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Lesley Matthews and Margaret Squires respond to a piece by Adrian Chiles in which he compares the workload at English and French universities
Adrian Chiles (English students spend a fortune to go to university. Shouldn’t that buy them more teaching and less partying?, 29 March) extols the virtues of the French university regime, comparing it with the UK, where students can do what they like. At the start of my sixth form (60 years ago), our history teacher told us that he would not be chasing us to get our essays in on time as he knew that we wanted to go to university. We had to be self‑motivated. Result? I did nothing for a year and a half. I failed my mock A-level history exam. I then worked prodigiously hard and got a B in my A-level. I went to university. He had not just taught me history – he had taught me to be responsible for my own learning.
Lesley Matthews
Shipley, West Yorkshire
• Adrian Chiles is right to blame the culture in some universities in this country for scrappy degrees. Maybe the universities should make it compulsory for each student to join a work group. When my daughter studied in Belgium, a group of Germans asked her if she had one, and seeing that she did not understand the concept, invited her to join theirs. She has never worked so hard in her life.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
It’s not just lecturers who are struggling with stress due to unrealistic workloads, says one reader
Re the University and College Union’s dispute (Work-life balance as important as pay, says university staff union, 10 February), there is always a focus on lecturers in articles about it. But the UCU is made up of more than lecturers. I am a burnt-out administrator, struggling to have my issues taken seriously by my university and by the country.
In the past year, I have been spread across three projects, all full-time roles in themselves, yet classified as only needing one or two days a week of work. All these were time-limited contracts. My contract is now permanent, but my job description is six pages long. It seems the universities now want blanket contracts so you’re on the hook for any work they want to dump on you. I have co-workers who are so snowed under with their workload that they’re afraid to strike lest they come back to an even larger mountain of work. I know many people in professional services jobs at the university who have been off sick with stress.
Continue reading...Readers respond to Daniel Dylan Wray’s article about escaping the shadow of his abusive father
I was moved by Daniel Dylan Wray’s account of lone parenthood, domestic abuse and seeing his father for the first time across a courtroom (A moment that changed me, 1 February). I have a not dissimilar story, although I lived with my father, but I remember periods of parental separation as a welcome relief. In a similar Damascene moment, I went from angry teen to university, and, as a professor, I’m still there.
University was a door into another world. I fear that similar young people will not have a chance to experience those moments of relief, and support from public services, that I, and presumably Wray, enjoyed. The relentless attacks on financial and other support to lone parents, and the ensuing stigma, will make life almost impossible for families in similar situations today, as I outlined in the Guardian last year (Tories have shamed single parents and heaped financial pressure on them, 5 July 2022).
Prof Morag Treanor
Edinburgh
There is thankfully more understanding of the condition than when my daughter was first diagnosed over 30 years ago, writes Judy Evans, while Cal Walters-Davies calls for more support and more positive coverage
How refreshing to see so much positive coverage given to the condition ADHD, coverage which helps to widen the understanding of and facilitate support for a disorder that is both challenging and potentially life-changing (ADHD services ‘swamped’, say experts as more UK women seek diagnosis, 13 January).
I wish the media had always been so enlightened. Over 30 years ago, my then 10-year-old daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, after many years of struggling to get an understanding and acceptance of her particular difficulties. At around that time, the disorder was considered by many in the media and general public as an “American” disease, with a great deal of scepticism attached to its validity as an illness requiring support.
In his Guardian column, Francis Wheen poked fun at what he described as “illness as euphemistic excuse” and “convenient props for people who are suffering from nothing more serious than the human condition” (Wheen’s world, 14 September 1994). I objected to his cynicism and you published my riposte on the letters page a week later. I’d like to think he wouldn’t write in the same tenor today – and that you will publish this letter too.
Judy Evans
Brighton
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