Why pay £3,000 for a library card?

I sometimes ask myself this as a Politics student. I have four hours of lectures, four hours of seminars and only four compulsory essays and four voluntary essays to do this year. If I had this little practice at essays for my A level exams there would be no way that I would have got the grades at A level I would need to get to Warwick University. Such a limited number of contact hours for Politics students makes it very difficult to stay focused, and to evaluate material critically as there is none to engage with – the truth is born in the discussion. Having taken what I thought was a huge step up, it can feel like a step down.

Seminars leave me with the sensation that twenty people in an hour-long discussion usually lead to one of two outcomes: either a discussion where few people will be able to participate meaningfully, or where there are so many students that individuals feel too nervous to speak in front of such a large group. It feels as if there is a high level of detachment embedded in the seminar system: it is quite possible for seminar tutors to not have time to find out a student’s name, let alone their individual educational needs, strengths and weaknesses and employ effective strategies for improvement.

I am now half way through my degree at Warwick and I have had to write only 12 essays in that time. There was a time when the Warwick Politics department had four compulsory essays per module per year; 16 essays which would create potential to be really stretched. Now we stand at a quarter of that. I have a great deal of reading to do, but without the necessity of engaging with the text to form a coherent argument, and without the necessary level of guidance there is tendency for words to wash over the reader and be forgotten in the goal of completing the task rather than information being analysed and remembered. I still feel halfway through my degree that I am shooting targets in the dark for marks. I simply haven’t had the direction I need in essay writing and learning.

What is more is that the personal tutor feedback is so limited; you are either said to be good or bad but there are no pointers for improvement – you know where you stand without a torch to show you the way forward. This is not surprising considering that tutors are not likely to know who you are. Feedback could also be improved by evaluation of the practice exam answers (if only we could do them throughout the year).

Of course university degrees should involve independent learning, but this learning is so independent that I feel I could do the same job much more cheaply with a library card without having to pay any tuition fees. Given the hours of contact science students can have, there is no reason, seeing as fees are the same, why arts students cannot have more guidance given the clear demonstrable benefit.