We don't need your stinkin' employment data rules, either!

Wow!  People suspect that it goes on, but when the disgruntled lecturer(s) actually get things like this 'confirmed', it still shocks us.  What shocks us you ask?   The fact that the degree farm has an extremely high success rate regarding students finding employment or going on to further education?  That's good, right?  Depends on what you mean by 'further education'.  Because that isn't it.  It's the fact that the degree farm apparently helps it's employment stats by paying graduated students who haven't found work or have gone into further education £200 to sign up for a 'course' at the degree farm (what 'course' pays YOU £200 to join, we wonder), so that they can be counted as 'successes' for the degree farm's statistics.  Meaning, that a high percentage of graduates have either found work or are continuing education within 6 months of graduation.  So parents, you, too, can pay up to £9,000/year on your child's education in return for a £200 return for your now-educated, unemployed progeny.  We'll have to ask a finance lecturer to figure out those returns, but it seems that the only positive benefit we see is would be for the degree farm.

When a 'teaching' Uni, isn't.

Some universities extol the virtues of their being 'teaching' universities, and how that is far superior to the evil 'research university' where they tell you that your child will have somewhat limited contact with a real 'professor'. Ok, outside of the fact that most teaching universities don't actually have readers (associate professors), much less professors teaching your kids (so your kids won't have ANY contact with esteemed and established academics, not limited).  But lest you don't really see a problem with this, allow me to explain. An MSc student came to visit a lecturer at the degree farm a few weeks ago. They were concerned because they had learned regression analysis (let's call it calculus for the sake of ease) in their degree, but didn't want to go to their module leader because they were still a little insecure about their ability.  However, they really wanted to try and  use what they had learned for their MSc dissertation. So, they came to me, and I agreed to help. Well, they told their dissertation supervisor what they wanted to do, and this person 'strongly discouraged' the student from using regression analysis because 'they didn't understand it and wouldn't be able to mark their work appropriately' (read: you'll get a crap grade because I, your supervisor, don't know what you've done). HUH?!?!? THIS IS SOMETHING THAT THEY TEACH IN THE MSc DEGREE!  But the supervisor doesn't understand it?  Now, here is the ironic thing...this supervisor/lecturer's qualifications are that they passed the same degree that the student is getting, from the same university.  So they took the same module, but clearly didn't understand it. And, as a paid lecturer/supervisors, do they take the time to try and learn?  Do they expand their knowledge so that your kids can grow?  Er, no. They tell them to do ratio analysis. So basically, they're telling your kids to do fractions when they're trying to do calculus. Calculus...because your kids WANT to...and the people being paid to educate them are stopping them. By the way, the student in question was upset because, though it was more difficult, they wanted to attempt to apply what they'd actually learned and test themselves. Instead, those who are supposed to educate them actually tell them that in doing so, they'd be attempting something that they don't understand and will make no attempt to understand. I don't know about you, but is this worth your tuition? People teaching your kids who know less than your kids?  Not exactly value for money, is it.

Like pawns in a game of chess

Your disgruntled lecturer thought (s)he couldn't be surprised by Degree Farm anymore. Naive and wishful thinking. They always find a way to take it to another level.

Imagine you have worked somewhere for several years which you've spent in your office and your chair. "Your" is the keyword here. We all know that the place is not our property but we grow accustomed to it, fill it with personal belongings and eventually create our comfort zone. This makes sense - feeling safe and comfortable in your office is vital for your productivity (plus emotional and mental health).

Now imagine that one day you come to work and find out it's not your office anymore. Your line manager has decided to move you into another office, another floor, with complete strangers and they never informed you about that! Yes, after your years of service, it didn't occur to them to ask how you'd feel about the move, let alone inform you that it was decided, although they see you on a regular basis and the whole thing had been planned well in advance! Instead you find out from your office mate who tells you that something is up because the estate people are checking your desk and brought boxes to "pack you up".

Well, at this point you definetely feel like a valued member of staff (sarcasm alert!).
The sad point is that to our managers we are nothing more than pawns in a game of chess. They think that they can tell us to do whatever they want and move us to wherever and whenever they wish. They don't care about our opinions or wellbeing, or for that matter our job satisfaction. You'd think that one of manager's duties is to create an atmosphere conducive to productive work - not at the Degree Farm. Here the thinking goes: the more the staff are fragmented and the less informed, the easier it is to manipulate them. But most importantly, they are less likely to question the managements' decisions and incompetence.

It's Away Day!

You probably have heard of away days - days when firms take their staff away from the workplace to clear their heads, do something different, interesting, have nice time, but overall it's a team-building activity. Sounds good, doesn't it?

The Degree Farm has its own take on away days. Going away from the workplace means going to just another university building (literally, sometimes it's just across the street, a building in which many of us teach on daily basis...). Doing something different? Getting involved in team building activities? Positive experiences to remember and increase creativity? Rather not!

Our management's approach to away days can be summarised in the following way: make staff go to another university building which is no further than 5 minutes walk away. Remember to ensure that everyone acts as if they were in some far-away leafy place. Keep them busy for 5 hours - seat them down in a room and have 5 hours of presentations and training.

In each open day there's a good dose of propaganda so we don't forget how great the Degree Farm is and that it's all thank to our amazing deanery. The highlight is when one of the deans comes forward and points out that we are lucky to have our jobs and should be grateful. Good times!

Then we are briefed on changes and suggested changes. Obviously our feedback is appreciated and taken into account by the managers when making their decisions (sarcasm). The typical scenario looks like this: the head of department informs us of a change dreamt up by one of the deanery gurus. Then we are asked what we think about it, after all it's the lecturers who do the work. We express our concerns and say it won't work, it's impractical, impossible etc. Then the head of department says that there's nothing we can do about it because the dean is passionate about his idea. Within two days we all receive an email from the dean informing us that feedback was overwhelmingly positive and he has decided to implement the changes. As you can see the lecturers' input is very valued at Degree Farm!

Then there is some technical training - how to do things online, use virtual learning environment, fill in forms, write up exam papers and all that stuff.

Then we need to think how to improve the student satisfaction to get a good NSS score. How could we do that? Let's brain storm for ideas how to bribe or scare our students into giving us the highest marks. To one of the away days the managers invited a person from another department who told us how to perfect the NSS score. How do they do it at their department? They take third year students away to a resort for 5 days and make them fill in the online survey out there! Unethical? Immoral? Simply wrong? You'd think! Well our line managers don't see such a problem. The only reason why our department didn't do the same are its size and the student numbers. It's simply logistically too difficult to send hundreds of students away for 5 days along with necessary staff. This may still change because Degree Farm decided to create new posts whose holders will be responsible for organising such trips. More happy times ahead!

At the end of the time all staff are energised, motivated, their creativity is overfilling the place - that's what a normal person would expect after a normal away day. At Degree Farm the overwhelming feelings are tiredness, powerlessness and frustration. But nobody will say a word out loud because they have been reminded how lucky their are to have their jobs. The brave ones who tried ended up without pay increments, were denied promotions and mistreated terribly by the management. Critical thinking and honesty are an enemy at Degree Farm (and it's supposed to be a university...).

Student / staff ratio and incentive to cheat

The game is on: the game to manipulate statistics and climb up in the league tables. One of the factors taken into account by the ranking makers is the student / staff ratio. This is supposed to reflect the amount of attention individual students should expect to get from lecturers. The Degree Farm used to do well in this category by counting all possible members of staff, including admin and estate personnel (maintenance, cleaners, etc.). For example our student / lecturer ratio is somewhere around 30/1 but the tables give a figure in mid teens. The ranking makers realised that universities played dirty and decided to tighten the rules: in order to count a member of staff in, that person must have a teaching qualification or appropriate teaching experience. What to do? How to keep our place in the rankings? Should we hire more lecturers? Wait, the rules say that a person must have a teaching qualification but they don't say that the person must actually teach. EUREKA! Let's make our admin staff take a PG certificate in teaching in higher education! We run it in house anyway so it won't cost much and we'll save our sweet spot in the league tables. Pure Degree Farm genius!

Not everything is bad at the Degree Farm

The posts in this blog are overwhelmingly negative, yet there are some positive experiences and good people at Degree Farm. In spite of the ridiculous and disconnected management, many lecturers are able to put their frustration aside and deliver outstanding experience to students. The same lecturers are very friendly and make an effort to create as positive atmosphere to work in as possible. On many occasions people go to extra lengths to help and support their colleagues. They will go out for drinks together and enjoy each other's company. Some really good friendships are established. In short, there's a proper "community" spirit. Paradoxically, the terrible management may help some of us to come together - having the same complaints and ridiculousness to fight against each and every day brings people closer. Your Disgruntled Lecturer knows that whenever (s)he needs some help, someone to cover teaching,  invigilate, moderate, feedback on research, etc., it's enough to ask and there will be a number of colleagues ready to help.
To add to that, working with students can be very rewarding. Yes, there are far too many "passengers", lazy students and those who's attitude can be summed up by "l pay, l demand to pass". But there are also bright sparks who are thirsty for knowledge and work hard and they go to succeed in life after the Degree Farm.

'Research' Allocations

Just in case you're sitting there reading some of these posts, and you're also an academic, you might be saying to yourself 'I don't know what these people are complaining about; research is difficult, time-consuming, and will often require work in one's free time.'  We hear you!  We completely agree with you in fact.  But we're also guessing that a good part of your week at work is spent doing said research; maybe 8 hours a week at worst and 24-36 at best.  A WEEK.  And it was even better when you first graduated with your PhD.  So lest you think that we're just whiny ingrates that didn't know what we were getting into when we entered this field, allow us to explain both what we were promised in our interviews and what we actually get.  In our interviews, we were promised a 60/40 teaching/research allocation. which was completely acceptable to us.  But not only was that promise not realized, we had no idea of all of different things that "research" means to the degree farm (more on that in a minute).  So what *is* our allocation, you ask?  Well...the basic research tariff is 50 hours a year.  A YEAR.  And we're on 12 month contracts, not 9, so many of us are teaching 3 semesters a year for the same pay as those who teach just 2.  To be clear, 50 hours a year is about 1 hour a week allocated for research.  Anyone who has published a 3 or 4* paper knows how easy THAT is to do on an hour a week (though our Deanery could put out a 4* every week if they wanted...they just don't seem to want to).  So that's the tariff is you haven't published.  You're already coming from behind because how are you to publish ANYTHING on an hour a week?  If the powers that be deem that you have the possibility of publishing, the next tariff up is 100 hours a year, or roughly 2 hours a week.  If you HAVE published, then you'd likely be given 150 hours, or 3 hours a week.  For those who are REF-able (4 papers at an average 3.5* ranking in 6 years), you get a whopping 200 HOURS A YEAR!  Yup...that's 4 hours a week.  To be a world-class researcher.  But it gets worse.  Remember above where I mentioned that no 'research' is created equally?  Well, the Degree Farm has decided that we should spend our oh-so-precious research hours doing things that make the Degree Farm money, such as moderating exams and dissertations for foreign universities, or whatever other tasks they deem as 'research'.  But we're publishing, surely we shouldn't have to do those things?  Can't other people who don't have any desire to publish can do them?  No.  Again, everything is fair at the Degree Farm, some things are just more fair than others.

Advice of the week

So the advice of the week comes from the boss. Although we are required to do research and publish under the afiliation to the Degree Farm, we are supposed to do it purely out of our love for research.
How should it work in practice? We should work on research during weekends and Christmas. By the way, Christmas counts as our annual leave - we are forced to use our annual leave allowance during those days (fair enough but don't tell me to work during that time!). So sorry family, l can't join you for the Christmas dinner because I need to work on that paper...!
Weekends? Hello Boss! Have you forgotten that you're already forcing us to work about five Saturdays a year as open days plus clearing without any compensation, whatsoever? Oh wait, forgive us, we've forgotten that we still have 52 Sundays in a year...

This is just an icing on the cake: out of that love for research we are required to publish a 3* or 4* paper a year. But then again silly us, our (now) Dean kindly informed us that this should be dead easy and they could write a 4* publishable paper in two nights! That awesome Dean has a master's  degree from the Degree Farm as their highest degree and has never experienced real research. Yet, (s)he's got a vital say on how we should do research and how it is resourced...

Greetings from the Degree Farm!

We don't need your stinkin' NSS rules!

Now, I don't actually know if there ARE official NSS rules.  For those of you who don't know, the NSS is the national student satisfaction survey.  The scores are highly weighted in the UK university rankings.  You can see that some of the post-1992 universities owe their increased rankings to increased NSS scores.  Not research, not student spending, not student to teacher ratios...student satisfaction.  So, have we improved our teaching to such a huge degree that we've moved up so much in  the rankings?  Have we hired SO many new, super-qualified people that students are so much more satisfied than they were just 3 years ago?  Maybe, but I'm going to guess that's a pretty big ask.  So, it appears that we help it along a little bit.  You know, by having highly exclusive holiday lunches that are ONLY for only the 3rd year, non-foreign students (the target of the NSS) where we tell students how great our NSS scores have been and how they anticipate that the students will give us even BETTER scores this year!  This is the soft-sell.  The harder sell will come closer to NSS itself where we tell them that if the good scores don't continue, the value of their degree will decrease as our rankings decrease.  No pressure, eh?  I've even heard about departments taking their NSS students for week long field trips to fun places to fill out the surveys.  Noooo, not trying to bias the outcome at all.  But hey, if there are rules, they don't apply to us, at least they don't as long as we move up in the rankings.

Degree Farm's Deanery Genius Du Jour: Open Plan

Yup.  Open Plan  One of the deanery has the design bug, so we're doing away with our semi-private offices (two or three to a space) and joining the ranks of the call centre worker.  Don't get me wrong, open plan has its place...in a call centre, for instance.  But not only is it not overly productive to producing great research (oh, sorry...forgot that wasn't a priority), it's just not overly productive full stop.  Now, I know a lot of you reading this may be in open plan.  You might have a lovely cubicle, decorated with pictures or memos...a nice safe place which keeps out pretty much everything except the noise.  Is this what is planned?  Er, no.  When we say open plan, we mean OPEN plan.  We'll be facing either a window or our co-workers.  No dividers.  No walls or dividers to put ANYTHING.  But hey, maybe this means more space for everyone?  No.  We'll get one shelf in a bookcase and one lockable drawer in a file cabinet.  Books?  Resources?  Pah, who needs 'em!  PAPERLESS is the way to go in academia.  And, I bet the studen...er, 'clients' will LOVE it!  Remember how it felt when your boss called you into the office in front of all of your open plan co-workers?  Like 'oooooh, you're in TROUBLE!'  Yeah, that's how your kids are going to feel.  Because if they have anything they want/need to say to us, we're going to have to leave the open plan and try to find a private place to talk.  For those already in open plan, this often means the stairwell.  TOP NOTCH!  Do you really think that your child is going to come to me in front of everyone and say 'I'm failing, I need help', or 'I'm really feeling a bit depressed, can I talk to you?'  I sincerely doubt it.  So not only is management treating us like call centre workers, they seem to be working really hard to dis-assemble the already tenuous relationship between student and lecturer.  Ah, you say...but if everyone is open plan, it must be great!  But not everyone IS going to be open plan.  The deanery certainly isn't, and right now the current idea is to not have management in open plan.  Because, you know...they need their privacy.  At the degree farm, everyone is equal.  Some are just a little more equal than others...

Would you send this e-mail to your boss?

Ok.  I get it.  We spoon feed you everything.  We print out all of the lecture slides for you because you can't be bothered to download them yourself. We're supposed to allow you to come into class whenever you feel like it because you've paid up to £9,000 a year for your education...never mind the fact that everyone ELSE has also paid that amount and manages to get to class pretty much on time (not 1/2 hour late to a 2 hour lecture, coming in with a steaming cup of Starbucks!).  No...your coming in to a packed class of 150+ students where the only seats left are in the middle of the rows or in the front (God forbid you sit in front), so you make 12 students get up from their seats in the middle of the lecture to let you pass as you greet your buddies....is absolutely awesome and in no way a disruption to anyone else's learning.  Hey, what does it matter anyway because, yes, you expect me to give you the answers to the exams.  And yes, some of my co-workers succumb to this practice in order to meet their 95% pass rate target.  So I admit it, I am a horrible person for asking you to at least TRY to learn what I'm working so hard to teach you, and telling you that anything we've gone over in classes is fair game on the exam.  I understand that I, as a lecturer, am failing you in your quest to not actually learn anything and still pass my class, as evidenced by the e-mail sent to me by a student (below), and I'm ok with that.  I sleep pretty well at night over this, though I'm not so sure that whomever taught grammar/punctuation to this student should be...  Here is the e-mail that relates to an upcoming exam; would you send this to your boss?

"hi
since you refused to tell us the topics to focus on and you said read all of the topics you taught us can you at least give us some revision questions to focus on and the answers you expect.  because this is so stressful.  all other lecturers have given us topics to focus on but i dont know why you are making it so difficult for us."


Because I'm a horrible meanie, that's why.  And because no one in the real world is going to give you the answers.  Did I mention that this is a MSc student?  Not a first year...a MASTER'S student.  What are we teaching this generation?  Are we teaching them the skills and knowledge that will help them to get good jobs and lead productive lives?  Or are we teaching them that if they pay their money, they'll be considered 'clients' (yes, we're actually told by management that this is what we're supposed to call students) and they don't actually have to take responsibility or develop a work ethic.  I mean really.  I don't know about you, but I don't want the people who are designing aircraft I fly on or the cars I drive to have a degree simply because they passed by learning the 20% of the overall information that the lecturer told them would be on the exam.  Is that wrong?

Stasi - we want to control you at home and whenever you are online

Your Disgruntled Lecturer decided to get a tablet computer to use for work. After all, reading papers, marking essays , responding to emails, etc. should be more convenient this way, right? So following this train of thought (s)he decided to connect the device to the work email and calendar. And here came a surprise! In order to do that, Degree Farm requires the user to grant the following privileges to the university:
- access to all the resources and files on the device,
- the right to delete and edit any content on the device,
- the right to reset the device settings at any time (it sounds outrageous but it could be justified by data security in some exceptional circumstances)

The points that can't be justified are :
- access to the device's camera and picture gallery,
- access to the voice recording (both without the users knowledge!),
- access to the device's keyboard and other input methods,
- access to the device's location,
- access to personal passwords.

This sounds outrageous, doesn't it? Stasi-like? NSA and GCHQ , I think you can learn from Degree Farm! At least they have a decency to ask for one's consent...
(What makes it worse is that most of our colleagues did have no idea, including your Disgruntled Lecturer on their mobile phone) .

How would you feel if...

... you spent nine years of your life to get good university education from an undergraduate to a Ph.D. degree, published in one of the top journals in the world in your discipline, were offered a job with a promise of research time and support, and then were told what academic research is by people who struggled to get their bachelor degrees from under-performing universities? Yup, welcome to our hell! Let this post be a warning to ambitious and intelligent people who consider applying for jobs at post-1992 universities (even those that appear to be good judging by league tables, etc.). Don't believe the managers and people who interview you, instead approach some young and mid-career lecturers for some unofficial information on the working conditions, duties, targets, etc.

A couple of years ago we were offered lectureships at the Degree Farm. Already in the job interview we were assured of the extensive support for our research and amazing opportunities available to us. The message was reinforced when we were offered the positions. It all seemed good. The picture was quite exciting - being a part of an underdog that wants to join the big dogs in the game. A chance to change something, to be a part of some great development. What else a young idealist could ask for? The first year was tough - focused almost entirely on teaching, course development and admin tasks. But hey, the first year is expected to be difficult and it should get better later on, right? Well, it didn't. The teaching load was steadily increased to 70 - 80% of our time, we got involved in 4 - 6 courses simultaneously and the rest of the time is spent on more and more mundane and brainless admin tasks. On top of that, some of us teach 3 semesters in a year - September to August! The requests for basic (and inexpensive) research software were repeatedly denied as the management couldn't see any benefit in spending money on it. Conferences? - "Expensive, do you really need to go?" Workshops and additional training? - "Expensive, can't you find something cheaper? Sorry you used your share of the annual budget when we paid the 20 pound fee for your previous workshop..." We could spend a whole day counting more outrageous examples. The problem is that they would always come up with some dramatic excuse - someone being sick, absent, had an accident, the department was understaffed, etc. But how can that be the case for over 2 years? Our recent departmental meeting made it clear - research doesn't count or matter! The management more-less said that most members of the department do not have intellectual capacity to conduct research and they shouldn't be treated any different. Therefore, no one should get any research support! Obvious logic! (sarcasm).

So to sum up, they recruited a whole bunch of people with Ph.D.'s from the top UK universities on the promise to develop the university's research profile, then once they had us in, they kept denying any chance of doing research and in the end our line manager shouted (!) at us saying that research is not really our job.

We must be sadists to be still around... Time to move on, don't you think?

We built this university on cheats and lies

As the title suggests many things at the Degree Farm are not as they first appear. We actually believe that the place has more in common with communist dictatorships of the twentieth century than an academic institution in a developed and democratic country.  Let's look at some examples of manipulation and "massaging' the numbers.
Most, if not all,  universities ask students to evaluate the quality of teaching.  Normally the purpose of such an exercise is for lecturers to receive feedback on what they do well and what could be improved.  How does it work at the Degree Farm?  Lectures are being constantly reminded by the managers to have a talk with students before they let them fill in the forms. This talk should make students aware of "how important it is for their future and value of their degree to give us only positive evaluations". No pressure at all... But this year the practice went even further.  The person who came with the evaluation forms to one of our  colleague's lectures informed students that they are not allowed to select negative answers! Students were kindly informed that they should select only the "strongly agree" and "agree" boxes,  and if they didn't like certain aspects of the course they ought to tick "not applicable". The person then went on to explain that choosing "disagree" or "strongly disagree" is not allowed because it will "skew the results and mess up their research". I really wonder who trained them to say that,  I don't believe they could come with such a justification on her own.  This example shows how unreliable are statistics produced by the Degree Farm.  The sad thing is that the university uses those statistics to seduce new applicants.  In this case, instead of making an informed decision about their degree the applicants are allured by a set of questionable metrics.  It stinks... It's misselling....
We have plenty more of similar stories and you will probably read them one day.  Especially when the NSS comes near. That's a massive dose of manipulation, including manipulating students to fill in NSS forms and telling them that the degree they are getting in several years will be worth nothing if they don't give only very positive feedback in the NSS survey. Come on,  those  90-100% student satisfaction rates don't come by chance (or hard work).
It's sad how higher education has become a deception game for the pursuit of money.  After all,  universities play with the future of young people.  Yet it doesn't seem to bother the people in charge as long as their bonuses are safe. Young people, you are not alone - your lecturers are lied to even more than you are!

Open days (one of many future posts, I'm sure)

Dear students/parents.  When a university tells you that they’re better than other ‘research’ universities because they focus on “teaching”, beware.  First, look at who is ‘teaching’ you/your kids.  No professional experience?  Just graduated?  Would you pay that much money to let someone who has little experience renovate your house?  I doubt it.  And it’s not just limited to that…I helped a student whose dissertation supervisor didn’t have time for them because they were doing their own PhD (and, not unusually, wasn’t given enough time to do it).  This student went beyond what they were taught and utilized some advanced research techniques.  Did they get the 1st that they deserved?  No.  Why?  Because the second marker nearly failed them because they didn’t UNDERSTAND what they’d done (at least they were honest about it) and the lecturer/PhD student supervisor didn’t want to go against their co-worker.  So they split the difference, resulting in an average mark.  Why?  Because the ‘teacher’ had never actually done research like that and didn’t feel obligated (or, perhaps they, too, were overworked) to look into it. 

Why did we set up this blog?

Welcome to the Degree Farm!

We are a group of disgruntled lecturers who work at one of the post-1992 universities in the UK. Our professional lives are filled with ridiculous rules, ever growing red tape, students’ lack of appreciation of knowledge, and most of all - management’s  obsession with statistics (NSS scores, pass rates, student satisfaction etc.), which trumps any intellectual values and respect for staff. In short, the university is run like a corporation - generating income and surplus is the only aim even if it means lowering standards and forgetting what being a university is about. We are aware that what we describe here is not a characteristic of only our workplace but a reality in the modern university sector in general.

We chose “Degree Farm” to be the title of this blog because of our growing impression that modern universities are about giving degrees to anyone who is willing to pay the fees. Over years we have witnessed falling entry and pass requirements. Can you imagine that our university requires us to have a pass rate of 95% in our modules? 

"Degree Farm" relates to Orwell’s Animal Farm. There are many (far too many!) parallels between the world created by Orwell and our university. Managers hungry for power, destroying careers of people who may threaten them one day, coming up with tasks, rules and meetings which have only one aim: to justify their existence. This is topped up by a good dose of manipulation, misinformation, deception, bullying and turning people against each other. 

This blog describes our personal experiences and voices our personal opinions and often will be used to air our frustration over the higher education sector and our own university. As a reader you should expect high levels of sarcasm and black humour. After all many of our every day situations at work are so tragic that all we have left is to (bitter) laugh!

Join us on our journey through the absurd world of modern universities!