Slackers

[Malingering BA]

On my Chemistry degree back in the late 80s we had 20 hours of lectures, 10 hours of practicals and 4 hours of tutorial per week, 34 hours total, plus write ups and a once a term detailed project for out of hours. The humanities bods had about 15 hours total a week but it has always been so.

[oracleslave]

Very nearly... none of this handout nonsense either, it was take your own notes or nothing...

Or you could photocopy an entire terms worth of notes from the nerd at the front of the class when exam time came around.

[Murder1]

When I did CEI Part II (degree level thingie) nearly 30 years ago, it was non stop lectures all week... must have been at least 30 hours/week... I'd find the timetable but I suspect it went to the paper bank long ago...

Surely the timetables were written on slate tablets then?

[Gonzo]

of course it's meaningless, for example History students tend to have less lectures than say Maths students, they always have had, probably half the amount of hours. Yet with all the reading and essay writting history degrees take up much more of a person's time.

That's if you actually do any of it.

I did a Politics degree (a few years ago now) I had to do 4 one-hour lectures and 4 one-hour tutorial groups a week. And that's if I actually made it to them all. A couple of essays a term to churn out and that was it.

There was another guy I had been at school with doing an engineering degree at the same place. He was horrified to find out that he had to do more hours a week than when he was in the Sixth Form

[xoggoth]

On the other hand, maybe all these media studies things are not totally useless. They make our stupid world go round.

I was looking at that toilet tissue ad with the puppy. How did the meeting that kicked off that series of ads go exactly? Hey chaps! we need to promote something for wiping arses in a socially acceptable way! What has a very obvious arse and is always using it all over the place including the dining room carpet but on the other hand is totally CUTE with it? I know, a PUPPY!!!! Hey Stephens, great idea!!! Let's run it.

I would have chosen Keira Knightley or Catherine Zeta Jones to promote the image of cute and acceptable crapping personally but what do I know? I am only an engineer.

[Bagpuss]

of course it's meaningless, for example History students tend to have less lectures than say Maths students, they always have had, probably half the amount of hours. Yet with all the reading and essay writting history degrees take up much more of a person's time.

[threaded]

This is one of them fun with statistics type things. In the UK more students go on "media studies" non-study type courses, whereas in other countries more students study things like maths and science. So of course the UK students don't appear to study as much, but most of those UK students are on mickey mouse degrees that don't count.

Now if you do the comparison in a more sensible manner looking at only meaningful degrees you'll find the students in the UK are well overworked when compared to other countries. There again in other countries most students have near full time employment to help fund themselves through their course, and so obviously take longer to do the degree.

In short, you can't really compare this way as they're so different.

[Pondlife]

"Although there is no suggestion here that the length of study equates to quality of learning, as these comparisons become better known there is bound to be increasing pressure on English universities to explain how their shorter, less intensive, courses match those elsewhere in Europe.



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