I've spoken to many students recently. A huge number of them are repeating first year. The second time round they might drink less (or not) and manage to scrape 40% in six modules. This is interesting because, as has been reported elswere, Universities do not allow markers to fail people. It's bad for business. You can't charge £3000 annual tuition fees and leave the customer with nothing at the end of his three year party. What would the parents say? What if the customer sues you? What if you fall down the League Tables?
In order to pretend that they're selling real degrees the Universities are trying to make "students" attend classes. Good luck. Apart from compulsory lab classes and tutorials, my course has a 50% undergraduate non attendance rate. This is in one of the best departments in the UK.
Why fail them in first year and not the others? First year marks do not count towards a degree, so you're not compromising their final mark, but why fail them? They, and you the taxpayer, have to pay for another year's tuition. Remember the Universities are businesses, not a public service. They are obliged to maximise their income by any means neccessary.
It's a brilliant scam. It does however expose these institutions as cynical operators selling a product whose academic value has been debased beyond satire. Well, almost. It's often said that Queens should hang a sign on the door saying,
"If you can read this you're admitted"
Jordanstown already do.
About Me
- belfast samizdat
- A half-breed from West Belfast who went to Sullivan Upper, Discovered Homelessness (and James Connolly),settled in the Holylands before it went shitfaced, Took up studying, and got his heart broke by Academia (And a few Women), Someone who knows he can survive even a near fatal beating, and has learned to face death with equanimity. Never forgets a bad turn. Stands by his Class and above all his friends.
11 comments:
get some ear plugs
i have read through several of your stories now. i have noticed that their are no replys to ur posts. whether this is because you dont want the opinion of a student to be seen or if no-one has any interest in what you are saying, is yet to become apparant.
are you trying to justify the burning and destruction of several cars simply because some residents may have been wakened at the early hours of the morning?
all students are not the same. it seems to me that your are sterotyping all students to be "hillbillies" that drink illegally at all times! when i think of "hillbillies," the term would closer describe those who are uneducated and live in caravans or mobiles. if that is what you ment, then i agree with you that there are "hillbillies" in the holylands.
Unashamed: For too long students have been allowed to run riot around our fair city while real honest people try to fit there lives around each of them. i salute you sir for highlighting a lot of the problems that residents living in common student areas face to even live their own lives. i too live in the city and feel that now i can llive no longer with these completely depraved students living nearby. on one occasion while out for a walk with my five month old son and seven year old daughter, having just left my fornt porch i was handed eight used condoms by four drunk youths!!! and all because they thought this would "be deadly craic" i need to remain anonymous because as we both know students are a vindictive bunch and the police refuse to do anything about these yobs keep up the good work.
Yes, the 3 A's I got at A level to go to Jordanstown, prove I can read your right. What about you? A resident from Carmel Street tells me you've been doing your degree for about 10 years! Easier to blame other for your problems? Check your own credentials!
Many many years ago the exam boards were run by the government. The quality of exams and marking was closely regulated. Then the boards were privatised. They had to compete with each other in a marketplace. Schools inevitably chose the board that gave the best marks. And so a race to the bottom began. Standards fell through the floor. Way back in the mid nineties (before I began my degree) Channel Four's Dispatches did an investigation into this. Guess which board was the most notorious for grade inflation? Northern Ireland. Even way back then this boards manipulation of marks was scandalous. This puts the supposedly higher performance of our pupils in a different light.
Is Queens a hard place to get into? It is if you live in the rest of the UK or are dumped into one of the local secondary schools.
When I studied for my diploma (In which I got 72%. No mean feat in a shithole like BIFHE. And yes it's worse now than it was then.) I became familiar with the work of Pierre Bordieu and the concept of Cultural Capital. Basically this is what grammer schools dispense. You learen how to jump through hoops and get high marks in already rigged exams.
I've been doing my degree part time now for eight years now. I may or may not be able to save it. THe irony is that things went off the rails when I started representing you people, students. I'll never forgive the man who conned me into that racket. If you add to that the effect on my health of living among you clowns it's amazing I'm able to study at all. When I started at Queens I was getting to sleep at 4am, up at 8 for class at 9, come home and crash to make up for the sleep deficit in the full knowledge that the coming night would be as bad as the previous one. I do not know how anyone can study here. It's a fucking lunatic asylum run by the fucking inmates. Thus all those party animals failing level one, redoing it and being awarded passes through the rest of their exams.
By the way, well done on getting your 3 A's.
Yes I know there are typos. It should be learn not learen.
I study full time, work part time, and also live in the Holylands. My family is working class, from West Belfast and I was brought up that you do not blame others for your problems, you get on with it! Like is West Belfast there is an expression, a well balanced man has a chip on both shoulders...
I've never heard that expression. It sounds like a double dose of resentment. No Thanks!! I admire your dedication and stamina. Way back when I too just got on with it. Maybe I'm not as strong as you. If so I make no apologies.
Working class people have a double burden. Trying to work and study at the same time must hurt academic performance. The system does not do justice to our ability. There was a time when people got grants to cover rent and living expences, and there were no fees. I was one of those who tried to stop the slide into the current situation and even turn the clock back to the old days. We had no hope. Student politics is a sewer and the shit floats right to the top.
I wish I'd started my degree before the Holylands and the funding situation went shitfaced. I could have a PhD. I could be teaching now.I could be out of the fucking Holylands. What's lost is lost. The past is another country and not worth dwelling on.
I hope you do well in your degree. I hope I get to save mine.
"Guess which board was the most notorious for grade inflation? Northern Ireland."
If my previous school is anything to go by, there are very few CCEA exams being taken up. Most of the exams did were from English boards.
Now, imagine who is really stupid, a hillbilly who gets their degree within 3 yrs or a whiner who still hasn't got one after 10.
I guess the English boards won the race to the bottom.
My point about degrees being doled out to stupid hillbillies stands. I wouldn't wipe my arse with their degrees.
I'm afraid you'll have to do better than calling me a whiner. I know exactly why I am where I am, and I make no apologies for speaking out about it.
Yeah, make no apologies, let the reat of us laugh our heads off.
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