This is all true but I don't think the research intensive universities are at risk. They're not likely to be under-subscribed by the removal of the cap; quite the opposite.
Conversely the institutions that are very dependent on teaching are the same ones who are likely to have gaps, hence the overall viability of the institution is threatened.
True enough, my point was that it's not as simple as percentage of income from fees. The research intensive universities are at lesser risk not because the threat is to a smaller proportion of income but because they also happen to be the same universities who won't struggle to fill most of the places they have.
Yeah, I think you me and @Marvin the Martian are fiercely agreeing with each other.... worrying indeed.
Presumably with medicine, at the worst they can select the best students at second year for placements, and then do something with the others (bsc medical biology?) that's still better than outright rejection.
This is all true but I don't think the research intensive universities are at risk. They're not likely to be under-subscribed by the removal of the cap; quite the opposite.
Conversely the institutions that are very dependent on teaching are the same ones who are likely to have gaps, hence the overall viability of the institution is threatened.
True enough, my point was that it's not as simple as percentage of income from fees. The research intensive universities are at lesser risk not because the threat is to a smaller proportion of income but because they also happen to be the same universities who won't struggle to fill most of the places they have.
Yeah, I think you me and @Marvin the Martian are fiercely agreeing with each other.... worrying indeed.
Three intelligent people with relevant experience can look at the same information and reach the same conclusion, regardless of the fact that they disagree about other things that are far more to do with their opinions and beliefs than actual data. If that’s worrying then I’d like to be worried a bit more often, thanks
Presumably with medicine, at the worst they can select the best students at second year for placements, and then do something with the others (bsc medical biology?) that's still better than outright rejection.
There may well be an increase in non-continuation for this cohort, but that brings its own problems both for the students and the universities. And politically it would be yet another mark against the Tories, though frankly I think this debacle has already lost them what little student vote they might have had to start with.
The consensus around my office is that they’ve taken the easy course of action now in the knowledge that they’ve got a couple of years to (hopefully) figure out how the hell to make it work once placements start.
My guess is that Universities with a good reputation, like Birmingham, and Oxford now have to take in extra students..
Oxbridge can't take more as entry is linked to available accommodation in colleges.
You say that as if accommodation is not a problem for any other universities.
I'm not saying it isn't. Its just repeating what was written in a letter by Cambridge's Vice Chancellor. Cambridge tries to accommodate all first year students actually in the colleges which have a fixed number of rooms. Looks like they want to keep to that protocol rather than find space elsewhere.
On reflection it could be a "useful" means of restricting numbers
My guess is that Universities with a good reputation, like Birmingham, and Oxford now have to take in extra students..
Oxbridge can't take more as entry is linked to available accommodation in colleges.
You say that as if accommodation is not a problem for any other universities.
I'm not saying it isn't. Its just repeating what was written in a letter by Cambridge's Vice Chancellor. Cambridge tries to accommodate all first year students actually in the colleges which have a fixed number of rooms. Looks like they want to keep to that protocol rather than find space elsewhere.
Do you have a source for that? This statement says that students will be accepted if their CAG meets their offer, but some may need to defer entry based on 'our ability to increase places in subjects, our teaching capacity and the amount of accommodation that colleges can provide'.
On the face of it, the idea that colleges have a fixed number of rooms is bollocks, because if the college bought / leased some more accommodation, that extra accommodation would become ipso facto part of college even if it looks like part of a Victorian terrace and is physically separate from the fancy Medieval bits with the twiddly turrets.
This is all true but I don't think the research intensive universities are at risk. They're not likely to be under-subscribed by the removal of the cap; quite the opposite.
Conversely the institutions that are very dependent on teaching are the same ones who are likely to have gaps, hence the overall viability of the institution is threatened.
True enough, my point was that it's not as simple as percentage of income from fees. The research intensive universities are at lesser risk not because the threat is to a smaller proportion of income but because they also happen to be the same universities who won't struggle to fill most of the places they have.
Yeah, I think you me and @Marvin the Martian are fiercely agreeing with each other.... worrying indeed.
Three intelligent people with relevant experience can look at the same information and reach the same conclusion, regardless of the fact that they disagree about other things that are far more to do with their opinions and beliefs than actual data. If that’s worrying then I’d like to be worried a bit more often, thanks
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
I must confess that I'm finding all this brouhaha rather hard to comprehend (thank gods I don't have any kids of school or university age).
But - am I right in thinking that, once the dust has settled, most (or hopefully all) of those who have received results will be OK? I accept that there are, or will be, problems with some University entrances.
BTW, I live in Cloud-Cuckoo Land, so please be patient with me...
On the face of it, the idea that colleges have a fixed number of rooms is bollocks, because if the college bought / leased some more accommodation, that extra accommodation would become ipso facto part of college even if it looks like part of a Victorian terrace and is physically separate from the fancy Medieval bits with the twiddly turrets.
...and is a steaming bag of shit from the point of view of the welfare of the undergraduates concerned. New undergraduates need to be housed in college for their first year. These are young people, many of whom will have had little or no experience of living away from home for even a short period of time. They need the social support that living in college gives them, the easy access to meals in college, and so on.
A college renting some houses somewhere up the Cowley Road doesn't magically make those houses part of the social life of the college.
The least bad thing that colleges could do, were they forced to take extra people, is to house all their freshers on site, and exile some of the upper years that they had already promised accommodation to some remote rental house.
(This assumes that it's even possible to acquire housing and bring it up to regulation standard for HMOs in the next few weeks.)
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university.
It's not a large step from there to understanding that subtracting the lecturer's salary from the total fees paid by the students doesn't give "profit".
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
Why are they allowed to make so much profit ?
Are you actually this thick or are you just pretending?
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university.
It's not a large step from there to understanding that subtracting the lecturer's salary from the total fees paid by the students doesn't give "profit".
You gotta love the idea of UK universities making a profit...
I haven't been following this thread, and haven't read through all the comments. So if I'm repeating something that someone has already said, I apologise. However, the real and fundamental flaw in Ofqual's system for this year, is that it wasn't assessing the students.
Unless I'm too hopelessly out of date and have missed the point, an examination system is supposed to assess and evaluate each student, individually, to indicate whether they have passed or failed, and if graded, to indicate the calibre of his or her performance. That is the primary purpose. The primary purpose isn't fairness - although if one succeeds in doing that, the result is objectively fair, and of one fails to do that, the result is objectively unfair. That is so irrespective of what other laudable or unlaudable motives underlie both the process chosen and the reasons for choosing it.
Balancing the results individuals achieve between one school or another or between years may be a way of moderating that assessment, making the overall results more consistent. If one is going to do that, it has to be done after one has done the primary assessment.
Giving people results based not on their own performance but on other years' performance from their school or another school mean that the results are not results. It means that whatever else may be evaluated, the students haven't been. They are grades and letters that have no bearing on the students actually being evaluated at all. It means that as an examination process, that is a complete failure.
That seems to me to be so fundamental that I can't really see any argument round it.
You've got to set that against the fact that there's a couple of things we kind-of know enough.
And that employers and universities don't want to be taking pot luck of students, and have made all their preparations on having these grades
So on the one hand we know full well that IF we did the test that Liam would probably be top, that Noah could be top but only if there's a good music theory question, and William tries really hard is tone deaf and James would have the capability if he turned up. (and similarly with schools)
We know that people have spent ages trying to match people into University courses based on their capabilities. And have based the offers they've made on the statistics of real exams (and the limits of their environment). They don't have the time or gin to start from scratch, and that would be ugly in any case.
And these are also fundamental with little way round them.
And yet as you say we haven't done the (normal) test. And that is also fundamental.
And those three things clash horribly.
__
On top of that there's all the issues with how they actually shifted the results
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
Why are they allowed to make so much profit ?
In addition to the other costs, you also need to think about how many lecturers you need to employ. Students will typically be taking several different courses, each with different lecturers. Quite possibly that group of 50 students will be taught by ten different lecturers ... do that maths, 10x£60k for lecturers vs £450k fees. Now, how much profit do you think is being made?
Plus any technicians for practical subjects, ancillary staff, and for any subject (except in my experience maybe Maths), the cost of library books and staff, to name the first three things that came into my head.
So on the one hand we know full well that IF we did the test that Liam would probably be top, that Noah could be top but only if there's a good music theory question, and William tries really hard is tone deaf and James would have the capability if he turned up. (and similarly with schools)
No women? Or is your hypothetical course too hard for a mere woman?
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university.
It's not a large step from there to understanding that subtracting the lecturer's salary from the total fees paid by the students doesn't give "profit".
That's only true if you accept the statement as fact.
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
Why are they allowed to make so much profit ?
Are you actually this thick or are you just pretending?
Are you incapable of explaining yourself with insulting me ?
We had some lecturers who would deliberately hand out incomplete printouts of the slides, in the hope that this would force students to actively take notes, and so pay attention. I have no idea whether it worked or not.
We had a lecturer who asserted (more than once) that lecture notes were the way to get the subject from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebooks of the students without going through the brains of either!
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
Why are they allowed to make so much profit ?
In addition to the other costs, you also need to think about how many lecturers you need to employ. Students will typically be taking several different courses, each with different lecturers. Quite possibly that group of 50 students will be taught by ten different lecturers ... do that maths, 10x£60k for lecturers vs £450k fees. Now, how much profit do you think is being made?
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
So on the one hand we know full well that IF we did the test that Liam would probably be top, that Noah could be top but only if there's a good music theory question, and William tries really hard but is tone deaf and James would have the capability if only he turned up. (and similarly with schools)
No women? Or is your hypothetical course too hard for a mere woman?
It was the top 4 male names to avoid any classism or sexism in the ordering (in the example the course was too hard for Will and James, although I could have made it clearer).
The first draft of the next paragraph had hypothetical letters from the admin to Emma and Olivia on a similar basis, but that bit was just unclear.
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
No one has suggested that one lecturer can teach all the courses in the country, so why should anyone need to defend that?
But, just to cover that bit of stupidity.
1. Each university will teach their own particular curriculum. For early years there will be a lot of commonality in each course, but by the time you get to the final year what each university teaches will be highly dependent on the research interests of the staff there - from my personal experience of nuclear physics the final year courses in Liverpool and Glasgow would be very different because the two departments specialise in different aspects of nuclear physics research and that's what gets into the lectures.
2. The courses include more than lectures. There'll be various class exercises so that students and lecturer can assess how well the information is being understood - the form of these will vary with subject, in some cases computer marked multiple choice tests could work but in most cases these will need to include short essays, something showing working etc that would need someone to actually read and mark these, or some form of small group tutorial discussion.
3. There will need to be opportunities for students to question the lecturer about things they don't understand. Whether that's meeting the lecturer in their office, or through email and Zoom.
4. The end of the course will need some form of formal assessment - an exam, assessed course work, etc. Which will need to be set and marked. With the options for resits.
Put simply, the delivery of lectures is a very small part of the work of a lecturer (depending on course maybe 20-30 hours per year, with some more time each year developing the material - quite a lot for the first couple of years giving the course). And though this could be reused if pre-recorded (either shared with other universities or simply repeated next year and the year after that) the time savings are minimal. The personal interaction between lecturer and students, the setting and marking of course work and exams, etc take up far more time and can't be shared across universities as easily (if at all).
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
No one has suggested that one lecturer can teach all the courses in the country, so why should anyone need to defend that?
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
No one has suggested that one lecturer can teach all the courses in the country, so why should anyone need to defend that?
But, just to cover that bit of stupidity.
You just can't help it can you
Well, let's conduct an experiment. You stop saying fucking stupid things and we'll see if that results in fewer people calling you stupid.
Good idea...though I suspect Telford is rather like a bed-bug - useless and irritating, but unable to help itself...
Meanwhile, I asked earlier: '...am I right in thinking that, once the dust has settled, most (or hopefully all) of those who have received results will be OK? I accept that there are, or will be, problems with some University entrances.'
This is a perhaps rather vain attempt on my part to put a positive spin on a difficult situation, but what do others think?
Yes, you're right. I should know better than respond to you. It's just a pointless exercise. You don't really need anyone to highlight the stupidity of your statements.
Yes, you're right. I should know better than respond to you. It's just a pointless exercise. You don't really need anyone to highlight the stupidity of your statements.
Rock? Luxury! We had to draw pictograms - with our tongues! - in the primordial slime...
Mind you, what with the way the world is sliding downhill at the moment, we may be back to that sort of thing before too long...
Much as I am enjoying this pythonesque fun, I think it is worth reflecting on the effect of various online databases such as Pubmed on literature searches in academia. It really was a massive step forward that coincided with my undergraduate days.
AFZ's point is valid, of course. The Magic Electric Interweb must make it so much easier for many students. In my day, we had to beg/borrow/buy/steal Books...
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
No one has suggested that one lecturer can teach all the courses in the country, so why should anyone need to defend that?
But, just to cover that bit of stupidity.
You just can't help it can you
If being insulted is difficult for you, these debates can be taken to Purgatory where ad hominem is not allowed, and you need not be distracted by being called out in a personal fashion. If you only wish your arguments to be called out and not your personal intelligence, Hell is entirely the wrong place to visit. Lots of posters avoid it for that reason.
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
No one has suggested that one lecturer can teach all the courses in the country, so why should anyone need to defend that?
But, just to cover that bit of stupidity.
You just can't help it can you
Well, let's conduct an experiment. You stop saying fucking stupid things and we'll see if that results in fewer people calling you stupid.
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
No one has suggested that one lecturer can teach all the courses in the country, so why should anyone need to defend that?
But, just to cover that bit of stupidity.
You just can't help it can you
If being insulted is difficult for you, these debates can be taken to Purgatory where ad hominem is not allowed, and you need not be distracted by being called out in a personal fashion. If you only wish your arguments to be called out and not your personal intelligence, Hell is entirely the wrong place to visit. Lots of posters avoid it for that reason.
It's nice to get a pleaant and constructive post for a change.
Well, now you know. Go, and do as Anselmina wisely suggests.
There is a difference between constructive critisism and mere insults.
Indeed, but the former takes more effort so is often reserved for Purgatory, especially in the face of heavy incoming WTAFery. Limited resources and all that.
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
The problem is @Telford that you simply ignore constructive criticism. Repeatedly. Throw in your habit of carelessly offensive comments and unsupported assertions and you will find that you are provoking insults.
O look! It says 'Welcome to HELL' on the door! But why, O why, are all these Horrible Daemons Shipmates poking Me with sharp words, and red-hot pitchforks? O woe is Me! Poor little Me!
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
The problem is @Telford that you simply ignore constructive criticism. Repeatedly. Throw in your habit of carelessly offensive comments and unsupported assertions and you will find that you are provoking insults.
But I'm starting to think that suits you.
When did you last make a constructive comment aimed at me. ? I don't insult people . I merely complain about being insulted.
O look! It says 'Welcome to HELL' on the door! But why, O why, are all these Horrible Daemons Shipmates poking Me with sharp words, and red-hot pitchforks? O woe is Me! Poor little Me!
The rules say that you are allowed to do this. They do not make it obligatory.
I'm reminded (can't think why) of Old Father William's exasperation with his son, in the poem by Lewis Carroll:
I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
The problem is @Telford that you simply ignore constructive criticism. Repeatedly. Throw in your habit of carelessly offensive comments and unsupported assertions and you will find that you are provoking insults.
But I'm starting to think that suits you.
When did you last make a constructive comment aimed at me. ? I don't insult people . I merely complain about being insulted.
O look! It says 'Welcome to HELL' on the door! But why, O why, are all these Horrible Daemons Shipmates poking Me with sharp words, and red-hot pitchforks? O woe is Me! Poor little Me!
The rules say that you are allowed to do this. They do not make it obligatory.
Comments
Yeah, I think you me and @Marvin the Martian are fiercely agreeing with each other.... worrying indeed.
Three intelligent people with relevant experience can look at the same information and reach the same conclusion, regardless of the fact that they disagree about other things that are far more to do with their opinions and beliefs than actual data. If that’s worrying then I’d like to be worried a bit more often, thanks
There may well be an increase in non-continuation for this cohort, but that brings its own problems both for the students and the universities. And politically it would be yet another mark against the Tories, though frankly I think this debacle has already lost them what little student vote they might have had to start with.
The consensus around my office is that they’ve taken the easy course of action now in the knowledge that they’ve got a couple of years to (hopefully) figure out how the hell to make it work once placements start.
I'm not saying it isn't. Its just repeating what was written in a letter by Cambridge's Vice Chancellor. Cambridge tries to accommodate all first year students actually in the colleges which have a fixed number of rooms. Looks like they want to keep to that protocol rather than find space elsewhere.
On reflection it could be a "useful" means of restricting numbers
Do you have a source for that? This statement says that students will be accepted if their CAG meets their offer, but some may need to defer entry based on 'our ability to increase places in subjects, our teaching capacity and the amount of accommodation that colleges can provide'.
On the face of it, the idea that colleges have a fixed number of rooms is bollocks, because if the college bought / leased some more accommodation, that extra accommodation would become ipso facto part of college even if it looks like part of a Victorian terrace and is physically separate from the fancy Medieval bits with the twiddly turrets.
Just think how many students, in all universities, could be reached by just one lecturer. It could make student fees a lot cleaper
Lecturers are not the primary cost associated with university. Consider that a lecturer might cost £60k once NI, pension etc are taken into account. If they currently deliver lectures to 50 students the university will be getting £450k in fees.
But - am I right in thinking that, once the dust has settled, most (or hopefully all) of those who have received results will be OK? I accept that there are, or will be, problems with some University entrances.
BTW, I live in Cloud-Cuckoo Land, so please be patient with me...
...and is a steaming bag of shit from the point of view of the welfare of the undergraduates concerned. New undergraduates need to be housed in college for their first year. These are young people, many of whom will have had little or no experience of living away from home for even a short period of time. They need the social support that living in college gives them, the easy access to meals in college, and so on.
A college renting some houses somewhere up the Cowley Road doesn't magically make those houses part of the social life of the college.
The least bad thing that colleges could do, were they forced to take extra people, is to house all their freshers on site, and exile some of the upper years that they had already promised accommodation to some remote rental house.
(This assumes that it's even possible to acquire housing and bring it up to regulation standard for HMOs in the next few weeks.)
Are you actually this thick or are you just pretending?
You gotta love the idea of UK universities making a profit...
Um, no.
AFZ
Unless I'm too hopelessly out of date and have missed the point, an examination system is supposed to assess and evaluate each student, individually, to indicate whether they have passed or failed, and if graded, to indicate the calibre of his or her performance. That is the primary purpose. The primary purpose isn't fairness - although if one succeeds in doing that, the result is objectively fair, and of one fails to do that, the result is objectively unfair. That is so irrespective of what other laudable or unlaudable motives underlie both the process chosen and the reasons for choosing it.
Balancing the results individuals achieve between one school or another or between years may be a way of moderating that assessment, making the overall results more consistent. If one is going to do that, it has to be done after one has done the primary assessment.
Giving people results based not on their own performance but on other years' performance from their school or another school mean that the results are not results. It means that whatever else may be evaluated, the students haven't been. They are grades and letters that have no bearing on the students actually being evaluated at all. It means that as an examination process, that is a complete failure.
That seems to me to be so fundamental that I can't really see any argument round it.
And that employers and universities don't want to be taking pot luck of students, and have made all their preparations on having these grades
So on the one hand we know full well that IF we did the test that Liam would probably be top, that Noah could be top but only if there's a good music theory question, and William tries really hard is tone deaf and James would have the capability if he turned up. (and similarly with schools)
We know that people have spent ages trying to match people into University courses based on their capabilities. And have based the offers they've made on the statistics of real exams (and the limits of their environment). They don't have the time or gin to start from scratch, and that would be ugly in any case.
And these are also fundamental with little way round them.
And yet as you say we haven't done the (normal) test. And that is also fundamental.
And those three things clash horribly.
__
On top of that there's all the issues with how they actually shifted the results
No women? Or is your hypothetical course too hard for a mere woman?
Are you incapable of explaining yourself with insulting me ?
You have still not explained why you need all these lecturers if one lecturer's notes can serve all students in the country. I thought you were in facour of more technolofgy use?
It was the top 4 male names to avoid any classism or sexism in the ordering (in the example the course was too hard for Will and James, although I could have made it clearer).
The first draft of the next paragraph had hypothetical letters from the admin to Emma and Olivia on a similar basis, but that bit was just unclear.
[in any case Noah is a biblical girls name]
But, just to cover that bit of stupidity.
1. Each university will teach their own particular curriculum. For early years there will be a lot of commonality in each course, but by the time you get to the final year what each university teaches will be highly dependent on the research interests of the staff there - from my personal experience of nuclear physics the final year courses in Liverpool and Glasgow would be very different because the two departments specialise in different aspects of nuclear physics research and that's what gets into the lectures.
2. The courses include more than lectures. There'll be various class exercises so that students and lecturer can assess how well the information is being understood - the form of these will vary with subject, in some cases computer marked multiple choice tests could work but in most cases these will need to include short essays, something showing working etc that would need someone to actually read and mark these, or some form of small group tutorial discussion.
3. There will need to be opportunities for students to question the lecturer about things they don't understand. Whether that's meeting the lecturer in their office, or through email and Zoom.
4. The end of the course will need some form of formal assessment - an exam, assessed course work, etc. Which will need to be set and marked. With the options for resits.
Put simply, the delivery of lectures is a very small part of the work of a lecturer (depending on course maybe 20-30 hours per year, with some more time each year developing the material - quite a lot for the first couple of years giving the course). And though this could be reused if pre-recorded (either shared with other universities or simply repeated next year and the year after that) the time savings are minimal. The personal interaction between lecturer and students, the setting and marking of course work and exams, etc take up far more time and can't be shared across universities as easily (if at all).
Well, let's conduct an experiment. You stop saying fucking stupid things and we'll see if that results in fewer people calling you stupid.
Good idea...though I suspect Telford is rather like a bed-bug - useless and irritating, but unable to help itself...
Meanwhile, I asked earlier:
'...am I right in thinking that, once the dust has settled, most (or hopefully all) of those who have received results will be OK? I accept that there are, or will be, problems with some University entrances.'
This is a perhaps rather vain attempt on my part to put a positive spin on a difficult situation, but what do others think?
A fable for you all...
Mind you, what with the way the world is sliding downhill at the moment, we may be back to that sort of thing before too long...
Much as I am enjoying this pythonesque fun, I think it is worth reflecting on the effect of various online databases such as Pubmed on literature searches in academia. It really was a massive step forward that coincided with my undergraduate days.
AFZ
AFZ's point is valid, of course. The Magic Electric Interweb must make it so much easier for many students. In my day, we had to beg/borrow/buy/steal Books...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VAdlkunflRs
I wonder what sort of grade they'd have been awarded by the writers of the original (some of whom went on to be large snakes)?
If being insulted is difficult for you, these debates can be taken to Purgatory where ad hominem is not allowed, and you need not be distracted by being called out in a personal fashion. If you only wish your arguments to be called out and not your personal intelligence, Hell is entirely the wrong place to visit. Lots of posters avoid it for that reason.
Most of them apart from you
It's nice to get a pleaant and constructive post for a change.
Indeed, but the former takes more effort so is often reserved for Purgatory, especially in the face of heavy incoming WTAFery. Limited resources and all that.
You're like a man in a brothel, who exclaims, "whores, where?"
I have no idea what you are on about.
OK. You're like a man in a pub who says "they're serving alcohol here!?!"
Still none the wiser. Thanks for trying anyway.
The problem is @Telford that you simply ignore constructive criticism. Repeatedly. Throw in your habit of carelessly offensive comments and unsupported assertions and you will find that you are provoking insults.
But I'm starting to think that suits you.
When did you last make a constructive comment aimed at me. ? I don't insult people . I merely complain about being insulted. The rules say that you are allowed to do this. They do not make it obligatory.
I'm reminded (can't think why) of Old Father William's exasperation with his son, in the poem by Lewis Carroll:
I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!
*sigh*
Here's a few:
Just now*
February 26th
February 29th
March 7th
April 14th
July 30th
Those are the ones I found quickly.
I said you were provoking insults by 'carelessly offensive comments' such as this one:
And unsupported assertions
[Far too many to list]
AFZ
*For the sake of honesty I should be clear that I made that particular comment after you asked your question... but you get the idea