Laurie Taylor Column

New report from UCU calls for more contact hours between students and lecturers.

From: The Departmental Secretary (Maureen)

Dear Student,

As you will be aware this department has received a number of complaints about the lack of contact between students and academic members of this department.

At a recent meeting of the departmental board it was therefore agreed that the following measures to increase such contact would be implemented from the beginning of next term:

* All academics have been instructed to reduce the pace at which they currently walk along departmental corridors.

One wall of the present SCR will be replaced by clear glass so that students may have full visible access to lecturers during their morning and afternoon coffee breaks

* Claims by students that they do not readily recognise their lecturers will be remedied by the installation of a small exhibition of clearly labelled waxworks in the library concourse

* Professor Lapping will make a brief public appearance on the balcony outside his office at midday every other Tuesday

* Every effort will be made to ensure that the postgraduate students who at present are responsible for all first-year teaching in the department bear a passing resemblance to the lecturers they have replaced

* Doctor Quintock will install a webcam in the kitchen of his home in Lower Poppleton so that students may observe him going about his limited range of domestic duties

* During his prolonged research absence, Doctor Piercemuller will be replaced at his desk by a life-size hologram

* Ted Odgers' 1969 Open University film Smash the Bosses Now will be shown on a continuous loop in the photocopying room

* Maureen's contact hours with students will be increased from 52 hours per week to 54.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

Maureen