All very true. The amount of time that University managers will allocate for a staff member leading a BA or MA programme is about 12 hours per week. That can be done by a 0.5 FTE lecturer and, in most art departments, is. When I ran a School (not a course, but a range of courses across departments) I was expected to do it on 12 hours per week. I had administrative support of 6 hours per week. That's about normal. A Dean (typically responsible for thousands of students and hundreds of staff) is expected to be able to do that job in about 17 hours per week. On top of that they would still have teaching duties, research supervision, strategic engagement with the institutional executive on numerous matters, external obligations (research councils, QAA, external examining) and their own research to do. I know people who carry this workload and also remain fully active as producing and exhibiting artists.
The students do get a raw deal. However, students (especially undergraduates) do come to University with unrealistic expectations. They come from school and expect to be taught as they were there. But Universities are not about being taught. If you want to be taught go to an FE College to learn a skill. Universities are about learning and that is something the student has to do themselves. The staff are there to help them work out how to do that - how to do the research that will allow them to discover the knowledge they seek. When students complain about having only 10 or 12 hours contact a week with lecturers they are misunderstanding what University is about. The staff are hammered by an inadequately resourced sector and over expectant students. Sorry for the rant. Best Simon Simon Biggs [email protected] [email protected] Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ Research Professor edinburgh college of art http://www.eca.ac.uk/ Creative Interdisciplinary Research in CoLlaborative Environments http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice http://www.elmcip.net/ Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts > From: marc garrett <[email protected]> > Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity > <[email protected]> > Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:28:29 +0000 > To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] The Return of King Mob. > > This paragraph from Armin's article rings true... > > "Yet the students who with such a clear mind defend the value of > education as a public good should take a clear and careful look at what > it is that they are defending. The snobbish and frequent comments of > members of the politic and academic establishment who refer to 'our > world class universities' are not aware of what the students know all > too well. That the standard of teaching and learning in most British > universities is very low, that a lot of the teaching is outsourced to > exploited and underpaid sessional lecturers, that part time staff often > are made course leaders and solely responsible for a whole BA or MA > course, that the number of 'contact hours' students are getting are few > and decreasing, and that British universities have long been turned into > a two- and three-tyer class society." > > wishing all well. > > marc > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
