Idiocy in Academia.

Time for a consumer review:

The summer's over and I'm finally back at college. It's my third and final year and so now there's no time for mucking about and skipping lectures to drink something rank in the Student Union.


The only thing is, it would seem that the staff at Leeds Trinity & All Saints College are still on their summer vacation.

The confusion started before I even went back. I popped in to pay my tuition fees around a week before college opened. On my arrival at the finance office, I'm met with a horrified look of someone seemingly scared senseless at the sight of £1174 in cash. Presumably they're used to students just giving them "mummy and daddy's" bank details to set-up a standing order. After all, it would have given them lots of needless admin to do (government funded/subsidised institutions always enjoy needless admin work)

Yesterday, after opening two weeks later than practically every other HE institution in the country due to renovation work they invite us all in to register, although on the same day that lectures are due to start.

Straight away that seemed like a cack-handed way of doing things, given the administration involved and confidently predicted absolute pandemonium. But on the supposed plus side, it could be done entirely with a few mouse clicks this year.
That's where it all went pear-shaped. The system, to put it bluntly, didn't work. For hours upon hours all people gt were time-out messages, errors, log-on fails and so-on. After restarting the web server twice, database server and practically anything that was plugged into an electric socket, the IT clowns still got nowhere near. Instead they suggested we all try again tomorrow (you can imagine the scene the following day) but there was a problem with that. No registration means no student loan payments and obviously as students, that money is needed at this time of year more than any other, what with the need to pay rent cheques, buy the necessary books and what not, so nobody wanted to leave despite how futile an exercise trying to register actually was.

I gave up and tried at home. Only blind luck eventually got me registered.

Today the problems continued. The online timetable system hasn't worked so half of the students couldn't get access to their timetable because the module codes were wrong and those that did get through were given duff information. That resulted in me missing one lecture this morning.

Surely then, you'd think that things couldn't possibly get any worse? That in all this pandemonium, they'd finally wake up and get things sorted? Well, not exactly. I was handed back someone else's essay feedback for starters and the college are still trying to bullshit people with regards to car parking.
Last year the college started charging £25 for students to park their car on a college campus miles from civilisation. The college is in a rather affluent area of Leeds and as a result, First Leeds don't operate any meaningful bus service to the area, as practically all the residents drive their own Mercs or BMW's. That means that driving is the only real way of getting their and back. The problem with charging for parking permits is that you push drivers into parking on the nearby streets, which has created serious safety hazards for people pulling out of the official car parks onto a busy A-road.
In an attempt to stop that, and email was circulated stating that "the police will hand out penalty notices to anyone parked on Brownberrie Lane or Lea Lane". That "threat" fails on two counts:
1. There are no parking restrictions on the named roads. No yellow lines, no clearways, no nothing.
2. The police are no longer responsible for parking enforcement. That responsibility now falls to Leeds City Council in order to free up police time so that they can do some real police work.

As a customer friendly institution Leeds Trinity & All Saints come at the bottom of the ladder by some distance. The past two years suggested that and less than 48 hours this year has only lowered my opinion of them. No other business can/would treat their customers with such contempt yet still expect them to pay in excess of £6000 in tuition fees over the course of three years and expect to get away with it. They've already made my bastards list, but that probably isn't a grand enough gesture.
I could go on to mention the persistently cancelled lectures, unpunctual lecturers, assignments that are handed out late, tutor strikes, a canteen that shows displays similar attitudes towards customer care and amateurish IT infrastructure but I really don't have the energy.

Two day's into the new academic term and I suspect the problems have only just begun at TASC.