The first year in university, as we have now reconstructed it, lacks many of these features. The student is in a strange environment. He or she is one of several hundred admitted to a particular Faculty or School. Classes will be large. The student will be, or will easily become, an alienated and isolated individual, lost in a lonely crowd. The more alert universities are trying to construct some kind of advisory or tutorial mechanism, but under these circumstances progress is not likely to be impressive. The student does not belong to anybody yet, so nobody feels responsible for him or her. University teachers have had no training or preparation for the role of advisor or counsellor. Of course they have had no training for the role of teacher either but they do not believe this to be necessary. Many of them are reluctant to engage in an advisory role and some of them are acutely afraid of the blame, or guilt, which may settle on them if a case ends in tragedy.

This may seem a shamefully timid attitude but as a prediction about the future it is spot on. Tragedies there will be. This is an entirely avoidable consequence of universities setting up a system which requires in them qualities which they do not possess. That is, of course, not what you will read in the press releases. In universities, I have discovered, you do not get a higher standard of administration. You get more elaborate and sophisticated excuses.