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!