Sick bastards in labs
Okay. I'm not a member of the university anymore, they can do fuck all to me, and now I can rant. Coz now they've really pissed me off.

In an attempt to make more money out of conferences the University completely changed around its academic year structure this year. Previously, we had about 6 weeks of lectures starting in late September, followed by a week of no lectures called Reading Week in early November during which people could try to breathe and catch up on work, then another six weeks of lectures taking us pretty much right up to Christmas. We had a three-week Christmas holiday which finished in mid-January followed pretty much immediately by two weeks of exams and one lecture-free week called Consolidation Week. Usually, departments wouldn't give coursework over the Christmas break, but given that exams were straight after that, people would generally drag piles of notes and textbooks home and then miserably fail to revise. It wasn't exactly an ideal solution, but it was bearable.

The new academic year structure is meant to address several issues: firstly, it's meant to be slightly more convenient for conferences, out of which the University makes money; secondly, there were allegedly complaints from international students that we broke up for Christmas far too late and people generally buggered off earlier; and then there was the teaching space issue (the University has been expanding, while available teaching space has become less and less due to one of the major buildings being full of asbestos) which led last year to the VC threatening to cut teaching time by 20%.

This year, the academic year looks something like this: starting in early October, there are ten weeks of uninterrupted lectures. This has turned out to mean that by about mid-November both students and staff are completely zombified and in dire need of a break. Term finishes a week before Christmas, however the Christmas break is still three weeks, coming to an end in the first week of January which a lot of students seem to find shocking. We come back to two weeks of further lectures, followed by two weeks of exams, followed by Consolidation Week.

So what will a typical student's life look like throughout the first semester of this shiny new academic year? Take Paul, for instance. He's had 10 weeks of lectures and bits and pieces of coursework here and there. We've already established that he's been zombified since mid-November due to the lack of Reading Week. Now, because we don't come straight back to exams, lecturers a far less reluctant to set coursework over the Christmas break - Paul has three pieces of coursework to do over three weeks. Then he comes back to two weeks of lectures, during which period he also needs to revise, then has two weeks of exams, and finally, if he's very very lucky, he might get a break during Consolidation Week. That's 10+3+2+2=17 weeks of solid work without a break.

From a different perspective, let's see what knock-on effects this academic year structure has had on teaching time. Firstly, a lot of staff decided that they can't live without Reading Week and a lot of modules took a break in mid-November. That already cuts one week of teaching time of the 12 that we're meant to have in the first semester. Also, coming back to two weeks of teaching after Christmas which then move on straight into exams without revision time means that any lecturer in their right mind will be reluctant to cover new content in that time as people will be revising already and will not be able to assimilate that new content. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the new academic year leaves us with 9 weeks in which to cover actual new content, as opposed to the 12 weeks we had previously. Effectively, we've cut teaching time by 25% without actually reducing or balancing out the use of General Teaching Areas.

One has, of course, to keep in mind that our fantastic Vice-Chancellor, Glynis Breakwell, is one of the strongest supporters of top-up fees among the Higher Education community in this country. One has, also, to wonder whether Ms. Breakwell has considered what it means for the University to charge for higher education. Has she, one wonders, the same attitude as her American counterparts to higher education as a service and to students as paying customers? Or does she rather think that she can continue to completely disregard the interests of the students, take on more and more students each year thus over-crowding the university facilities (not to mention what that's doing to the housing market in Bath!) and juggle the academic year around various non-academic concerns and still be able to charge GBP3000 per year for the honour to be a member of the glorious University of Bath, formerly in the Top 5 of the Times University League Table? When I graduated with my BSc in 2002, we were number 4 in that table. When I graduated with my MA last week, we had dropped to 5. Ms. Breakwell did not consider this to be a problem earlier this year. One wonders how much further we have to fall for it to become a problem.

I spent four years of my life at this educational institution, and I care about it. I believe that is more than can be said of Vice-Chancellor Glynis Breakwell.

Note, about an hour later: It occurs to me that the title of this post may seem somewhat strange. This is because originally it was going to be a lot less coherent and eloquent and I was going to rant about sick bastards in physics labs giving my boyfriend coursework over Christmas when I was looking forward to spending some time with a non-stressed, non-courseworking boyfriend. I'm glad I can occasionally still write a vaguely coherent argument though. ;-)