"But I have a chyld!" Foundation year university woes

Backstory: After 10 years of coasting through life, not knowing what I want out of it, I had an existential crisis just after my 30th birthday and finally figured out what I want to do career-wise. Unfortunately I left school with feck all, and it took a year or so to find a suitable foundation year course that will allow me to go on to do a degree next year (if I can get the required grades). There's about 130 people on the course - split into 4 main tutor groups but some classes have everyone altogether - and we're 5 weeks in at this point, so we're still getting the back-to-basics of how to make the most of the uni experience, using the online resources and developing basic study skills.

So yesterday we're in one of these Study Skills classes when it gets onto the subject of deadlines; how to find them on the student intranet, the consequences of missing them, how to ask for an extension and what circumstances allow you to get an extension in the first place.

That's when it starts, the incessant mooing of "what if" questions from the breeders, about how bizzy they are because they're parents, and their kyds who are always getting sick, how they have to leave class early to pick them up, how they might miss exams because little Sczneauwflayke has a school trip (that they've known about for months and now using as an excuse for leaving their uni work til the last minute).

Basically they were told that extensions were only given in extenuating circumstances, and that the extenuating circumstances had a rigid definition so things like school trips, hairdressing appointments and holidays didn't count. They DID say that each individual case would be handled with the tutor's discretion, but evidence will need to be provided with any request for an extension.

I just wonder why they're bothering to come on this course - at a discounted rate - if they're not gonna do the work and instead just use their kyds as an excuse as to why they're late with assignments and still expect top grades. One woman I got chatting to was telling me about how haaaaard it is being on the course when you're a parent, how she hasn't done any of the required reading because she's soooo busy. It's a part time course, it's one day a week. You're telling me she couldn't read in the evenings when her little darlings are in bed?

If you want the grades, you gotta put the time and effort in, otherwise what's the point? How are these people going to manage when they start a degree course next year, even if it's part time, if they can't manage the foundation year? Anyway, thanks for letting me rant, this is my safe haven for this kind of bitching.

I'm not sure what a Foundation course/year is. It sounds like the University is going to stand firm on their decision and if so these bizzy mahms and their excuses will all but vanish within a year. It may take a full year but they will vanish along with their excuses. The only ones who will make it our the ones willing to dedicate the required time and effort.

And congratulations on the classwork/University attendance!

Thanks Freya, you're definitely right about people likely dropping out of the course.

There's already been about 10 people who have dropped out, some parents, some not. Based on my personal experience, I'm expecting more people to drop out soon - I did a year of art college way back when; the class started with 30 students, the year finished out with like, 8. If people would drop out of something as laid back as an art class, there's bound to be people in this class that'll give up.

A foundation course - often called an "access to higher education" course - basically gives you a qualification equivalent to an A-Level, I think they're called AP's in America. It prepares mature students like me for studying at a degree level.

I don't get why these moos even bother with school if they're so bizzy. Why not leave those seats for people who are serious about their education, and have the time and ability to dedicate to studying? All they're doing is making a big, fat bill for the cost of the course. I guess they want to come across as 'edumacated' but really, they're not fooling anyone.

Congrats on the university track plan. Hope things go great!

I agree with M06B...sounds like it'll be a culling process. The ones who can shift their schedules and priorities will make it.

The people who are most successful in returning to school in general are people who do not have kids, empty nesters, or the rare parent who works hard (and generally has a supportive spouse). The foundation year is a nice way to weed out the people who won't be able to handle being in the university anyway. If they start whining about the structure and requirements, imagine how much they would complain without a foundation year. It would be endless claims that they weren't informed, didn't know what to do, and aren't internet savvy.

At least the school is taking a hard line up front, but they are also leaving the door open to the discretion of the individual professor which sucks for him/her because he/she gets to deal with Breeder excuses.

" about how bizzy they are because they're parents, and their kyds who are always getting sick, how they have to leave class early to pick them up, how they might miss exams because little Sczneauwflayke has a school trip."

" extenuating circumstances had a rigid definition so things like school trips, hairdressing appointments and holidays didn't count. "

I'm going to go Old Foagie on this thread, but I think this is a generational issue. I come from an era where things like this didn't have to be explained. If you sign up for a job, you are supposed to be there unless you are sick or on PTO. If you sign up for school, there is no such thing as vacation during the school year. I NEVER missed an exam during my entire college and post grad career.

It's sad that you even have to explain that an EXAM trumps vacation or a school trip, and that you should get your hair done on your own time, not during school hours. And Snotleigh isn't going to die if he/she goes on the trip with the rest of the class without the parunt hovering 24/7. And like most things that are lost on Breeders, there is a life lesson here: Kids should be doing what they are supposed to without excessive hovering and constant attention. If a kid sees the parent living up to his/her obligations, they learn by example. They also learn that the world doesn't revolve around them.

If I taught at a university, the breeder students would HATE me. NO kids in class, your kids are not an excuse for tardiness or absence, and no making up exams because you're a moo or duh.

And heaven forbid anyone would want time off because they're grieving a late period.

I think I'd have the same policy as one of my favorite lit professors: she didn't care if you showed up. She didn't care if you did the work. But she warned us all on the first day that if we didn't read the material and take good notes, we would never pass the exams. She said she'd had some people try it; her two favorite examples were someone who got a 2 on the class final ("Do you have to know how much you have to NOT KNOW to get a 2?" she asked me) and another student who showed up for the first day and the last day. He came in on the last day, looked over the final, and got back up and walked out.

By university/college level, it's on you to sink or swim. Seek help if you need it. Get a tutor. But don't expect the professors to let you skate because of your bad life choices. And those professors who do? You're just slapping those of us in the face who EARNED our grades and subsequent diploma.

Lurker, are you in the US? I could have used a foundation year after being ill prepared from going to Breed Hills High School. It was so crowded and hard to learn there because of you guessed it - breeders.

In Breed Hills, it was surly, nasty, devout Catholic engineer husbands who were rude ushers in the church who made their wives have up to 10 kids.

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kittehpeoples
By university/college level, it's on you to sink or swim. Seek help if you need it. Get a tutor. But don't expect the professors to let you skate because of your bad life choices. And those professors who do? You're just slapping those of us in the face who EARNED our grades and subsequent diploma.

That's my thought on the matter, but sadly these days a lot of decisions about the quality of a teacher are made by the student feedback. And while students who are eager to learn and intelligent will give good ratings for a class that challenges them, most students won't thank the teacher for it.

Consequently, standards keep slipping. The only people who really "benefit" from this are the first crop of lazy students with unearned grades, because after that employers will figure things out, to the detriment of the school's reputation and the graduates who actually learned something. Plus it won't help the lazy ones any.

I do believe that assistance should be provided to people who want to learn. Older students and foreign students should be offered instruction on how the school may differ from their previous university experience, and first-year students should learn about the different expectations as well. Basically, you get out of it what you put into it. If you pick easy courses and don't work very hard, you won't acquire the knowledge. You may not get the grades you deserve, but the main purpose for attending school should be to learn, not to get a certificate you can show people.

Also on the topic of helping people: If many students are having trouble grasping the material despite putting in the effort, the curriculum should be reconsidered to address the high failure rate. My field in particular is well-known for weeding out a lot of people in the first year, and I think that is in part due to the fact that it assumes people already know something about the field. Then the administration gets upset about the high drop-out rate, so instead of re-assessing how they teach, the teachers pass students who haven't grasped the fundamentals, and as a result the students never really achieve anything throughout their entire school career. Then they go out into the world and either get hired by desperate companies or sit around wondering why they are unemployed.

University administration has grown significantly over the last few decades and most of what they've done, aside from increasing their own salaries, appears to have been to make universities run like shitty businesses chasing the lowest common denominator (student=customer). I think most professors don't like giving unwarranted grades, but are incentivized to do so by the administration. They aren't incentivized to address the shortcomings of their own teaching style, only to pass more students.

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mr. neptune
Lurker, are you in the US? I could have used a foundation year after being ill prepared from going to Breed Hills High School. It was so crowded and hard to learn there because of you guessed it - breeders.

In Breed Hills, it was surly, nasty, devout Catholic engineer husbands who were rude ushers in the church who made their wives have up to 10 kids.

Nope, I'm in England. Tbh it was hard to find a foundation course that would take me because most of the ones available here in Liverpool require you to have at least 2 GCSE's, but as I mentioned, i left school with nothing but the feeling that I'd be dead by 18.

Now I'm almost 32.

I think that's why I'm so pissed at all these lack lustre breeders who just wanna coast through the course - this course will change my life long term and I'm determined to get the best grades I can so I can move onto the next step.

I never finished my degree, but for the two semesters I took of community college the single mothers were always the worst. One even brought her kid to my Trig class - teacher didn't send her home, but did publicly give her a verbal smackdown about how it was inappropriate and not the class's problem that she couldn't find a sitter, and that next time she'd be kicked out.

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"Yes, fellow readers, nothing says 'devoted father of a special needs kid' quite like drinking, snorting cocaine, and then taking the boat out for a spin."
- Tiquer