Staff work harder to compensate for lack of study space, writes Tony Tysome
Universities have extended the teaching day by the equivalent of nearly one and a half days a week in a bid to relieve pressure on space, research has found.
Interviews with academics and university managers conducted by researchers from the Institute of Education, University of London, have revealed that lectures starting at 8.30am or ending at 6.30pm have become common in the past few years, lengthening the teaching day that used to run from 9.30am to 5.30pm.
The trend has caused resentment among some academics and students, particularly those with children or who have far to travel to their university.
Union leaders argued this week that the change was a sign of workloads increasingly encroaching on academics' personal lives.
Sally Hunt, joint general secretary of the University and College Union, said: "The time available to staff to do research, see their families and relax away from their ever-increasing work burden is shrinking all the time.
"Universities are learning environments, not widget factories, and the working day should be arranged to facilitate not hinder this."
A report on the findings says that "attempts to increase the teaching week or year have created tensions, with academic staff under pressure from different managerial imperatives", and have brought limited savings in the use of space.
The longer teaching day is one of a number of space efficiency drives introduced by universities over the past decade.
But the report warns that these initiatives are now close to reaching their limits and any attempt to push them further would be likely to "seriously compromise" learning and research effectiveness.
The amount of non-residential building space available in institutions per full-time equivalent student dropped by 42 per cent from 1992 to 2001 and has continued to fall while student numbers have grown.
As a result, teaching and learning space has had to be adapted or designed for flexible use by most departments. For example, libraries and learning centres have started to relax prohibitions on noise to allow for group work.
Another recent trend has been the creation of "generic teaching spaces".
Consequently, individual departments have "mostly lost control of 'their' space, except when it is highly specialised", the report adds.
Some academics argue that while such areas mean more efficient use of space, there is a subsequent loss in the quality of the student experience, as students spend more time moving from one teaching session to another.
One of the report's authors, Paul Temple, senior lecturer in higher education management at the Institute of Education, said: "Clearly there is a balance to be struck between (the student experience) and the maximum utilisation of space."
But he added: "I am sure that when push comes to shove, it is space utilisation that wins."
LIFE IN THE NO-SPACE AGE
Annette Bashore, head of genetics at Leicester University, no longer has a lab to call her own.
The growth in student numbers has meant that even largely laboratory-based departments in research-intensive universities have had to give way to demands for space. Dr Bashore's department is no exception.
She said: "Ten years ago, researchers would feel very much that these were their laboratories where only they worked. Now, even at the laboratory level, it is more flexible, and we are constantly having to decide which group should be where.
"There is always potential for trouble or conflict, but we usually manage to avoid it."
Despite this, she feels that greater flexibility in space use is a positive change.
"Until recently, you could have had a research group that had shrunk to only one or two people still using the same laboratory space," she pointed out.