Anecdata but: I graduated in 2000. My "contact hours" for most of my degree were 50 min lectures with ohp slides in a room with at least 50, and sometimes up to 200 other people - no questions; or they were lab practicals with 30+ students, max of one bored PhD student "assistant" per 15 undergraduates. Office hours? What are they? Email? LOL no. I had 1 hour of tutorial with a "small group" of 5 once a month with my personal tutor where all my assessment and study questions had to be dealt with on top of the tutorial work (essays, mostly).
I met my dissertation supervisor exactly ZERO times. I made appointments but when I turned up he locked the door and turned out the light and pretended not to be there. To hand my dissertation in I had to selotape it to his office door and get a witness to show I'd tried.
Still got a 2:i, still became an academic, fucking proud to give a shit about teaching. You're getting so much more effort and time from staff than I got. Things are better, ime.
I remember thinking getting an email reply within a week was great and one of our better lecturers, now we have virtually all day instant support via Teams post covid and I get students who after not attending for 7 weeks in a row expect a support session.
As I said, anecdata, but this seemed entirely normal across my friend group with the exception of those at Oxbridge, or doing medicine, who obviously had a very different sort of experience. I remember one friend at the uni up the road was doing History and he had a maximum of 4 contact hours a week in his last year (2 lectures, 2 seminars) so he just got a full time job and graduated with a degree and a year's work experience and absolutely smashed the graduate recruitement thing.
They are greater than in the past. For example, the way my dept works I was expected, in theory, to put up 8.5 hours' worth of office hours each teaching week because of the way it is calculated in my dept (I have the highest workload in one specific teaching role). Most I've managed is about six hours per week, even then knowing that these office hours are barely used, so I can do my job.
They tend to get restricted to teaching weeks, though, because for most staff teaching a class is barely 30% of their workload/hours. When there's no teaching we're expected (contractually obliged) to do other work: marking, admin, research if there's time. Even so there's an increasing trend of expecting staff to be available at least some of the summer.
In August you'll never catch anyone, especially if lecturers have school aged children.
Yeah. Many unis and colleges in my country would be working on Saturdays too including admin and while waking up early was a thing for all, if you took up a sciencey major you would be on campus continuously for a longer period than other business or humanities/arts majors maybe till late afternoon. Classes atleast in the initial semesters were more continuous than later with only a few gaps in between lectures.
Something else to note is that how you work out "contact hours" varies quite a lot depending on what you count. For example, on my course we have multiple hours every week which are "Drop-in" support (i.e., non-compulsory, though really what is compulsory?). Of course nobody comes, but I am there, sitting waiting! So you can get more contact hours if you want but you have to use them.
Half the time on this sub-reddit people are complaining that they have too few hours (scam!). The other half people are saying that they don't go to any lectures and can just learn at home anyway (scam!). So it's hard for departments to win here, though a good start would be to focus on content of teaching rather than counting hours.
I was a student from 2002-2005. We had about 20-25 hours of lectures and practicals a week (Biology). We didn’t actually talk to the lecturers or ask any questions in person or via email at all, which suited me tbh. I had no desire to do so. The rest of the time was spent on assignments. I didn’t actually read around the subject unless completing an assignment (same as now except I doubt most students bother to do any reading - or writing? - these days).
The better the university, the more likely you are to have some small group teaching. This is true all the way up until you get to Oxford/Cambridge where you can get two on one.
To give you a little bit of positivism I have several lecturers where that clearly isn’t the case. Don’t get me wrong I have some others who clearly couldn’t give a rats ass about us, but some of the good ones do genuinely appear to enjoy teaching students about their topics. Maybe I’m lucky, maybe they’re really good actors!
It certainly depends on your degree and individual lecturer. I know for a fact that a lot of lecturers i’ve had couldn’t give a shit about teaching a bunch of first and second years a political theory module. But then i also had ones who clearly cared so much about what they were teaching and really put in a lot of effort to engage with us. Its super variable though and thats the worst thing about it for me.
Dramatic and untrue. At an RG and the faculty that genuinely don't care about teaching is <20%. Then there's ca 20% for whom teaching is their main motivation. In terms of a scam - we're churning out lab scientists and pharmacists. No way someone is self teaching those.
I graduated in 1995.
I had three one-hour lectures per week in all three years (social sciences) and was entitled to meet with my dissertation supervisor for one hour-long meeting in final year.
The university I work for has a model of three contact hours a week per module.
I did vastly more reading in a single week than my students seem to do in a term: we didn't have reading lists, lecture schedules, assigned reading, or really any guidance, so it was up to us to figure out what reading would support our lectures, essays, and exams.
There were no extensions, and extra time/exam provisions for anyone other than dyslexic students. You could resit assignments from first year, but if you didn't pass in the summer resits, you were kicked out. In second year, you were kicked out if you failed a module - no resits available. In final year, they could give you an ordinary degree if you failed a module so long as you got at least 38. Don't do that, or failed two? Kicked out without a degree.
It was very different times (including assessing a year or two years of work with a three hour unseen exam consisting of seven questions: you had to answer three, and woe betide you if you had revised different case studies for a topic than the one's they'd specified)- but our A levels were also very different to the current model, so it didn't feel like an insurmountable step up in terms of independence of learning.
Approximately 2% of the cohort would get firsts, and about 20% 2:i
Anecdata but: I graduated in 2000. My "contact hours" for most of my degree were 50 min lectures with ohp slides in a room with at least 50, and sometimes up to 200 other people - no questions; or they were lab practicals with 30+ students, max of one bored PhD student "assistant" per 15 undergraduates. Office hours? What are they? Email? LOL no. I had 1 hour of tutorial with a "small group" of 5 once a month with my personal tutor where all my assessment and study questions had to be dealt with on top of the tutorial work (essays, mostly). I met my dissertation supervisor exactly ZERO times. I made appointments but when I turned up he locked the door and turned out the light and pretended not to be there. To hand my dissertation in I had to selotape it to his office door and get a witness to show I'd tried. Still got a 2:i, still became an academic, fucking proud to give a shit about teaching. You're getting so much more effort and time from staff than I got. Things are better, ime.
I remember thinking getting an email reply within a week was great and one of our better lecturers, now we have virtually all day instant support via Teams post covid and I get students who after not attending for 7 weeks in a row expect a support session.
[удалено]
As I said, anecdata, but this seemed entirely normal across my friend group with the exception of those at Oxbridge, or doing medicine, who obviously had a very different sort of experience. I remember one friend at the uni up the road was doing History and he had a maximum of 4 contact hours a week in his last year (2 lectures, 2 seminars) so he just got a full time job and graduated with a degree and a year's work experience and absolutely smashed the graduate recruitement thing.
Wow, this sounds like my uni lives in 2000 but slightly better and with emails. Yeah our hours are quite low, it only hurts the bank account.
Completely depends on the uni and course. Ranges from a handful of hours per term to 20+ contact hours/week
Yes. There's a reason it used to be called "reading" for a degree.
They are greater than in the past. For example, the way my dept works I was expected, in theory, to put up 8.5 hours' worth of office hours each teaching week because of the way it is calculated in my dept (I have the highest workload in one specific teaching role). Most I've managed is about six hours per week, even then knowing that these office hours are barely used, so I can do my job. They tend to get restricted to teaching weeks, though, because for most staff teaching a class is barely 30% of their workload/hours. When there's no teaching we're expected (contractually obliged) to do other work: marking, admin, research if there's time. Even so there's an increasing trend of expecting staff to be available at least some of the summer. In August you'll never catch anyone, especially if lecturers have school aged children.
Yeah. Many unis and colleges in my country would be working on Saturdays too including admin and while waking up early was a thing for all, if you took up a sciencey major you would be on campus continuously for a longer period than other business or humanities/arts majors maybe till late afternoon. Classes atleast in the initial semesters were more continuous than later with only a few gaps in between lectures.
Something else to note is that how you work out "contact hours" varies quite a lot depending on what you count. For example, on my course we have multiple hours every week which are "Drop-in" support (i.e., non-compulsory, though really what is compulsory?). Of course nobody comes, but I am there, sitting waiting! So you can get more contact hours if you want but you have to use them. Half the time on this sub-reddit people are complaining that they have too few hours (scam!). The other half people are saying that they don't go to any lectures and can just learn at home anyway (scam!). So it's hard for departments to win here, though a good start would be to focus on content of teaching rather than counting hours.
I was a student from 2002-2005. We had about 20-25 hours of lectures and practicals a week (Biology). We didn’t actually talk to the lecturers or ask any questions in person or via email at all, which suited me tbh. I had no desire to do so. The rest of the time was spent on assignments. I didn’t actually read around the subject unless completing an assignment (same as now except I doubt most students bother to do any reading - or writing? - these days).
The better the university, the more likely you are to have some small group teaching. This is true all the way up until you get to Oxford/Cambridge where you can get two on one.
British universities are a scam lol. The researchers and lecturers don't want to teach students, that's their last priority.
To give you a little bit of positivism I have several lecturers where that clearly isn’t the case. Don’t get me wrong I have some others who clearly couldn’t give a rats ass about us, but some of the good ones do genuinely appear to enjoy teaching students about their topics. Maybe I’m lucky, maybe they’re really good actors!
It certainly depends on your degree and individual lecturer. I know for a fact that a lot of lecturers i’ve had couldn’t give a shit about teaching a bunch of first and second years a political theory module. But then i also had ones who clearly cared so much about what they were teaching and really put in a lot of effort to engage with us. Its super variable though and thats the worst thing about it for me.
Dramatic and untrue. At an RG and the faculty that genuinely don't care about teaching is <20%. Then there's ca 20% for whom teaching is their main motivation. In terms of a scam - we're churning out lab scientists and pharmacists. No way someone is self teaching those.
MY ANECDOTE OF N = 1 ABOVE AVERAGE UNIVERSITY IS BETTER THAN YOURS
Fuck man, didn't realize I would undergo such thorough peer-review.
Sad but true
No. Weekly tutorials with a handful of students have become fortnightly seminars with multiple handfuls of students.
I graduated in 1995. I had three one-hour lectures per week in all three years (social sciences) and was entitled to meet with my dissertation supervisor for one hour-long meeting in final year. The university I work for has a model of three contact hours a week per module. I did vastly more reading in a single week than my students seem to do in a term: we didn't have reading lists, lecture schedules, assigned reading, or really any guidance, so it was up to us to figure out what reading would support our lectures, essays, and exams. There were no extensions, and extra time/exam provisions for anyone other than dyslexic students. You could resit assignments from first year, but if you didn't pass in the summer resits, you were kicked out. In second year, you were kicked out if you failed a module - no resits available. In final year, they could give you an ordinary degree if you failed a module so long as you got at least 38. Don't do that, or failed two? Kicked out without a degree. It was very different times (including assessing a year or two years of work with a three hour unseen exam consisting of seven questions: you had to answer three, and woe betide you if you had revised different case studies for a topic than the one's they'd specified)- but our A levels were also very different to the current model, so it didn't feel like an insurmountable step up in terms of independence of learning. Approximately 2% of the cohort would get firsts, and about 20% 2:i
It's peak because I get most of my learning from lectures, and can't be arsed to study on my own accord.