Teaching quality threatened by science merger

Students remain concerned that Warwick’s new School of Life Sciences will adversely affect teaching quality and module availability.

From 1st October 2010, the Department of Biological Sciences will be combined with Warwick Horticultural Research Institute (HRI), to form the new School.

However, students believe that the merger will fail to provide adequate levels of tuition for current undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

John Lapage, the secretary of the Life Sciences Student Consultation Committee, claims there needs to be “more student involvement, more addressing certain aspects of the proposals, such as what is happening to biomedical science.”

Lapage is concerned that “there won’t be enough project work to go around [in the new School].

“Projects are the single largest assessed part of your degree”, and it is claimed “people might not be able to get enough project work on topics that are of interest to undergraduates.”

Sumaiya Khaku, Student’s Union Education Officer, said, “current students’ degrees will change and it is a bit like false advertising as I am not sure they were advised of this change before they enrolled.”

Lapage claims the University can “offer us a degree on paper, but educational quality will be hard to maintain and the university should be doing more, at least during the transitional period.”

It is hoped the medical school will offer help so “everyone gets a degree with a project that is relevant to their interests.”

Low levels of student consultation also remain a concern.

A third-year Biomedical Science student said “the existing degrees require more attention to make them better, which is more of a priority than merging with HRI – the University should perfect what they already have before trying to make it even bigger.”

She continued, saying that this will “cause the students’ problems to be overlooked in the ‘excitement’ of the merger.”

Khaku expanded: “the University’s perspective is to establish the School as they want it and then fix all the problems as part of ‘a longer term project’.”

Postgraduates are concerned that losing their supervisors in the job cuts associated with the merger “may influence when they can finish their PhDs”, according to Khaku.

Their courses will be disrupted as they are potentially forced to “start from scratch” by explaining their projects to a new tutor.

Lapage is “pushing to have this procedure for replacement supervisors formalised.

“The University will handle every case on an individual basis, but they have not issued a statement to say that there will be any resources put aside for this.”

The website claims that “the University is committed to enabling all current students to complete their studies and ensuring they are supervised appropriately.”

But Lapage claims the “University is not fulfilling its responsibilities and working to satisfy the needs of all its students.”

Khaku claims that students should not be concerned as “Warwick will still have its own reputation for excellence and we are hoping that will carry through to the School of Life Sciences.”

The merger also creates an atmosphere of job insecurity for current academic staff. Current estimates put the number of job losses to be at least forty. However, the university maintains there will be “an accepted teaching ratio of 1:15 to identify the minimum number of academic staff required to deliver all U/G and P/G teaching”.

“This should ensure that staff are not burdened with unreasonable teaching or administration loads, both to protect teaching reputation but also to ensure that time is protected to develop the research strength of the new school.”

Staff are being forced to “fight over the same number of jobs as no one knows if they will be affected, but the students are united in ensuring everyone is taken into account”, said Lapage.

Critics claim this merger is “skewed towards areas that are significantly less popular in terms of student recruitment and module choice”, favouring instead research.

Khaku explains that this new department is designed for research as “Warwick is at the end of the day a research intensive university”, and she thinks this may be as “there is scope to get more money from research capabilities.”

The University claims “There is a need to balance both research and teaching excellence, committing to a research strategy that maximises research strengths and future research potential.”

Scrapping the merger proposal appears unlikely, however campaigners hope that enough student involvement will ensure the most of their demands are met.