Studying at University

How to Adapt Successfully to College Life

G. W. Bernard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134412969
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Studying at University is an essential guide for anyone wanting to know how they can make the very best of their university experience. This highly informative book offers guidance to those in sixth form and college on what universities are all about and what being a student actually involves. The author also offers sensible advice to new and existing students on how they should set about their studies.

Key topics include:

• choosing the university that is best for you
• preparing yourself for university life
• how and why universities are so different from school
• how to get the most out of lectures and seminars
• preparing and writing essays and assignments
• revising for exams and exam technique.

Written by a university lecturer with vast experience of speaking to students about this nerve-wracking process, this engaging and accessible book is an indispensable companion for anyone who wants their move into higher education to be as informed and stress-free as possible.

Part I

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How universities began

Chapter 1

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Beginnings and developments

 

 

 

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As an historian, I always find it helpful in considering a new subject not simply to look at what there is now, but to find out how what is there now came to be there. We may not always like what we inherit from the past, and we are particularly likely to reject our most immediate inheritance, but if we wish to understand, and more especially if we wish to reform, the institutions and practices with which we have grown up, then it is essential to know how they have come to be what they are now. There is a temptation to think that what exists has always existed: it can be a shock to realise that some things have not been as they are now for very long. Often the name or description remains unchanged over a long period, but the realities it represents are very different. In this part of my book I give a brief sketch of how universities have come to be as they are now. I think that knowing a little of this background will be useful for you. But you do not have to begin here – go directly to the next chapter, or to the advice in Part III, if you wish.

Universities are one of the oldest and most characteristic institutions of Western society, but they have changed considerably over time, and, not least, in the last ten years. They have not always existed. In ancient Greece and Rome, great civilisations though they were, lasting several centuries, there were no universities. No oriental or Muslim civilisation developed anything like a university. In all these societies there were, of course, scholars, men – almost always men – who devoted themselves to study, but it was not until the twelfth century AD that anything that is recognisable as a university emerged anywhere. It is then – a century after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 – that in Italy, in France and in England we find the first universities.

Before that, institutions of the Christian church, especially cathedrals (the principal church in the diocese of a bishop) and monasteries (where small groups of men who had taken a vow of celibacy spent their lives performing a rigorous round of daily services) often developed schools. Some of the clergy and monks would concentrate on teaching young boys. Much of that teaching was basic instruction, but in some places and at some times it went rather further. Some of the teachers were learned men in their own right. And some of the monks were simply scholars. Such schools acquired reputations as centres of learning. Young scholars would travel from England to northern France and to Italy in pursuit of their studies.

What seems to have happened in the twelfth century is that many such scholars and teachers found the monastic rule – the need to perform several services daily – increasingly burdensome. They may simply have been so excited by their studies that they wanted to devote themselves entirely to them. They may also have wished to study and to teach subjects such as medicine that did not fit easily into the life of a monastery. They may have wished to be free from the daily control of a bishop or an abbot: we can only speculate, since there are no statements of intent, no manifestos, no interviews. But we do know that many scholars and learned men formed themselves into a group – or society, or gild, or, to use the word that caught on, a universitas – of ‘masters’, or scholars, who organised the study of young men willing to pay for such guidance.

The key feature was that these studies were organised. It was not a matter of dropping by to hear a lecture, or of living in a scholar’s household for a while and engaging in dialogue. Buildings were set aside or constructed specially for the purpose of teaching and of study. Constitutions spelled out how the university was organised. The teachers were grouped together by subjects: and these groupings were called faculties or (confusingly for the modern student) schools. Formal syllabuses were set down, stating what needed to be studied, and over what period of time. Schemes of assessment tested whether students had succeeded. And then these societies of scholars obtained recognition from existing authorities, above all from the church: licences were granted by the pope allowing these universities to award certificates – or degrees – to those who had successfully completed their studies.

A typical medieval student might start aged fourteen and spend a year each studying grammar, rhetoric and logic, taught in the Faculty of Arts, after which he would become a Bachelor of Arts; he would then spend a year each studying arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, leading, after a total of seven years, to the degree of Master of Arts. A successful MA might then undertake advanced study in the Faculties of Theology or Canon Law, or Civil Law or Medicine. That would be rewarded by the degree of Doctor. The word ‘doctor’ is derived from the Latin doceo, meaning ‘I teach’. Once you had achieved a doctorate, you were deemed qualified to teach students yourself.

Recognisable here are the foundations of the modern university. Evidently there were significant numbers of young men who wanted to study and who could afford to do so. Their studies were organised and formalised. Their teachers were grouped together in forerunners of modern university subject departments. And the emergence of universities reflects wider economic developments in Western European society – part of the so-called ‘twelfth century Renaissance’. Another important factor was the significant growth in the scale of government and administration in the twelfth century: there was consequently an increased demand for well-educated administrators in church and state.

Encyclopedias and guide books will give you more or less precise dates at which the earliest universities were ‘founded’ – Bologna, in Italy, in 1158, Paris around 1175, Oxford around 1188. But that is misleading. Nowadays it is quite feasible for a government to announce that it will found a university in a place where there was no university before, and then go ahead and create it by an act of will. That was not how universities began. Bologna, Paris and Oxford were clearly recognised centres of study before the teachers there formed themselves into gilds recognised as universities by various kinds of charters from kings and popes. But once universities had emerged and been recognised as such, it was then possible for the model to be imitated: new universities were set up in France, in Italy, and later in Germany and other countries.

In England, two universities emerged: first Oxford in the late twelfth century and then, early in the thirteenth, Cambridge. They became unusual in European terms in the development not just of buildings in which lectures were given and hostels or halls in which advanced students lived, but also colleges as corporate bodies employing teachers, or Fellows as they were called, and so combining teaching and accommodation. The earliest colleges were designed for the teachers and for the most advanced students; in time they came to include younger students as well; and over the centuries the halls or hostels were absorbed by or turned into colleges. New colleges were founded from time to time, by grants of land from kings, queens, churchmen (such as William, archdeacon of Durham, who in 1249 left money which led to the emergence of University College, Oxford, or Walter of Merton, who endowed Merton College in 1264), and landowners (such as John de Balliol who endowed what later became the college named after him at Oxford 1263–68). William of Wykeham’s New College, Oxford (1379) set the pattern of colleges controlling the teaching of undergraduates. By the middle of the seventeenth century most of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge had come into being.

The curriculum changed, with some striking developments, in the sixteenth century. The syllabus sketched above yielded to intense study of selected Latin and Greek texts, with an emphasis on rhetoric and language. The system of what at Oxford are called Honour Schools – studying a set subject or group of subjects and taking examinations at the end of three or four years – was established in the early nineteenth century. Literae Humaniores (ancient history, classical languages and literature and philosophy) was the most popular until it was displaced by Modern History at the end of the nineteenth century. Science and engineering rose significantly then.

By European standards, England had astonishingly few universities. Until 1827 there were only two – Oxford and Cambridge. By contrast Scotland, an independent country until 1603, but with a much smaller population than England, had St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen in the fifteenth century, Edinburgh from 1583, and a second university in Aberdeen (Marischal College) from 1593. Not until the early nineteenth century were more universities established in England. University College, London, was founded in 1827, King’s College, London, in 1829, followed by several more colleges in London – Imperial, Bedford, Queen Mary, and the London School of Economics. The university of Durham was endowed by the bishop of Durham in 1832. The universities of the great industrial and commercial cities of the North and Midlands were founded from the middle of the century, usually on the initiative of local industrialists or businessmen, with royal charters marking successful development: Manchester 1851 (and granted a charter in 1880), Leeds 1874 (charter in 1904), Bristol 1876 (charter in 1909), Birmingham 1880 (charter in 1898), Liverpool 1881 (charter in 1901), Reading 1892 (charter in 1925), Sheffield 1897 (charter in 1905). In Wales Aberystwyth, Bangor, and Cardiff came in 1893, Swansea in 1920. A new development was the emergence of university colleges under the authority of the University of London whose external degrees they awarded: Nottingham, Southampton, Leicester, Exeter and Hull. In time these too were granted royal charters. All of these had followed a similar pattern and were collectively styled ‘redbrick’ universities – many of their late Victorian buildings were built with red bricks – or ‘civic’ or (less flatteringly) ‘provincial’ universities. Outside Stoke-on-Trent, at Keele, a rather different pattern – a four-year degree with a common first-year, now abandoned – was followed in the establishment of what became the University of Keele (1950).

Parallel to the foundation of new universities were two further important educational developments. Training colleges were set up to train teachers for primary schools. The first emerged from a school to teach the children of the poor set up in Southwark by an eccentric Quaker, Joseph Lancaster in 1798, which developed into the Borough Road Teacher Training College. In 1838 the Church of England, which through various bodies had supported charity schools, resolved that it was no longer sufficient for teachers to learn their craft simply by serving as apprentices to existing teachers; they needed more formal training. The College of St Mark’s, later the College of St Mark and St John, was set up in Chelsea, London, on the model (but lacking the endowments) of Oxford and Cambridge colleges. By mid-century there were over twenty teacher training colleges, other religious denominations followed suit, and a national body was set up to oversee them and lay down syllabuses and examinations. In the early twentieth century a number of cities established their own teacher training colleges, notably Leeds. There was also a substantial growth of local technical colleges for technical vocational training, especially from the late nineteenth century. Neither training colleges nor technical colleges were universities, but sometimes they had links with universities, particularly in the case of the training colleges. From the 1890s many universities set up departments of education, offering courses that combined the practical training in training colleges with more academic studies; many of these university departments took on the task of validating – for example, by setting and marking examination papers – the qualifications offered in training colleges.

There was then a new wave of expansion of universities in the early 1960s – Sussex, York, Warwick, Kent, Lancaster, Essex, and the colleges of advanced technology, Brunel, Bath and Aston. It was an expansion justified by the famous Robbins report of 1963. In the mid-1960s Tony Crosland, then Labour Minister of Education, decided that further expansion in what was increasingly being called ‘higher education’ would be achieved by renaming some thirty of the existing technical colleges as ‘polytechnics’, and allowing them to prepare students for BA or BSc degrees, initially under the umbrella of the Council for National Academic Awards. In the 1970s many of these absorbed some of the earlier teacher training colleges. In 1992 these polytechnics were allowed to call themselves universities and granted royal charters permitting them to award their own degrees. A number of former teacher training colleges, which had earlier been renamed colleges of higher education, increased in size, and permitted to offer degree courses, were also allowed to call themselves universities (or sometimes ‘university sector colleges’, meaning that the degrees they award are validated by another university).

That sketch of developments must be supplemented by looking at numbers. The earliest universities were very small – at best a few hundred students. As recently as just before the Second World War, there were only 50,000 full-time students in the UK. Writing just after the end of the war, Bruce Truscot commented on the proposals of the National Union of Students – ‘which habitually goes to enthusiastic extremes’ – that the university population should rise to 200,000 or 250,000: ‘if England, instead of twelve universities totalling (before the War) 35,000 students, had sixteen with an average of 3000 each, all reasonable demands would be met for a long time to come’. (Adding in the universities in the rest of the UK would have pushed Truscot’s optimum number up to 60,000.) By 1960 there were 200,000 students, approaching the NUS’s ‘enthusiastic extreme of 1945’; by 1968 this had risen to 400,000, and by 1990 to 600,000. Now there are nearly 1,500,000. There are now more students in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland combined – some 54,000 – than there were in the whole of the United Kingdom on the eve of the Second World War. What is called the ‘participation rate’, the number of students as a proportion of the total number of 18–21-year-olds, has shot up: one in twelve at universities (plus one in twelve at what were then technical colleges and became polytechnics) when I was a student in the late 1960s; now well over one in three (and approaching two in five); Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, speaks of moving to one in two, and this was indeed a formal election manifesto commitment in 2001.

That increase in student numbers is a staggering social and educational change. Much, though far from all of it, reflects the entry of women into higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, only men went to university. The first women’s colleges were Girton (1869) and Newnham (1872) in Cambridge, then Lady Margaret Hall (1879) and Somerville (1879) in Oxford, but until 1920 at Oxford and 1948 in Cambridge women were not formally allowed to take degrees. As late as 1960 of the 200,000 students only a quarter were women. That ratio has now been transformed. Anyone looking back at that can only be astonished that it took so long.

Moreover until the late nineteenth century virtually all university students were not only men, but adolescent men. In medieval universities, the age of entry could be as young as 14 or 15; the current typical age of 18 is a late nineteenth-century development. Birkbeck College, whose origins lay in an early nineteenth-century mechanics’ institute, was incorporated into the University of London in 1858, its role to offer a university education to older and employed students, with all teaching taking place in the evenings. From the 1920s the University of London offered external degrees for which students could study by correspondence, again aimed at older students in employment. And with the development of the polytechnics, now the new universities, and then the training colleges in the 1970s, came a greater emphasis on mature students. Other universities responded by also accepting as students men and women who were older than the traditional norm of 18. These ‘mature students’ now make up a significant proportion of the total student population, especially in the new universities, in some of which more than half the students are ‘mature’.

Part II

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What universities are about

Chapter 2

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What makes universities special?

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So what is the point, what is the benefit, of going to university? Quite simply, it is greatly enriching to continue studying beyond A levels. If you are now a sixth-former, think of yourself as you were, say, two years ago, and consider how much you have learned, how much your abilities have developed since then. What makes the years of late adolescence so fruitful is that this period in life offers the optimum combination of the energy and openness to new ideas characteristic of youth on the one hand with a now already solid base of learning and maturity on the other. It is not an accident that it is those aged 18–21 that provide the largest category by far of the country’s university students.

But why go to a university in order to continue studying? Why not stay on at school? What is the difference between university and school? The difference is that those who teach in universities are also engaged in research, and it is this that makes them such rewarding places to study in.

Schoolteachers are not expected to research, nor are they given the time to do so. Think how many classes a schoolteacher takes each week; think how many different aspects of a subject a schoolteacher teaches. A history master might teach twentieth-century history at GCSE, sixteenth-century history to the junior classes and nineteenth-century history to the seniors. Schoolteachers teach at many different levels, from A level to 11–13-year-olds: these different groups require very different approaches. Schoolteachers also often have to teach pupils of widely varying abilities and to cope with very different levels of commitment to study, not to mention the most basic challenge of maintaining order. So what schoolteachers have to do is to ‘get up’ their subjects (including many which they have not had the time to study for any great length of time or in any depth, and on which they are therefore unlikely to be able to say anything original), to adjust and simplify them according to the age and abilities of their pupils, which obviously is especially necessary for younger pupils, and then to stimulate and discipline them into learning.

University lecturers by contrast teach students over 18, that is to say individuals who are adults, and who are at university from their own choice (not because they are compelled to by law), having secured Alevel passes showing that they have attained a certain level of competence (or, if they are mature students who have not obtained such formal certificates of attainment, are by definition highly motivated). For the lecturers that means that to a large extent they can teach on their own terms, without having to worry about discipline, and without having to simplify greatly.

University teachers teach perhaps ten hours a week on average for some 24–30 weeks of the year (though ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I How universities began
• PART II What universities are about
• PART III How to make the most of your studies
• Conclusion: study skills?
• Further reading
• Index