Students suffer too

I have worked full time all my adult life, most of that as a single parent. During that time, I also completed four degrees (including PhD) whilst working full time and doing the degrees full time (always choosing institutions on the primary basis of having options for distance/ online learning). I entered academia about 15 years ago, in a series of contract roles (having worked for the corporate sector and governments for many years, I am very skilled at project management, sticking to deadlines and so on). At first, I loved it, as it provided the two most important aspects of any job (to me) flexibility and interesting work.

However, as the years went on, I had to take on increasing amounts of teaching (for which I am totally unqualified as are most teaching staff, who do not even have basic qualifications in education) to keep getting contracts. While I quite like teaching, I find it incredibly stressful and time-consuming (in 2022 I was working 7 days a week trying to keep up with convening, teaching on multiple campuses, marking, creating and editing courses and so on). At the same time, we are expected to navigate a multiplicity of mostly busy work administration tasks (none of which use the same IT systems, and which are ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated and none of which ‘talk to each other’).

For me however, the most difficult aspect is dealing with students. For every wonderful engaged student, there are ten who are overly entitled, demand high marks for work that should fail, have extremely limited English language skills and often punish their teachers by the archaic, useless and outdated “metrics” of SECs and SETs. Then there are ten more who have extremely difficult life circumstances, including bereavements, horrendous living conditions, full time work just to survive, and other personal circumstances. Much as I want to help these students, I am not mentally capable of doing so, and as an Autistic person, I struggle with this, as I am highly empathetic, but cannot deal with my own problems, stress and other issues, as well as that of the students. I am not a counselor, and cannot help these students, and this is deeply distressing. But also, why should I have to be the one who feels responsible for them, as it is not my job or remotely an expertise of mine?

Then the university is attempting to force all students back on campus, no doubt to justify millions of $$ spent on buildings and other infrastructure. For IT courses, which are far better taught primarily online, they expect students to attend in-person, in small computer labs (when all students have their own computers, and most prefer workshops online – according to my years of surveying these students). Timetabling is an absolute nightmare, and frequently courses are timetabled for multiple workshops in tiny computer labs, which the convenors / lecturers are expected to teach, often at extremely unsuitable times (i.e. 4-6pm) in a capital city, or 3-5pm (ditto) under the assumption that both students and staff live on campus or nearby, and/or do not mind being stuck in horrendous traffic, due to poor public transport options and/or do not have jobs, caring responsibilities, family duties and so on. The majority of students DO NOT WANT (or are unable) to come back on campus, and they don’t turn up anyway. I am lucky if 10% of students turn up to in-person workshops, which I have to attend. One course, only a single student turned up and while we had lovely chats, is that worth 3 hours commuting to and fro?

On the other hand, there are courses which should be taught on campus, either that include field or lab work, or teach the ‘soft skills’ of collegial interaction, group work and so on. But the students, especially those international students who spent the past couple of years doing only online work, and largely just recorded – due to time differences, completely lack these skills, making teaching such as class a nightmare. This has nothing to do with country or English language skills.

And most students don’t care about anything other than assessment anyway, the system of which is equally archaic and mired in the past. Exams for example, benefit those such as myself (and most other academics, hence their popularity) who excel in such things, and punish those who take longer to learn, have anxiety and so on. I create assessment items directly related to contemporary issues and case studies, and then students complain about any part of the course that is not directly related to the assessment, and God forbid, has any theoretical content. This whole system needs redoing (which I suppose the LLMs are going to overturn anyway).

While often relatively senior management are cogniscent of these issues, they have zero power to influence the higher up management are generally oblivious to them, or more likely, only concerned with managerialism, and the entire neoliberal infrastructure of the contemporary university, as a profit-making business, mostly screwing vast fees from international students, who are only at university here to get possible residence permits, and certainly not for academic excellence (otherwise why would students from Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan be here, as they are light years ahead in academic skills).

And of course, there is the reliance on contract and casual staff, where one has to almost beg to get a contract renewal (when you well know that they do not have the staff to replace you) and this is frequently done too late, and a staff member loses access to IT, email and so on. Surely if one has been working for more than a decade, with an excellent track record, then one should be made permanent? Rhetorical question of course.

When does one ever have time for research? Well, other than nights and weekends, of course.

For myself, an older, bolshie person who speaks their mind no matter what the consequence, and is a lifelong rebel, who wants to retire anyway, these points are not as pressing as for my younger colleagues who are looking at an endless landscape of short term jobs, in a sector that should, but does NOT value expertise or dedication or student outcomes. These staff cannot speak up and have to suck up what they get given.

Oh well, I suppose given the global inaction on climate change, we’ll soon be living in some post apocalyptic hellscape with everything run by AGI anyway.