15 May Is your £9250 tuition fee worth it?
It’s a well-known fact that going to university is extremely expensive and can result in a lot of debt. For a three year course the average university student is paying around £27,750, this excludes the maintenance loan which can be up to £11,354 if living in London. The real question is, is it worth it?
Theresa May has started to discuss this issue herself. Parliament is currently reviewing university fees with a debate surrounding whether there should be a variety in fee levels based on the student’s course, but this has been warned against due to equality issues.
According to research from Which? and the Higher Education Policy Institution, arts and humanities students spend just nine hours in lectures and seminars. Law students fare slightly better, with an average of eleven hours of class per week. Should you be deciding what course to do based on contact hours?
For £9250 a year the reality is far from what it seems. Most courses expect you to do a huge about of independent research in your spare time. Expecting you to spend hours on end in the library going through book and book for quotes and references. Also included in the fee are one to one sessions with your course lecturer’s/course leaders. On average, students outnumber staff fourteen to one – leading to crowded seminars often short for time. As a result, independent research becomes infinitely more rewarding.
Ellie Hardwick 1st year Italian and French student at the university of Kent said; “In the minimal contact hours I am learning about the same authors, techniques and basic linguistics in that I was taught at A Level, which I learnt for free.” Ellie has studied these subjects since the age of 11, so furthering these studies to degree level she was hopeful that she will be learning something new and be able to use the skills with peers and tutors. “When seeing my tutors, they say I have good progress and to continue reading around the subject.”
Ellie on average has 8 hours of contact time per week in her first semester at university, however this did then drop to just 6 in the second semester as she said “it was to allow more revision and reading time for upcoming June exams.”
Ellie said that she did feel like she had full support of the tutors and were always offering “to meet up for one to ones when needed, but my progress was excellent.” Ellie said the amount of contact hours confuses her as she doesn’t understand how the lecturers can know her progress and know her individually with so little contact hours. “Although I did well in my first semester it is very hard to indicate how well I will do in my exams because when I have contact hours I share it in seminars and workshops with others, around 15 of us are in at one time.”
In response to these allegations the university of Kent did say “We treat all students as individuals and lectures are there to support and guide students to their best ability.”
The focus on value for money is intensified by the recent announcement of a fee hike above the £9000 threshold. A 2011 report from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) claims that there ‘is no evidence to suggest that, taken alone, contact hours offer a meaningful way in which to measure quality. They add: ‘Quality (or more specifically, academic quality) is about providing an environment that creates the potential for students to succeed in their studies’, which is ‘measured in a qualitative rather than quantitative way’.
According to a report published by the NUS, science based subjects benefit from longer teaching hours. Students studying medicine, dentistry or veterinary courses would expect to receive nineteen or more contact hours per week in lectures, seminars and clinics. Whilst law students will see an average of 13 hours of contact time per week, whilst a languages student can expect just 10.
With a medicine degree having one of the highest contact hours across the country, third-year medical student Holly Adams from Cardiff university can really see the benefit. She said “I agree with the statement, compared to my friends I am in class or clinics a lot more than them. I think it’s great and really feel I am getting my money’s worth. Not only do I just have contact time in lectures but I also get clinic time in hospital shadowing professionals and going hands on to examine patients myself. This is going to benefit me massively when going into practise after university.”
Although Holly spends most of her time studying compared to her friends on other courses she has no complaints about contact hours: “I feel completely supported even when in clinic in hospitals I have one to one sessions with my course supervisor every week to check on progress and I know they are on hand if I ever needed any help. Although my actual lectures are taught in front of many students through my seminars or tutorials I’m in small groups so we can all ask questions and I feel fully supported. I think having a good rapport with my seminar teachers and my supervisor is extremely important for my motivation as well, this makes my contact time beneficial for me.”
For so many undergraduate students their final year of university is looming very close. Some will be keen and will relish at the opportunity before them in the job market, that will expect help with CV writing and gaining as much experience as possible. But for the 957,000 16 to 24 year-olds who are currently unemployed in the UK they are still frantically finding jobs, going on gap years or looking into post graduate study. The ‘boomerang generation’ as they have been named. Postgraduate master’s degrees have become a popular alternative, as they offer another year of independence and a chance for further study, enhancing the skills adopted at undergraduate level.
Matthew Miles is one of those students studying a masters, an MSc in Climate Change at UCL. However, this wasn’t his original plan “I studied my BA at Kings College London, gaining a 2:1 in Geography. My contact hours weren’t great, slowly declining through the years. I coped fine a knew prior to uni that I needed lots of self-study time. The issue that I found through the minimal contact hours was the lack of guidance to what to do post uni. I didn’t have a great relationship with any of my lectures and felt lost in what I should do after study. I debated going into a job but I had no clue what I wanted to do. In the end I went to student services for guidance first of all rather than to anyone teaching related on the course. They provided the options and helped me see sense. I had to approach a lecturer in order to seek guidance in how to write the best personal statement possible. I wasn’t expecting to be taken under the wing of a lecture and be treated like a child at school when I came to university, however I think contact hours should include guidance and support for students especially in the final year.”
Matthew did successfully get into UCL and he said that contact time for his masters has been declining as his thesis due date is looming, he said: “When going into high education and post graduate study I really didn’t expect many contact hours, mostly just independent self-study, and that was correct. Tutors and lecturers aren’t there to chase students up like teachers at school.” Kings college London were contact to reflect on the amount of contact hours for the course, however a reply was not received.
But recent data from The Students Academic Experience Survey, collected by HEPI and the Higher Education Academy, reveal that only a third of students think that they get “good value for money” – a figure which has fallen from 53% to 37% since 2012. It is unsurprising, then, that the number of contact hours influence how students perceive their quality of learning experience. Nonetheless, teaching goes way beyond the classroom, with self-study being vital for any university course. Universities have a good support system in place in student services or within individual courses themselves, even when contact hours are very low.
