Universities Gone Mad!

Exams are a stressful feature of every student’s life. Going over notes, mind maps and frantically reading through textbooks making sure you are as prepared as you can be for the challenge that lies ahead.

However, it is all very good you being prepared for your exams, but what if the University are not?

Work is just about to start on the new Grizedale accommodation at Lancaster University. Although it is good to see that work is beginning on the pile of rubble that has sat in wait since the beginning to the academic year it has come to many people’s attention that it seems illogical to start this major building work right as a ‘Quiet Period’ has been put into force around the campus. Why are diggers allowed to make excessive noise, and yet students get told off by the porters for having a small game of football?

It would appear that this university has not thought about its students and the effect such a noise disruption will have on their revision and ultimately their final grades. One postgraduate student commented; “When will the University start to think of its students, its customers? I mean undergraduates go home in June, we have to suffer this right through the summer, and previous experience shows that even though we pay huge amounts of money for MA’s, our dissertation writing time is destroyed through excessive building noise or just plain bloody inconsideration”.

However, it is not our own University which seems to have lost all sight of their students. It was announced recently that the students of Manchester Metropolitan Business School. Are to sit their exams, that had been scheduled to take place in a conference room in the City of Manchester Stadium, will in fact be situated in a large marquee in a car park next to one of Manchester’s busiest roads. A student of the business school told me that he was ‘Outraged at the situation’ and that the idea of taking exams in a tent was ‘a joke’. The clear message from the students was that no one was laughing.

Just imagine it. All the hours spent in lectures, all the time spent reading through textbooks and the abundant note taking all building up to those end of year exams only for a lorry to roar its engine and you’ve lost your train of thought mid-sentence. One can not specifically say the effect that such a disruption will have on any student but it is clear that such an interruption will only have a negative effect on the final result.

The purpose of Universities is to create an atmosphere where students can excel in their chosen area of study and further their academic career. This taken into mind, why does it appear that some universities are not seeking to create this much sought after ambience? It is also noted that neither University had planned for the disruptions to occur. Grizedale College had been planned to be well under way by now and Manchester Met.have fallen on the bad side of a double booking. But even with this taken into account, neither University can seriously expect their students to perform to their full potential under such circumstances. Both Universities have issued their apologies for the disruptions caused to the students during the stressful period, but last time I checked apologies did not help you pass an exam.

Jonathan Starr