I can totally sympathise with Naomi Sugai’s disappointing experiences at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. The Sunday Telegraph reports how she posted a minute-and-a-half video on YouTube, complaining about her £4,750- a-year business course – and was asked to leave.
It has now been viewed more than 1,800 times and Naomi has been suspended from her course. You can view it here.
This was the university’s heavy-handed response:
"The university said "unfounded" comments made on the site about staff and the university – which have subsequently been removed – were "defamatory". In a letter advising Miss Sugai of her indefinite suspension, Steven Bennett, the university’s secretary, warned: "Should you attend the campus during your suspension, security staff have been instructed to remove you and, if necessary, to seek assistance from the police. This matter has also been referred to our solicitors."
I went there as a mature student in 2004/05 when it was known as the Anglia Polytechnic University after being told that the only thing missing from my CV was an academic qualification, so I decided to study for a degree.
I was advised to study for a PG Cert as an introduction into academic writing, and then try for a PHd or Masters. I was the only one in my class who did not have a first degree and I had no support at all to help me with my lack of academic knowledge. From memory, I had three 1 hour tutorials throughout the whole year and I paid the full course fees out of my own pocket – again, the only student in my class to do so. One tutorial was even cancelled so my tutor could drive his mother to the railway station.
I found it very stressful as I really wanted to do well and desperately wanted support and guidance, which I did mention several times, but it fell on deaf ears. If it hadn’t had been for one of the other students helping me, I would really have struggled to write my two papers on Applied Social Science Research Methods.
I remember it took ages to get a reply from emails to my tutor, I felt I was being a nuisance if I pushed it too much as it wasn’t his main day job. I felt huge relief when the course finished – and I somehow passed with a distinction.
My immediate reaction was that I could not face returning there, I had no confidence in the college, that I would continue my degree with the Open University.
I hope that the college realises it should have been listening and responding to students to meet their needs and answering any criticisms, not ignoring them, that there may be others like me who were also unhappy there and will report about their disappointing experiences too.
I wish I could have had a different tale to tell about my college days. But I was determined to wear the graduation outfit for a photo, even if it was just a PG Cert.
Hat tip Donal Blaney.
Congratulations on doing so well with little support, Ellee. I have just applied to do an MA in counselling at Chester and have spent weeks and weeks trying to get answers to queries. It took me three days of phoning just to be able to speak to someone in that department, which, considering that we are talking about counsellors, is not a good sign!
hi Ellie,
I think this is a very important issue for society today and you should keep going with it. The young are being oversold qualifications to take them off the so called “dole queues” and that is wrong with how you, Geoff and I learned, i.e. sitting by the side of gifted skilled people. At least as apprentices we were paid, every university in the country knows it is massively overselling qualifications because education is now a market. Who is there to project the young from getting into debt, and picking up certificates that they do not need and could well learn the same skills on the job. Ugh all too horrible and all to obvious.
Jennyta, Thank you, and good luck to you with your course. I remember thinking at the time that it was harder to get a response from the college than any local authority, government office or high ranking politician I had previously dealt with. Why should that be?
Boni, How many organisations today take on students and train them like we were? Newspapers certainly don’t any more. In fact, many young people are expected to work for no money just for the experience.
I worry about David getting into debt when he goes to uni, but he wants to go and I hope he has a more positive experience. At least his course involves a year’s paid work in industry and a 95% chance of a job at the end of his degree.
Yes, well done you, Ellee and you seem to bear out what Naomi is saying. She shouldn’t have had to resort to youtube – where were her support tutors?
Yes I can sympathise with her too, so many injustices go on at these institutions and people don’t speak out for precisely this reason.
You did really well in spite -rather than because – of the college so you were definitely entitled to wear your gown!
I did an MA in creative writing but felt the course was so unchallenging – and that a fish could have passed – that I felt guilty wearing my gown. Or telling people that I have a Masters.
And you look utterly charming and lovely in your graduation gear.
I hope that the publicity will help this young woman who has been unjustly treated. The video is so mild, what are they playing at?
Lovely photo of you Ellee with the boys.
I agree with others that you certainly earned your degree and the right to wear the graduation gown. I’d love to go back to uni to study things I didn’t have time for during my education program degree. Things like history and English literature that I could now, as a mature adult, relate to much better.
I have a friend who complained about her course at Plymouth – it took a lot but she finally got her copmlaint across.
Postgraduate qualifications tend to be a case of ‘we want your money but don’t want to give you our time’. I’ve done two postgraduate courses now and I am singularly unimpressed by the quality of assistance I received on both counts. I was treated like an inconvenience rather than the person who pays their salaries.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
Letters from a Tory, that was the impression I had, and I had paid £3,000 for my course and worked my socks off as it ran through the 2005 General Election campaign when I was the Eastern Region press officer for the Conservative Party.
What colleges need to realise is that students are business clients and need to be satisfied, they also want value for money and a good quality service.
Ellee,
I suppose that’s what happens when people have to pay for something.
When there were no fees for tuition, people didn’t complain. They got something for free and were grateful.
You did well to get through the Applied Social Science Research Methods, without support, most mere mortals would have fallen by the wayside – very tough.
I’m currently doing a MSc Social Research & Evaluation at the London Metropolitan University, which involves studying complex research methods and evaluation strategies – very tough, even with support. I can understand what you must have been going through – you have my utmost respect.
Courtney, it was all a new language to me and I felt clueless. I worked so hard and persevered – and even became the class student rep. Good luck with your course, I am sure you will do well.
I did a BA hons at ARU (or APU) as it was called in 1997. Having very few prior academic qualifications I was delighted to be accepted and ‘Educating Rita’ style fully embraced all that was offered. However, I soon realised that some of the teaching staff were ‘left-overs’ from the ‘tech’ days and not really suited to teach at an undergraduate level. The keen new and young tutors didn’t last as they soon moved to better, real, Universities. Basically ARU, like many former higher educational establishments have jumped, on the University bandwagon without having the expereince to teach or administer at such a level. I am sure that if they went back to offering young people sound and thorough training in technical skills at a City and Guilds level then the country would have the workforce it needed and young people would find valuable, debt free, employment.
I read a comment above that said something like “where are my support tutors?” I thought I’d take this opportunity to reply. I have got a course tutor to whom I’ve explained the various problems and he has passed this on to someone higher than himself but the problem is that it just gets recorded somewhere (probably, I’m just assuming this) and then put away in a drawer or filed away on a computer. My course is only 1 year, well technically it’s one year and one semester but the one semester is for self study to write a dissertation so I had to do something drastic in order for change to happen whilst I was still there. I don’t think it’s selfish of me to expect that. Also if every year every student said how they really felt the uni would be forced to improve the courses, well one could only hope that they would.
Through sheer determination and a lot of bitching I have managed to be allowed onto a module called Internet Marketing which should have been an option anyway. What I am unhappy about is the fact that I have to do this module on top of my work load for this semester instead of doing it in the summer when we should be allowed to do extra modules.
They have finally organised two modules to be run in the summer. They are Entrepeneurship and Innovation which is already being run for the MBA students which means we will be joining a class that’s already running and that it’s not run specifically for us, which I don’t particularly have a problem with but the university is acting like they are doing me and the rest of my class a massive favour (offering us what was in the prospectus, how generous!?!?!) The other one is called something like Leadership and Organisation which we have covered in both semester 1 and 2 which means we are not getting value for money.
My feeling is that I should have gone straight into employment and not wasted my money and time doing this course but as I am more than half way through I feel obligated to finish it due to the guilt of wasting the money and to show that I’ve nothing to be ashamed of and I AM going to finish the course!
Naomi, I’m so glad you found my post and thank you for your comment. I’m glad you stuck to your guns, but am sorry for you that it has been such a struggle. I’m wondering whether it would be worth your while writing to your MP David Howarth outlining your experiences and disappointments. These universities should be accountable, after all, they rely on public funding.
I have had various emails from supporters and I believe one of them contacted an MP (although I’m not sure if it was David Howarth) in any case the MP’s response was that although the university rely on public funding they are essentially an independent institution free to be run in whatever way they see fit.
I will however contact David Howarth and see if what he has to say is the same as what I’ve written above.
I contacted the Office of fair trading who don’t deal with individual queries but they put me through to Consumer Direct and they were able to give me some useful information. The two choices given to me by consumer direct was to quit the course and get money back from the university for “breach of contract” or to finish the degree and possibly not get any money back as I would have used the full service in the eyes of the law, or if I was really adamant find a way to prove my consequencial loss and go through the small claims court.
Regarless of whether any of this happens I found out that each call is logged so that if they get a large number of complaints about the same organisation or institution and especially same problems experienced by different people that organisation or institution will be externally investigated by Consumer Direct, so what we need to do here is to encourage more people to complain so that organisations and institutions that are falling below the minimum standard get scrutinized from an independent outside organization who have the power to instill change.
Although I will not name names, one of our classmates has suffered a break down partly due to the stress caused by our course issues which I think just goes to prove how stressful it really is to be at the university and in particular the course that we are on. I have made the associate dean of student affairs aware of this as I think they need to know what a negative impact the university is having not just on this individual but on many students.
Naomi, learning should be a fun experience too, I’m sorry it’s been so negative for you. As I said before, I do sincerely sympathsie. I wish you the very best of luck.
I’ve just graduated from Anglia Ruskin University and have to say that I have had NO negative experiences during my three years whatsoever. In fact I was recommended to go there by a close family friend who also found the experience rewarding and now works for a national newspaper in America. I understand freedom of speech and that Naomi felt she was being treated unfairly but I do also agree that posting a video on YouTube was not the best way to go about it, it is a relatively new, and promising University that is entitled to call itself just that. I and alot of my friends from Ruskin believe that you have tarnished the University name and put a lot of people off accepting places there purely because of your own negative experience which seems totally unfair.
Whilst I sympathise with your issue, I feel that you should have made it clear that YOUR course in particular was disorganised and that you feel something needed to be said about it instead of essentially helping to black list the University as a whole. Many talented individuals (before my time and yours) have come out of Anglia Ruskin and it doesn’t seem fair that the University (which already dwells in the shadow of Cambridge University) should be subjected to more bad press when it really does not deserve it.
I’m not saying it should have been swept under the carpet, or that you should have been suspended. But the fact remains that many Students and friends and families of those students felt disheartened and somewhat embaressed by your YouTube video.
Beau, I am really pleased to hear you had a much more positive experience, and I appreciate your comment.