Board games

I’VE been a student and – in my experience – they do little work, get little tuition and could comfortably do a three-year degree in 18 months. Lecturers care about research, not students and students care about work for – at best – a month a year. And that’s the month around essay deadlines and exams.

From 2002 to 2005, I studied politics at a good university – then ranked fifth in The Sunday Times University Guide. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Academic, rigorous, even. It wasn’t.

Where to start? How about September, when term starts? Fine. Except term doesn’t start in September. Sure, students arrive then: unloading their desks and duvets from parents’ cars, spreading pizza boxes round the neighbourhood like muck in a field. But nothing – bar drinking and fancy dress parties – starts then.

The first week is Freshers’ Week. Yes, even if you’re in third year. Lectures are off and campus is given to 18-year-olds with nerves, new friends and tattered maps. The second week, invariably, involves arriving at lecture theatres, getting a reading list, then scooting off. So, in fact, term doesn’t start until mid-October. Though, even then, you might not notice.

In quiet terms, we had eight hours. In busy terms, we had ten. A week. So – at most – two a day. I know, I know – how did we manage?

If you don’t turn up – hungover perhaps, or missed the bus – don’t worry. Lecture notes, more often than not, are online.

After my first year, I spent the summer working at Little Chef. My colleagues – hard-working battle-axes in pinnies – would ask, out of interest, how many hours a week I had at uni. It was embarrassing to answer.

They did more in a day.

Of course, the idea is you study privately.

Each module, I think, recommended at least 24 hours reading a term. But that is treated like “Consult your doctor before starting an exercise regime”, or “Arrive at the airport three hours before departure”. It’s worthy advice that everyone ignores. Unless an essay was due, the average politics student would read for two hours a week, maximum – bringing the total hours per week to 12. What stress.

Oh, and mid-way through each term, we had a week’s holiday. Or, to give it the official title, “Reading Week”. It was, we felt, an excuse for tutors to catch up on their reading, not us.

Reading Week meant bigger hangovers, not bigger library queues.

For many tutors, giving lectures and tutorials seemed like an inconvenience, a chore that interfered with their PhD, or their book, or whatever they really worked on. We had dozens of lecturers. Most were fine, and friendly, but students rarely seemed the priority.

In December and April – when essays were due – the nightclubs emptied and libraries were rammed. Some sat in aisles, some ripped pages from books to get round the return date.

Rows and rows of assiduous students took notes, occasionally breaking to sip Diet Coke, or eat an apple.

This is when, I imagine, they took the prospectus photos.

The rest of the time libraries were sleepy, like country train stations at 3pm. But it wasn’t because students were lazy. Far from it. These were, after all, people who got at least two As at A-Level, people who captained football teams, ran hockey clubs, trained for triathlons. The problem was this: it was very, very difficult to get a First. And very, very easy to get a 2:1, the next best degree.

To get a First would have taken a brilliant mind and hours upon hours of work. So we didn’t bother. On my course, just ten out of 109 – nine per cent – managed it. On the other hand, 82 of us – that’s 75 per cent – managed a 2:1. If you wrote a very good essay – full of original thought and thorough research – you got 67 per cent. If you wrote a very bad one – full of cliched constructs and partial plagiarism – you got 57 per cent.

A friend of mine once dashed out an essay the night before deadline. He wasn’t the sharpest tool and his essay was at least 500 words too short. Once marked, the lecturer wrote, in all seriousness: “Is English your first language?” For that essay, Stuart – such an exotic name – got 56. For a 2:1, you needed 58.

When scoring 70 or higher needed vim, vigour and vast brain power, and scoring less than 58 saw your nationality questioned, no wonder most settled for the morass of mediocrity in between.

Recently, The Times reported the pressure on academics to award Firsts and 2:1s. It is, they said, caused by “anxiety over their reputation and by the litigiousness of customer-students.”

One academic said: “Every summer is poisoned by appeals.” Perhaps that’s why many lecturers, before the exam, revealed the questions.

NOT directly, of course. But – say there were ten topics that term – they said: “For topic one, look at this aspect, for topic two, be sure to revise this.” It meant we revised two topics diligently and ignored the other eight. So – before the exams – four-fifths of the course was cast aside, deemed superfluous.

Many friends, from across universities and subjects, had similar experiences. But, also, I knew genetics students and dentistry students, who never left campus. When they got 2:1s, they wept joyously. It seemed unfair to them – and us – that our degrees were respected equally.

University is valuable. I learnt vast amounts about politics, history, research and independent thought. And, of course, I learnt how to get drunk on a fiver. I would recommend it in a heartbeat. (University, that is, not cheap whisky). But, in my experience, it’s not academically rigorous. Anyone with nous can get good results with little effort. A 2:1 often proves you had two brain cells and played the system.

And, more importantly – in an age of rising fees and living costs – the amount of dead time means three-year degrees could be done, comfortably, in half that. Exams are done by the first week of June, for example, and we got a month off at Easter. And, even in 18 months, a degree would still have time for that academic essential – Reading Week.