University Life under Strain

The quality of university life is under strain from the relentless expansion of higher education, leading independent schools in Britain complained.

The warning followed survey of the impressions of campus life gained by former pupils of the schools.
Infrequent contact with tutors, worries over student safety, and even grumbles over the food were all seen as symptoms of the pressure on universities.
Head teachers said that standards could well drop if the squeeze on university budgets continued.
A survey was carried out because of fears that the level of pastoral care in universities has declined.
A number of students'suicides had raised concerns among head teachers.
Although most of the 6,000 students surveyed were enjoying university life, almost a third were less satisfied with their course.
About one in ten had serious financial problems and some gave alarming accounts of conditions around their halls of residence.
Incidents quoted included a fatal stabbing and shooting outside a hall of residence, the petrol-bombing of cars near another residence, and two racist attacks.
Nine percent of women and seven percent of men rated security as unsatisfactory in the area where they lived.
The survey confirmed head teachers'fears about contact between students and tutors slipping, with a quarter of the students seeing their tutor only every three weeks.
New students, used to regular contact with their teachers, found it hard to adapt to the change.
Interview techniques were a cause for concern, with the school calling for more training of the university staff involved in admissions.
Some headmasters complained that interview were increasingly “eccentric”.
One greeted an applicant by throwing him an apple.
Another interview lasted only three minutes.
About a quarter of the students found the workload at university heavier than they had expected.
There were differences between subjects, with architecture, engineering, veterinary science, medicine and some science subjects demanding the most work.
The survey also confirmed previous concerns about possible racial bias in admissions to medical courses.
Applicants with names suggesting an ethnic minority background had been rejected by white candidates with the same qualifications.