Why is this not Policy currently?

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 annieman 21 Feb 2020

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51586150

UCL make it Policy for Staff to not have relationships with Students.

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 Tom Valentine 21 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

Mature students?

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Roadrunner6 21 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

Yeah I dated a few students.. one was older than me and I didn't know I was her lecturer (I'd lecture to 100-200 at a time), one I was early 20's and she was early 20's.

We just had a policy of admitting it, make sure you were no longer involved in their teaching or grading of assignments.

A few members of staff were asked to leave due to age gaps and repeated issues.

 Rob Exile Ward 21 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

FFS; you meet someone, you are attracted to each other, maybe even fall in love... You're saying that whenever that happens, one or both must seriously disrupt their careers to follow their hearts?

Are we really incapable of distinguishing between mutual, consensual relationships and exploitative abusive ones?

Post edited at 20:50
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 Neil Williams 21 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

> UCL make it Policy for Staff to not have relationships with Students.

It's an interesting question.  Clearly teacher-student relationships in schools (adult-child, even 16+) are not on for the protection of the child, and I understand the law already deals with that.  However in a university...I can see a conflict of interest which should be reported and dealt with appropriately (i.e. that member of staff not marking that person's work), but otherwise why not?  They are adults.

Post edited at 20:29
 Coel Hellier 21 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

It's not policy already because everyone involved is an adult.  It is dubious, yes, but would one ban relationships in all work places between any two people with any difference in seniority of role?  

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 Neil Williams 21 Feb 2020
In reply to Coel Hellier:

Or any relationships that come out of a customer-business relationship?  Personal trainers for instance often end up married to one of their clients.

Clearly the linked article involves someone behaving *very* inappropriately, but shouldn't that be dealt with by being reported and dealt with as misconduct?

Post edited at 21:40
 bigbobbyking 21 Feb 2020
In reply to Neil Williams:

It does say "close personal and intimate relationships between staff and students where there is direct supervision" and other relationships are allowed but must be declared. 

 wintertree 21 Feb 2020
In reply to Neil Williams:

> I can see a conflict of interest which should be reported and dealt with appropriately (i.e. that member of staff not marking that person's work), but otherwise why not?  They are adults.

The conflict of interest is hard to resolve.  You can remove the academic from assessing that 1 student they’re dating, but you can’t stop the academic from giving them extra coaching and help; both that and having 1 person differently assessed are massive issues in terms of academic fairness to the whole cohort.

Beyond immediate conflict of interest, regarding your “otherwise why not?” - as the article say, when the person is deemed “at risk” due to “disability”.  What I suspect they mean is when someone is vulnerable due to their pre existing anxiety or depression becoming harder to manage when they leave home for the first time, move to a town or city where the GP service is overwhelmed by the sudden registration of 5000-10000 people in one week and is struggling to meet all of those who need continuations to their medications, etc etc. Many would claim a staff member perhaps twice their age “romancing them” is predatory and exploitative.  

Student mental health is increasingly being described as a crisis nationally and in any group there’s a subset of people who willingly or unintentionally exploit that.   This I think is what the article is alluding to.

Anyone who knows any examples of academic integrity being compromised by a relationship or someone being heavily exploited through eg low point in mental heath is unlikely to post any actual examples due to a mix of confidentially and a fear of being sent on Gardening Leave for transgression of their local Public Image Management policy.

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 DaveHK 21 Feb 2020
In reply to thread:

Anyone read Disgrace by JM Coetzee?

 henwardian 21 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> > I can see a conflict of interest which should be reported and dealt with appropriately (i.e. that member of staff not marking that person's work), but otherwise why not?  They are adults.

> The conflict of interest is hard to resolve.  You can remove the academic from assessing that 1 student they’re dating, but you can’t stop the academic from giving them extra coaching and help; both that and having 1 person differently assessed are massive issues in terms of academic fairness to the whole cohort.

There are plenty of ways for students to get extra coaching. There is no rule disallowing paying a professional tutor for extra help or asking a relative or family friend to give up some evenings to give you extra help. Drawing a line between this and help from an academic who isn't involved in assessing your course is completely arbitrary.

If assessments are to mean anything at all, they must be fairly and equally carried out and if there is a concern that one assessor may be unduly harsh or unduly lenient, a system must be put in place to correct for this. What you are suggesting is that just because someone else is marking the students work, they will get a lower or higher mark than otherwise expected. Universities have masses of measures in place to make sure this doesn't happen including obvious measures like anonymising papers to prevent discrimination by the marker.

> Beyond immediate conflict of interest, regarding your “otherwise why not?” - as the article say, when the person is deemed “at risk” due to “disability”.  What I suspect they mean is when someone is vulnerable due to their pre existing anxiety or depression becoming harder to manage when they leave home for the first time, move to a town or city where the GP service is overwhelmed by the sudden registration of 5000-10000 people in one week and is struggling to meet all of those who need continuations to their medications, etc etc. Many would claim a staff member perhaps twice their age “romancing them” is predatory and exploitative.  

Very true.

Except that it's true no matter who is taking advantage of their "disability" or "at risk" situation, how is a university staff member different to the girl/bloke the student meets down the pub in this regard?

> Student mental health is increasingly being described as a crisis nationally and in any group there’s a subset of people who willingly or unintentionally exploit that.   This I think is what the article is alluding to.

Again, I expect there are just as many, if not more, people in the general public who target vulnerable students compared to among the staff at a university.

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 wintertree 21 Feb 2020
In reply to henwardian:

> There are plenty of ways for students to get extra coaching.

They do.

> There is no rule disallowing paying a professional tutor for extra help or asking a relative or family friend to give up some evenings to give you extra help.

Agree.

> Drawing a line between this and help from an academic who isn't involved in assessing your course is completely arbitrary.

Totally disagree.  The academic is a member of a department that must treat its students fairly and they are compromising that fairness.  They have access to “inside information” external paid tutors don’t up to and including in some cases prior knowledge of exam questions.  They have access to far more context on marking than external tutors.  Even if they had no special knowledge, they are not treating all the students fairly and equally, which should be a key principle of the professional activity which they have chosen to do.

> If assessments are to mean anything at all, they must be fairly and equally carried out and if there is a concern that one assessor may be unduly harsh or unduly lenient, a system must be put in place to correct for this. What you are suggesting is that just because someone else is marking the students work, they will get a lower or higher mark than otherwise expected. Universities have masses of measures in place to make sure this doesn't happen including obvious measures like anonymising papers to prevent discrimination by the marker.

This is true - but such measures tend to rely on several markers each doing a big chunk of work to help them get a feel for the range of solutions, and meeting to agree levels etc.  Totally different to taking 1 persons work and saying “someone else will mark this one paper alone”.  Between that and the person doing the other marking having a vested interest it’s a bad situation.  Plenty of marking isn’t anonymous for various good reasons, and it should be obvious that if the staff member and student are working together, anonymity is trivially defeated.  My point was less about the 1 student getting extra help than the organisation - in the form of an employee - breaking the pact of fairness with the whole cohort.

> Very true.

> Except that it's true no matter who is taking advantage of their "disability" or "at risk" situation, how is a university staff member different to the girl/bloke the student meets down the pub in this regard?

The university staff members is a paid employee of an organisation with a duty of care towards its students/customers.  I think the government is going to start ratcheting up the importance of that duty of care.

The university staff member is a paid employee of an organisation with a duty to uphold professional standards, and should act accordingly 

> Again, I expect there are just as many, if not more, people in the general public who target vulnerable students compared to among the staff at a university.

The same could be said of axe murderers or pedophiles but you wouldn’t use that as an excuse to turn a blind eye?  

The staff member has a duty of care and a duty to professional standards that has no parallel in the general public.

The staff member has an imbalance of power and authority that has no parallel in the general public.

Some of the worst stories I’ve heard from various institutes related to older, international students doing postgraduate studies here in the UK on a study visa.  The power imbalance the supervisor has here is massive given the level of compliance and monitoring and reporting required of the supervisor to maintain validity of the visa.

Post edited at 23:03
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Roadrunner6 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

It happens. I don’t think that often though. And I’d say it rarely happens between staff and students in their first 1-2 years of college.

but I met my wife when I was 32, she was 22. Almost a decade later and we’ve 1, almost 3 kids. 
 

did you really find 29 to early 20s massive?


 

 summo 22 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

Is this really any different to an office, with senior and junior workers. There are always stealth and not so stealthy relationships, favouritism etc. Human nature, banning it, just means it'll be more hidden. 

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 gethin_allen 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> Not sure whether it should be illegal but it's creepy as ****. I was a mature student at 29 and would never have dated one of the young students in my class. I bet young lecturers take advantage of vulnerable students all the time. I'd make it illegal for sure. 

I have relatives with a 20 year gap between partners, we thought this was proper dodgy at the time, especially as there was a very significant power imbalance. 20 years later they are happily married with kids etc. and we are the ones eating humble pie.

To think that a relationship can't work with a 10 year age difference is just naive.

You obviously hold university staff in very low regard if you believe lecturers are running around freely taking advantage of students. It's also rather insulting to a lot of students to assume that they are all so vulnerable or that they will jump into bed with anyone to get an advantage in uni. These people are young adults, they can vote, get married/civiled, have kids etc. 

 mondite 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Coel Hellier:

> It's not policy already because everyone involved is an adult.  It is dubious, yes, but would one ban relationships in all work places between any two people with any difference in seniority of role?  


Its not unknown for relationships to be banned where there is a significant discrepancy in authority and influence.

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to summo:

> Is this really any different to an office, with senior and junior workers.

Yes.  It’s very different in terms of both pastoral care and academic integrity.  I went in to some detail above and am collecting dislikes for doing so...  

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 summo 22 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> Yes.  It’s very different in terms of both pastoral care and academic integrity.  I went in to some detail above and am collecting dislikes for doing so...  

But everyone are adults etc.. even as a manager or owner you often end up mentoring, counselling etc.. because some folk don't always leave their home life at home. 

I can understand the academic integrity side, grades etc though. But that's the same as work place favouritism, promotions and so on. 

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 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to summo:

> But everyone are adults etc.. even as a manager or owner you often end up mentoring, counselling etc.. because some folk don't always leave their home life at home. 

> I can understand the academic integrity side, grades etc though. But that's the same as work place favouritism, promotions and so on.  

It’s not the same legally or ethically.  Legally, workplace relationships have employee status on both sides, staff/student ones do not.  There is a corpus of employment law to protect the position of the person on the weaker side of workplace power imbalance.  There is no equivalent level of protection for a student.  Ethically, 1/3rd of the student body is refreshed each year with people who’ve only just turned 18 and who are away from the family home for the first time.  As I alluded in a pervious post, it is a very difficult time for some people with mental heath difficulties.  This an area where the scale of the problem is emerging in the press and in government thinking and I expect the regulatory body is going to tighten up the conduct and support it expects from universities.   I doubt they’ll pony up the cost of the required GP support for 0.7 million people moving and changing their GP practice in 3 weeks.   More consistent, advanced information to some students and their home GPs could help. 

It’s not at all “the same” as workplace favouritism because academic qualification are routinely accredited by professional bodies and are at the core of the activity of the employer, so it’s entirely reasonable in that sense for an employer to want to protect its core assets.  It’s also more asymmetric - favouritism to 1 student pits them against up to 400 peers, where as most roles in an office have very few peers.

Workplace favouritism isn’t a good thing in my view so it’s not a great angle to justify this.

Back to the OP’s article - a measured tightening of regulations to protect academic integrity and the most vulnerable students.  This seems a proportional and measured way of going from the absolute and strong legal protection the students fell under 3 months previously at sixth form to a total free for all.

I think the workplace analogies you and others have drawn up thread just do not apply to the undergraduate university environment.  

Post edited at 09:09
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 Andy Hardy 22 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

 a pervious post, 

Is this a post  for the academic who offers "special 1-2-1 coaching, discretion assured"?

 gethin_allen 22 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Everything you say just leads me to how academia is changing for the worse as students (AKA adults) are cosseted and lead through university.
Years ago, if you graduated from university you would be held in very high regard and considered competent in a range of skills, far beyond whatever subject you studied.

But then, university education produced rounded individuals because it treated people as adults and was not an extension of primary school as it has now become. Students were responsible for their own attendance and learning. If they didn't turn up and engage they failed, simple as that, there weren't members of staff chasing people. These days students are made to clock in to lectures and tutorials etc.

These days a undergraduate degree is access to a low paid job or another degree. And a first class degree is nothing unusual as last year almost 30% of graduates leave with one.

There's ample support for students in most universities (mental, academic, financial, protection against predators of all types) and honestly, the majority of people I've met who have taken full advantage of the system are the very weak (academically) who have done so to dodge their shortcomings.

People need to be given the responsibility to be adults.

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to gethin_allen:

I agree with a lot of your sentiment but I disagree strongly with the idea that protecting the most vulnerable students from exploitation and protecting academic integrity is a part of the problem.  It’s not babying the students, it’s treating them with considered respect.

> There's ample support for students in most universities (mental, academic, financial, protection against predators of all types)

I disagree strongly from first and second hand experience through past jobs, colleagues and family perspectives.  It’s difficult to get a statistical picture - a recent round of FoIA request on suicides was dodged by most institutes for example.  

Charging money has fundamentally compromised the process in my view and is behind a lot of the changes you hi light  and with which I agree, but that is where we are.  Frustration at that shouldn’t manifest as push back on genuine welfare issues.

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 ianstevens 22 Feb 2020
In reply to gethin_allen:

> Everything you say just leads me to how academia is changing for the worse as students (AKA adults) are cosseted and lead through university.

> Years ago, if you graduated from university you would be held in very high regard and considered competent in a range of skills, far beyond whatever subject you studied.

> But then, university education produced rounded individuals because it treated people as adults and was not an extension of primary school as it has now become. Students were responsible for their own attendance and learning. If they didn't turn up and engage they failed, simple as that, there weren't members of staff chasing people. These days students are made to clock in to lectures and tutorials etc.

Two primary reasons for attendance monitoring, neither of which are to do with student's responsibility for learning. 1) If you're on a tier 4 visa, one of the criteria to keep it is going to lectures. 2) In my experience (not to say there aren't others of course) we use attendance as a wellbeing monitor - why aren't students coming? Is it because of a mental health/family/other health issue etc, that we can provide support for, or is it because they can't be f*cked? In the case of the latter my approach with my students is just to point out to them that it's their decision, but they pay £9k but ultimately it's up to them. 

> These days a undergraduate degree is access to a low paid job or another degree. And a first class degree is nothing unusual as last year almost 30% of graduates leave with one.

This is to do with 1) the changing job market, 2) the access of graduates, 3) grade inflation and 4) marketisation - sadly this is quite true. 

> There's ample support for students in most universities (mental, academic, financial, protection against predators of all types) and honestly, the majority of people I've met who have taken full advantage of the system are the very weak (academically) who have done so to dodge their shortcomings.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you must be kidding right? Easily a 6+ week wait to access the universities mental health support in the places I've worked. 

> People need to be given the responsibility to be adults.

Yes, agreed. But I suspect university students are not as babied as you think. 

 Rob Exile Ward 22 Feb 2020
In reply to ianstevens:

I'm slightly conflicted here, I know someone very well who got A*s in maths and physics, but then lost it quite early in his 1st year at Manchester. Once he'd stepped  out of the hamster wheel he could find no way back in ... And although the university continued to collect fees from him for 2 years, no-one once asked where he was.

 ianstevens 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

These are the sort of people I’d like the monitoring process to catch - those who have previously been at the top of the game who’ve fallen off the wagon for some reason. Identifying them is the first step, then providing support. That said, if someone comes to an attendance monitoring meeting and is happy that they’re not performing as well as they could, that’s their decision - and that’s where part of being an adult comes in. Often students who have done well previously who’s attendance (and marks...) drops tend to see getting hauled in for a meeting as a bit of a wake-up call and they tend to improve in my experience.

 ianstevens 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> When I was at uni I was doing a group project with 4 other students. I suggested that they head up to my house and try to make a mock up of the project. They all seemed up for it but when the day arrived one student showed up. She was a wizz kid from India, she was 17 years old and stunningly beautiful.

> She came up from Uni, a few miles away and walked straight into my house, I'd known her one day, I couldn't believe how vulnerable she was. Luckily for her I'm not the kind of person who would take advantage of a situation like that so we cracked on and did the work. When she was ready to leave I insisted on escorting her home, on the bus, then I literally walked her to the door of her halls.

> So I think there should be a blanket ban, no teacher should be allowed to have a relationship with a student in their place of work, should be instantly fired or worse. To protect girls like her, and the thousands of other young vulnerable girls who attend uni.

In the case you describe, yes, of course a policy makes sense. However, I’d have thought that common sense would prevail amongst academics; clearly this would not be an appropriate scenario to enter a relationship with a student. However, a blanket ban is, in my opinion, an awful idea - let me present two counter examples:

1) Myself. My partner and I were simultaneously on a PhD program (same department, same research group, some crossover of supervisors) when we got together. However, I was c. 18 months ahead of her in the process, completed before her and got a job in the same department. Technically, this made one of us staff, and one of us a student - a blanket ban would have meant either the end of our relationship or me passing up a job opportunity I really couldn’t turn down. Obviously I had no supervisory responsibility.

2) My friends, now married for 3(?) years. Wife had just finished her PhD and started as a lecturer. Husband returned to academia to do a masters, in a different department, but with some crossover with wife’s department. No marking/teaching responsibilities. Again, your blanket ban would have made her job untenable.

To be totally clear: I’m in no way saying it’s appropriate for academic staff to date vulnerable students, or students for whom they have teaching/marking/supervisory responsibility. However, a blanket ban is not the solution. 

 Offwidth 22 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Thank you for your thoughtful points. Like you I am especially concerned about the treatment of some vulnerable overseas students by a small number of exploitative staff 

I'm pretty confused about this headline though, as I thought relationships in direct supervision were already 'banned' in most Universities (and should be in all) for reasons of potential conflict of interest and possible exploitation. The relationship isn't the item being banned in such rules, it's the direct supervision or influence over any marking or grade decisions (at my place we have to formally declare any conflicts of interest at exam boards).

Relationships between staff and students are inevitable and I've seen many examples of such relationships in my time in academia through formal and informal routes and from friends... nearly all the ones declared, properly followed the internal systems with mechanisms to remove any conflicts of interest, but many more were kept secret, some of which seemed clearly explotative to me (and this works both ways ...including some devious minded students using sex to try to get better grades).

Much more common and a much bigger problem at University is unwanted sexual behaviour....

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/26/more-than-half-of-uk-stud...

......and when this is handled badly we get headlines like this

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/student-sexual-abuse-assaul...

...so one big thing I would like to see changed is more binding rules on University senior staff who manage complaints of inappropriate or abusive behaviour who fail to act according to the University rules and in some cases in direct conflict with legal principles  (again I've seen problems in both directions: mainly student complainants treated very unfairly, but in some in some cases staff being regarded as guilty until proved innocent beyond reasonable doubt). In particular University senior staff are not the police and serious sexual complaints should be handled by the police.

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

> I know someone very well who got A*s in maths and physics, but then lost it quite early in his 1st year at Manchester.

This is a real problem for the leading universities in any given STEM subject.   You take a few pupils with the best grades from each of many different schools.  Each individual is used to being a star achiever.  Put them all together and suddenly half of them are below average, and the marking scale is set so that some of them will get low marks.  If someone has defined themselves - or been defined by friends and family - as a super high achiever, the consequences of suddenly finding yourself in the bottom end of a cohort can be atrocious.

For a minority it’s worse still as they been intensively tutored in private on top of a small class size selective 6th form and in some cases wouldn’t have made the selection cutoff without that extra intensive support.  It can be quite a shock when the level of the content steps up at university and you’re expected to lead your own learning and the individual support is lowered.  

I always tell students to define themselves not in comparison to others but by if they are doing all they can with the resources they have access to - with the point that the whole system is there to support them in what they choose to do, not to make them do anything.

Post edited at 12:11
 SouthernSteve 22 Feb 2020
In reply to ianstevens:

>  we use attendance as a wellbeing monitor - why aren't students coming?

This is a really useful thing that we use for non-compulsory sessions. There is also a correlation between attendance and final academic outcome

> There's ample support for students in most universities (mental, academic, financial, protection against predators of all types)

This is improving, but to say it is ample is a bold statement. Also where does the role of the university and the NHS start and stop?

When discussing support, albeit not for mental health,  there was an interesting point arising out of a recent RCVS survey of new graduates that indicated that these vets felt more unsupported when they were receiving all three forms of support (training, a mentor, appraisals /performance review) than when receiving one or two (those who had none felt the worse). Whether this can be applied to students is difficult - but there seems to be an effect of 'over' support or support that is present, but that perhaps fails which is worse than fewer arms of support, perhaps (I am guessing) provided well. The veterinary profession has been very keen to increase awareness of mental health and its potential consequences, but I am not sure the bedrock changes needed to improve peoples lives have been started and I wonder whether this could have a similar effect of feeling unsupported.

As to the original question. I am comfortable with the UCL policy, but I am quite old. Colleagues in internships, residencies and doing PhDs with some teaching responsibilities a few years older than the students may feel very different, but also have very little power to wield. In general, I am in favour of keeping relationships out of any department as it changes staff interactions generally as people consider the couple to some extent as a unit.

 gethin_allen 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

But in the case you describe you were a student so you wouldn't be covered by any rules from the university or legislation.

As a 17 year old there is already legislation in place regarding relationships with people in perceived positions of power, just as  with school teachers and A level pupils.

And as far as students putting themselves in positions which you consider risky. The same students will be out getting drunk and walking home alone in the middle of the night, or with others who they have met that very night and have been attached to by the face for the majority of the night where all sorts could be happening.

Post edited at 12:40
 ianstevens 22 Feb 2020
In reply to SouthernSteve:

Some nice points made. To clarify, the claims of “ample” support weren’t made by me, they were quoted form a post above. I’m not convinced there is ample support - my current school recently employed a wellbeing advisor, covering c. 1500 students - and they were almost instantly fully booked.

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> In particular University senior staff are not the police and serious sexual complaints should be handled by the police.

Quite.  For example those staff aren’t well placed to say “well I wouldn’t let a thing like that bother me” and should be capable of being trained to say “I can’t take sides in allegations such as this but I can sign post you to internal policies and your rights and reporting options under them, and to the police.  Here is what I can to do support you”.

Its not rocket science.

 Neil Williams 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

The law already handles that - the age of consent becomes 18 if you are in a position of responsibility over the person involved.

Roadrunner6 22 Feb 2020
In reply to mondite:

> Its not unknown for relationships to be banned where there is a significant discrepancy in authority and influence.

But that’s why you report it.

you remove that influence. I briefly dated a final year student who was older than me, but I let my supervisor know and was very open with people that I couldn’t be involved in decisions like project allocation etc. 

It’s hard to actually ban relationships as you just drive them underground but you should remove any influence or power. However, if there is a pattern I think most universities would act. There was a lecturer at one university who twice left his wives for a younger student. In the end he was moved on to another university.

 ianstevens 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

That’s entirely the point I’m making - a blanket “students can’t date staff” is not universally applicable. Disclosure to the head of dept is standard practice.

 gethin_allen 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> No, I could have come on to her and if she had reciprocated I could have legally slept with her. That worries me. 

But you were a student, effectively a peer and not in a position of any power or influence. So what's your problem? you can't legislate against two students getting it on whether they are of equal age or 20 years divided. And you can't legislate the maximum allowable age difference between couples.

Who knows, she may have fancied you and hoped that you would start something. It could have been the start of something beautiful.

> This is not the same as someone taking advantage of their position of authority. 

Once again, there was no authority held by anyone in the situation you describe, this lady decided by her own will to come to your house and, in your view it seems, put herself at risk. This I argue is considerably less risky than the rest of what students get up to and no different to what other adults indulge in.

 Offwidth 22 Feb 2020
In reply to gethin_allen:

"Everything you say just leads me to how academia is changing for the worse as students (AKA adults) are cosseted and lead through university."

I see most of the change in support as welcome (support for severe mental health problems and mitigation to avoid  unnecessary drop-outs has improved in my decades in academia but what we have now is is far from ideal and a gulf from cosseting.

"Years ago, if you graduated from university you would be held in very high regard and considered competent in a range of skills, far beyond whatever subject you studied."

Rose tinted nonsense unless we go back to the 70's  when student numbers were very much lower. These days alongside your subject every employer expects extras which didn't even exist back then (except for hardcore scientists and engineers) like IT skills. 

"But then, university education produced rounded individuals because it treated people as adults and was not an extension of primary school as it has now become."

Give us some evidence of this:  how did Universities do this before and what are they doing differently now. When is this 'before' and 'after' as you only seem to be in your early thirties.

"Students were responsible for their own attendance and learning. If they didn't turn up and engage they failed, simple as that, there weren't members of staff chasing people. These days students are made to clock in to lectures and tutorials etc."

I knew students in the early 80s who failed who attended and some who passed who missed nearly eveything not compulsory (like labs... which usually had to be done or failed and still are like that now) nothing much has changed in my time other than the slightly better monitoring and support .  Even where attendance monitoring is policy (it's still not in quite a few Unis) it's just that... it's not compulsory for any standard student to attend most classes. The only students who have to attend and legally have to be monitored in that are Tier 4 overseas students.

"These days a undergraduate degree is access to a low paid job or another degree. And a first class degree is nothing unusual as last year almost 30% of graduates leave with one."

I've been an academic longer than you have lived and this seems a big exaggeration to me with the exception of your point on 1sts which luckily I've never had to suffer departmentally (across the sector it IS a common distortion, produced by league tables and marketised management).

"There's ample support for students in most universities (mental, academic, financial, protection against predators of all types) and honestly, the majority of people I've met who have taken full advantage of the system are the very weak (academically) who have done so to dodge their shortcomings."

This is twaddle.

Queues for professional internal support are often huge and as others have said the link to external support (which has never been more difficult to access thanks to austerity) too often patchy. Plus staff student ratios are much worse than they were even 20 years ago so academics can't help paper over the gaps as much as they could once.

Students have never had debts this high before and some face genuine poverty as living expenses have recently been increasing faster than inflation (especially the rip-off increases in hall fees) and then they face repayment for decades when in my time I left Uni debt free and I was immediately saving for a house.

It's a myth that you can dodge shortcomings, all you get are extensions so you still have to do the work; and maybe some slight generosity on grade boundaries on degree awards but that was always so. Cheats are much less common in my experience than those with genuine issues and I've had to manage many thousands of students with problems. You can still cheat and win but its harder with all the IT checks and normally you will need to pay someone to do work for you and understand enough to be able to defend what's written. If you cheat and get caught penalties are severe. Cheating only generally works for bright rich kids.

"People need to be given the responsibility to be adults."

They are. As adults when things go badly wrong the system can help be it inside Uni or in ordinary life but not as well as anyone experienced in this professional area would like.

 Tom Valentine 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

I would imagine young males to be equally vulnerable to pressure from tutors of either sex.

 Neil Williams 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> Yes I know. I think that should change. 

You think it should be the law that anyone in a position of responsibility over someone should be convicted of a sexual offence (with all the implications that involves, such as being banned from working with children permanently) if they engage in a sexual relationship with anyone they are responsible for, where both are consenting adults?  Like a member of staff with their manager, say?

I'm sorry, I couldn't disagree more.  It's at worst a matter for the employer - taking advantage of your position is (gross) misconduct, and if there's pressure involved in the decision to enter the relationship it could well be classed as rape, but otherwise what's the problem?

If anything needs to change, it's that people need to feel they can and should report such misconduct and that it is taken seriously.

Or are you proposing a change in the age of majority so 18-21 year olds, say, are considered not fully adults?  I can sort of see the point in that; people are definitely growing up slower than they did 20 years ago.

Post edited at 18:25
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 gethin_allen 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

Maybe I do have rose tinted glasses. You guess I'm in my early 30s, my profile is a bit out of date, late 30s is closer. When I'm talking about older graduates, I am talking 70s and before. I'm talking about the histories of people I admire, I don't claim to be one of these people. Maybe there is bias as you state that in these time fewer people went to uni and therefore the graduates are obviously going to be exceptional. And there's bias in that if these you only hear of the exceptional ones.

There are many points in your reply but I'll try not to go on.

Support - I'm by no means saying that this all bad, but I'll maintain that some students are playing the system and taking unfair advantage. For example; A student deferred a year due to mystery health issues after openly informing their tutor shortly before the dealine that they didn't have a thesis worth presenting which would have resulted in a guaranteed fail.  The student had previously failed the year and would be out if they failed the year again, but they remained as deferral is not considered a fail so they get a third go at the year. There are many cases where students have not had to present work in seminars because of anxiety issues. I concede  that mental health problems are entirely real and a massive problem, but if a degree is supposed to prepare people for a career where public presentation skills are essential, are we doing our job if we produce graduates who can't do so?

Regarding finance. The system is better now than it was under the last system but worse than what went before. It's become a simple tax as few if any students will clear their debt. One advantage the current system has is the maintenance loan which wasn't previously available unless your family was on a very low income.

Regarding pass rates etc. Maybe my comments sound harsh, I'd bet (I don't have data) that there are the same number of exceptional students now as there were 20 years ago, but the current system doesn't help anyone. If I were a top class student (I wasn't) I'd be proper pissed off that my distinction is being eroded. You find really good bright students getting high 80s and leaving with the same final degree as people almost 20 points below. When I started uni, the whole year group were told early on that only ~5% would be leaving with 1st class degrees.

Anyway, we are straying a good way from the original issue of whether or not students can shack up with their lecturers. On which my position was that they are all supposed to be adults and can decide for themselves so long as there isn't any direct supervision/assessment role.

1
 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to gethin_allen:

> There are many cases where students have not had to present work in seminars because of anxiety issues. I concede  that mental health problems are entirely real and a massive problem, but if a degree is supposed to prepare people for a career where public presentation skills are essential, are we doing our job if we produce graduates who can't do so?

Something I often hear.  The purpose of a degree is not to cure anxiety.  Nobody teaching it is a trained mental health professional.  To think students should be cured by university of mental health troubles is as daft as to think they should be cured of physical health troubles, and it’s not very aware of the issues to think that making people do presentations will cure anxiety - it’ll likely do the opposite.  You also seem to be lacking an understanding of how the Equalities Act 2010 applies to either universities or employers.

 Neil Williams 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> No, I'm taking about teachers and students specifically. 

But why only them?  Why not, e.g., the manager of an apprentice and their apprentice (where the apprentice is aged over 18 of course)?

 Neil Williams 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> That would be a teacher and student. 

OK, an 18 year old retail worker and his/her 25 year old manager?

Deadeye 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> When I was at uni I was doing a group project with 4 other students. I suggested that they head up to my house and try to make a mock up of the project. They all seemed up for it but when the day arrived one student showed up. She was a wizz kid from India, she was 17 years old and stunningly beautiful.

> She came up from Uni, a few miles away and walked straight into my house, I'd known her one day, I couldn't believe how vulnerable she was. Luckily for her I'm not the kind of person who would take advantage of a situation like that so we cracked on and did the work. When she was ready to leave I insisted on escorting her home, on the bus, then I literally walked her to the door of her halls.

> So I think there should be a blanket ban, no teacher should be allowed to have a relationship with a student in their place of work, should be instantly fired or worse. To protect girls like her, and the thousands of other young vulnerable girls who attend uni.

> Luckily for my Indian friend she made a good choice because we got a first  


That speaks volumes about you.

 Neil Williams 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> Work colleagues. 

Why is that different?  What makes the apprentice more vulnerable than the same person doing an entry level job that isn't an apprenticeship?

I could accept the argument that we should consider 18-21 year olds as a different class of adult (which might have some impact on the age of consent), as a lot of research suggests that the risk management part of the brain is not properly developed at 18.  There are some other things you can't do until 21 e.g. drive a minibus.

I'm not sure I can accept the argument that there is something different between a student and a non-student.

Post edited at 20:10
 mondite 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Roadrunner6:

> But that’s why you report it.

> you remove that influence.

Assuming someone is honest enough to report it which in some cases I can see them not doing so. Banning would, in some cases, also help the lecturers. Gives them a clear opt out clause in cases of infatuation.

> There was a lecturer at one university who twice left his wives for a younger student. In the end he was moved on to another university.

So passed the problem onto someone else to deal with after possibly screwing up several peoples lives.

There is no simple answer and a blanket ban is possibly not the best case (eg your example) but for full lecturer and undergrads I think it does make sense.

 mondite 22 Feb 2020

In reply to NERD:

> I also think the age of consent should be 18.


Lot of kids (although almost certainly less than the numbers claimed on surveys) would therefore be offenders if caught by an angry parent. Which does happen occasionally and can wreck kids lives.

I think moving it to 18 would need the close in age clause in it.

 Neil Williams 22 Feb 2020
In reply to mondite:

> Lot of kids (although almost certainly less than the numbers claimed on surveys) would therefore be offenders if caught by an angry parent. Which does happen occasionally and can wreck kids lives.

> I think moving it to 18 would need the close in age clause in it.

I could see sense in something like that, the age of consent being 18 unless both parties are aged say 19 or below.

 gethin_allen 22 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I understand that the law states that all reasonable adaptations should be made. But in this case, the purpose of this assessment is to show you can present information to a room of your peers. You obviously can't fail someone who has diagnosed mental health issues but how can you assess someone for such a skill otherwise? Serious question.

Presentation and communication skills are pretty key in most professionals surely.

Maybe universities should routinely issue full transcripts of exam results or an alternative classification system with a skill breakdown. 

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to mondite:

> So passed the problem onto someone else to deal with after possibly screwing up several peoples lives.

As part of shifting the problem on it may be that the victim(s) received payoffs in return for signing NDAs (gagging orders).   The alleged offender (hot potato) may have had a superb reference provided to help move them on, and could have gone to a higher grade post at a lower ranked institution as their next stepping stone.  This creates a person with administrative power over individuals and policy who has a vested interest in promoting a culture of secrecy and stalling over allegations rather than support and as much openness as is possible.  

With a bit of evidence and a lot of extrapolation I might put the number of such hot potatoes at over 100 per year in the UK sector wide.  Not just over the issues discussed but bullying behaviour, “dark manufacturing” (theft), highly illegal image collections etc.  

I also don’t think it’s one sided - there are staff on the receiving end of manipulative behaviour and/or false allegations from students.  It’s a system with over 2 million students and about 0.5 million staff; at 3% of the country’s population, higher and further education eclipses even the NHS for the number of people tied up in the system over a multi-year period.  It’s so many people that basically every ugly aspect of human behaviour is represented along with the good.  

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to gethin_allen:

> I understand that the law states that all reasonable adaptations should be made. But in this case, the purpose of this assessment is to show you can present information to a room of your peers.

With reasonable adjustments.  Which could be a reduced audience, or a videod presentation etc.

> You obviously can't fail someone who has diagnosed mental health issues but how can you assess someone for such a skill otherwise? Serious question.

Worst case (if no reasonable adjustments exist) you exempt them from that assessment.  Typically presentations are not a significant part of the mark on summativly assessed work anyhow.

> Presentation and communication skills are pretty key in most professionals surely.

Although the purpose of a degree is not to develop those skills but to learn about a subject in great depth.  The transferable skills are important but fundamentally a degree is about learning something fundamental to the best of your ability.  I have no qualms exempting someone from a presentation if it’s making them so miserable they can’t see the beauty and logic behind a key theorem.  No employer is going to hire a graduate unseen from a STEM subject just because it guarantees they’re good at presenting; the employer will meet with them, interview them and perhaps hold assessments with them.  They’re not relying on a degree to rubber stamp presenting skills.  A person with such anxiety is going to have to find a tailored path through life - we can either be a dick about it and make their degree miserable, or we can accommodate it and help them enjoy their study of the subject thereby developing many other transferable skills as well as confidence, all of which helps them to find their coping strategies.

> Maybe universities should routinely issue full transcripts of exam results or an alternative classification system with a skill breakdown. 

Universities are not vocational.  If you overload the process everyone looses from having an impossible task.  Although the degree classification system lies at the heart of an awful lot of stress and could many think be improved with more granularity.  A transcript for someone with exemptions is very close to a release of confidential medical information.

Post edited at 21:27
 Paul Sagar 22 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

Just on the point that has been made in various posts above, that university teaching staff have “so much more power” than those they teach. 

really?

What power do I have over my undergraduates Erm, I could refuse to talk to them in office hours? I could not write them a reference (that they could just get from someone else)? I can’t grade their essays harshly, because I don’t know who wrote what until all the marks are recorded and released and only then are essays de-anonymised. I’m really struggling to know what it is I have “power” over them regarding.

By contrast a student could accuse me of sexual misconduct on twitter and my career would be over by the end of the week. 

Power. Please. 

More generally the banning of sexual relationships between staff and undergraduates is an extension of a moral panic that started on American campuses and has now arrived here. Read Laura Kipnis’s excellent book Unwanted Advances for an insightful examination. 

Post edited at 21:31
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 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

> really?

Think about how some students *perceive* you and what you can or can’t do.  That is power.  Also keep in mind that at many institutions a lot of work isn’t anonymous - for example it’s very hard to anonymise a final year dissertation or project, and some students don’t believe in the genuine strength of anonymous marking codes.  If you set assessments or examinations you have power - you can choose to selectively leak or hint at the content; the idea is abhorrent to me but I’ve no doubt it happens for the same reason I wasn’t surprised to find out someone at another institution was doing paid essay writing on the side.

> By contrast a student could accuse me of sexual misconduct on twitter and my career would be over by the end of the week

As Offwidth and I have said, it’s a two way door.  Staff are vulnerable to one small, malicious set of students.  A totally different set of students are vulnerable to staff.

Post edited at 21:41
 Paul Sagar 22 Feb 2020

The number of 1) undergraduates who are so vulnerable as to be *pressured into sex* by the (deeply mistaken) perception that their lecturer has power over their lives; who 2) do not realise that if they *are* being so exploited there already exists an army of bureaucrats and managers who will immediately come to their aid and 3) lecturers who are so evil and seedy that they would seek out such vulnerable students and take advantage of them is - taken together - not only a) so vanishingly small that a blanket ban on some type of adults getting involved with some other type of adults is clearly disproportionate, but anyway b) such a blanket ban won’t actually protect the vulnerable from the evil and exploitative because the latter will just do it anyway because they are vile and the rules won’t constrain them.

But a ban allows people to feel good about themselves, and making it seem That Something Is Being Done. 

 

Post edited at 21:45
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 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

> blanket ban

Did you read the article the OP linked?  It made no mention of a blanket ban.  It looks like most policies but with a wider mandatory notification rule on staff and more protection for students with some disabilities.

I also don’t think that the number of cases of staff/student relationships with exploitation going on in one or the other direction is vanishingly small.

Post edited at 22:09
 Paul Sagar 22 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Exploration maybe. But I assume you meant exploitation. Got any evidence? Or is it just a feeling you have? And if so, are you sure you’re right? How? 

I work in a university and the air of moral panic around student sexual exploitation does not match the reality I see. I don’t think universities are any different from any other large scale institution full of humans. Some good, some bad. I’m not clear why universities should have different rules. 
 

Also FWIW, what friends tell me about banking, law, and the city generally when it comes to exploitation of younger and more vulnerable (typically) women by predatory elderly men far outstrips anything going on on campuses. But I suppose that’s a debate for another thread...

 wintertree 22 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

> Exploration maybe. But I assume you meant exploitation. Got any evidence? Or is it just a feeling you have? And if so, are you sure you’re right? How? 

You should know that if my answer to your first question is “yes” that I’m basically unable to say any more between issues of privacy, libel, institutional policy etc.  I say “yes” on multiple different examples I can recall.  I’m only as sure as my own judgement.  Another take - 2% of all workers in the UK work in higher and further education.  It’s a good statistical sample.

> I work in a university and the air of moral panic around student sexual exploitation does not match the reality I see.

I don’t see any more panic but some gentle tightening of regulation.

> I don’t think universities are any different from any other large scale institution full of humans. Some good, some bad. I’m not clear why universities should have different rules. 

As I said up thread, students are (a) right out of the childhood home and (b) have no protection under employment law unlike all the other examples people give.

> Also FWIW, what friends tell me about banking, law, and the city generally when it comes to exploitation of younger and more vulnerable (typically) women by predatory elderly men far outstrips anything going on on campuses. But I suppose that’s a debate for another thread...

Quite.  Also as I’ve said elsewhere one wrong doesn’t justify another.

Post edited at 22:16
 Offwidth 23 Feb 2020
In reply to gethin_allen:

I think you need to revisit the fundamentals of what is meant by a University and what is meant by a fail there. You seem to see University as an SAS obstacle course only for the gracefully gliding elite, where I see it as it sits in the modern world and with assessments and grades being as fair as possible and matching statutory requirements.

Firstly I'd suggest your golden age never existed in the way it's often claimed. I too know old people who made it to University the hard way from a poor background via 11+ entry to grammar schools, and/or scholarship exams into public schools but if you get them to talk you will realise the rich could purchase their ticket to the same schools and rely on family history for preferential entry to elite Unis. I'm an early comprehensive Oxbridge entry from the early 80s so I saw the elite in those days and I can assure you, even then, we still had people who were there through family connections rather than intellect and we had our share of scoundrels and wastrels who ended up mysteriously with a degree (Arch and Anth or  Land Economy were favourites.... including the under-achieving royals) despite apparently doing no work at all or looking too dense for the not so terrible standards required. It was also easier to cheat then. In contrast all the STEM students had the highest possible entry grades and generally worked bloody hard....crazily so for the pinnacle working hard subject Vetinary Medicine. Those wasters got great jobs for the same reason they got into Oxbridge and it wasn't the exceptional quality of their brain.

In my early days as an academic I saw students with serious mental health problems timed out and given a fall-back award as they took too much time out of Uni. When they were at Uni they were very able and they really deserved to finish their degree and get a good grade. Thats what happens now... they get the time they need to get that good grade. I'm not very sympathetic to ignorant employers who would automatically reject such skilled people's qualifications just because of their past mental health problems.

Back to the present... you simply cannot game the system in the way you claim. You can get short extensions that way but they just take time away from what you should be working on next. Any long extensions require professional sign off. You can cheat by purchasing bespoke essays but you may still need to defend the content of those. Any plagiarism is picked up in all subjects in my institution (everything textural requires parallel electronic submission and automatic testing).

As I said above, I agree that the number of higher grades awarded in most departments is a national scandal but its a result of marketisation response to league tables. I've fortunately never had to work in such a department. I agree that some academics might mark borderline fail standard work as a pass, etc (as the volume these days is so high the quality checks might miss this) but thats rarely down to students gaming things. Marking crap as a pass (etc) will get the external examiners on the case, which would be serious. Some lecturers have given inappropriate exam hints to slightly manipulate output marks vs apparent exam paper quality; but as far as I can tell thats happened as long as the role existed. It certainly happened in my student days.

For the future, all our competitor nations already have a much larger percentage of students in HE, and their HE systems are often much better aligned to state economic needs without closing off other opportunities. Like the US we avoid this route by importing foreign HE level expertise to fill skills gaps and by lumbering all our students with huge debt to match their freedom of choice. The rose tinted days when only 10% of the population studied in HE are simply not fit for purpose. Yes the system is broken in some respects but due to very different reasons from the rose tinted view.

Post edited at 12:14
1
 Paul Sagar 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

I agree with all you've said there in your assessment of UK HE. 

I'd also want to say though that for those very reasons you describe about how work is assessed etc., that the number of lecturers who can work *that* system as leverage for sexual exploitation must be pretty small, and if they are cunning enough to work such a system to that end, they're probably cunning enough to find plenty of other ways. Hence why I find the idea of a policy saying academics can't have relationships with people they directly supervise to be all style no substance.

Having formerly worked in Oxbridge I would actually say that if anywhere is more likely to have dodgy stuff going on, it's Oxford and Cambridge, with the weird cloistered college system and the insane amount of contact students there have in close quarters, either 2 on  1 or 1 on 1 with academics. Having moved to a normal university, I have so little direct contact time with any individual student my sense is there are going to be far fewer opportunities for misconduct. Not saying no opportunities; not saying it doesn't happen; of course other departments will be different to mine - but the idea that there needs to be an official policy on student-staff relationships seems at the very least using a sledgehammer to fail to crack a nut.

Post edited at 20:05
 wintertree 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

My experiences outside of oxbridge don’t align with yours.  I am aware of plenty of small group teaching at more than one institution and department, and lots of 1:1 contact including advisor systems and final year projects/dissertations.   Not that I think small group tracking is needed for exploitation - either way round.

> but the idea that there needs to be an official policy on student-staff relationships seems at the very least using a sledgehammer to fail to crack a nut.

The policy in the OP’s article amounts to declaring a conflict of interest - absolutely standard practice in any profession - and further protecting a small minority of the most vulnerable.

The only time such a policy is a sledgehammer is when someone gets hauled up in front of HR and violating the policy is one of the issues on the table.

One of the most fascinating aspects to me of the EDI processes going on in the field is seeing what I consider to be the disproportionate pushback from some quarters.

I would also add that “staff” is not just lecturing staff but PhDs and postdocs both of whom have paid roles in many teaching programs.  

Post edited at 20:22
 Paul Sagar 23 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I don’t see why a 25 year old PhD student should have to “declare” a consensual relationship with a 20 year old UG just because the former is the latter’s seminar leader in a group of eg 14, anymore than a middle manager in Tesco should have to “declare” their relationship to the checkout worker.

but I guess we just disagree on this. 

 wintertree 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

> I don’t see why a 25 year old PhD student should have to “declare” a consensual relationship with a 20 year old UG just because the former is the latter’s seminar leader in a group of eg 14, anymore than a middle manager in Tesco should have to “declare” their relationship to the checkout worker.

Well you could comment on the point I’ve made several times that the undergraduate lacks any of the legal protection afforded to the checkout worker, due to the lack and presence, respectively, of employee status.

Or you could comment on the issue of academic integrity, something you’ve not addressed.  The PhD student is being paid as an employee and is expected to uphold the academic standards of their employer.  Declaring a conflict of interest and allowing the employer to decide on appropriate action is to my mind reasonable and proportionate.

The door swings both ways.  This protects the position of the staff member as well.  I can think of specific examples where PhD/postdoc level staff have been in my view exploited with potentially serious/actionable consequences against them.  

I would also expect a person managing many people at Tesco  to declare a conflict of interest with regards on of them.  Again, this protects their position as well as - more so than - that of the person in the more junior post.

> but I guess we just disagree on this.

So it seems.  One of us also disagrees with standard practice in the field...

Post edited at 22:26
1
 elsewhere 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

> I don’t see why a 25 year old PhD student should have to “declare” a consensual relationship with a 20 year old UG just because the former is the latter’s seminar leader in a group of eg 14, anymore than a middle manager in Tesco should have to “declare” their relationship to the checkout worker.

> but I guess we just disagree on this. 

Long ago as an undergrad I remember an equally young first year undergrad talking to me about her fears  and the difficulties of wanting to split up with her tutor (PhD student or post doc) running her seminars. Pretty much exactly what you describe.

Yes there are cases (a small minority?) where they live happily ever after but definitely a power imbalance and to be avoided.

Post edited at 22:59
 Offwidth 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

My experience of most new overseas students in the system is they are genuinely concerned of undue influence (very mistakenly) and I've had to work hard to undo quite a few unfair decisions that resulted from that, when the student knew what happened was wrong under the rules but were frightened the staff members concerned would exact revenge if they complained (I assured them the staff could not exact revenge). I've even had a few British students who were worried about such things and EU students on average fell somewhere in between the two. At MSc level a lot of these students are 1:1 on their research methods preparation and on their major project work (most of their work for 4 months for us) and 1:1 with personal tutors and may meet staff socially as well, especially likely on a campus based Uni. I've been a UCU caseworker on a fair number of complaints of racism and sexual harrassment linked to staff-staff incidents or staff-student  (with accusations in both directions),  that most other staff would have no clue of; and I've been a staff commiteee member of quite a few initial investigations of student led harrassment of another student. Experiencing what I have, and looking at that survey of unwanted sexual attention, that I linked above, indicates to me we have a fairly large problem. It's a lot bigger than 'a nut' and the new rules are just UCL catching up with most other Unis, so are no 'sledgehammer'.

The worst handled cases are hitting headlines:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/18/universities-silencin...

Hence, I support our fairly long established rules separating those in a relationship (sexual or family)  from the marking process and more recently of having formally declared conflict of interest in the exam board process. That is not banning the relationship, as the likes of the UCL headline implies, although cynically  I do expect a case will arrive on a UCU caseworkers desk soon (if one hasn't already) where an untrained overzealous manager formally warns a member of staff just for having a declared relationship of the tutorial type you described, when it was the management responsibility to assign a separate marker.

 Paul Sagar 23 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I’m not sure why you think undergraduates lack legal protections. And there was a time when management would have happily ignored some pesky student and just taken the word of the (typically male) senior staff member - but those days are long, long gone. And I’m not sure that what you think is “standard practice” is anywhere near as standard as you are asserting. And i also happen to think the power that a middle manager can wield - on a day to day basis - over a junior employee is far greater than most lecturers over most students. And whereas you seem to think undergraduates are really just children+, I think they’re adults - just like the 50% of their age group who don’t go to uni. 

so yeah, it’s easy to post a snide reply and make out like the other person is disingenuous and/or stupid, isn’t it? What fun we’re having. Isn’t the internet great. 

 Paul Sagar 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

MSc students are, what, 22 years old and up? What you are describing in those cases are adults in situations where some adult is behaving very poorly indeed - but I’d expect any well governed institution to have measures in place to deal with that. The problem there isn’t staff-student relationships, it’s awful people who need to be dealt with for being awful people.

fair point on the UCU casework point; you must be right that a lot of stuff goes on most of us (rightly) never hear about. I guess what I’m sceptical about is that it happens more at universities than anywhere else in instituons of comparative size. And I’m sceptical that the problem is staff-student relationships per se as oppose to some awful people being awful (which they will be anyway).

 wintertree 23 Feb 2020
In reply to Paul Sagar:

> I’m not sure why you think undergraduates lack legal protections.

I do not think that.  Read my posts more carefully perhaps.  I have - repeatedly - said the "workplace relationships" comparisons are not valid because students lack the legal protections afforded to *employees*.  It's right there at the start of my previous post, and in other posts. There is a vast amount of legal background to employee-employee conduct that protects staff and that simply does not apply to students.  They are not employees, they do not have any of the legal protection afforded to employees.  There is no equivalent law protecting students in student/staff interactions.  Of bloody course students have the same legal protection as everyone else in the country against criminal acts, but that's very different to the extra protection that employees have in a workplace context.  

Is it so hard to grasp that legally a student <> staff relationship is almost totally unlike an employee <> employee relationship?

> And I’m not sure that what you think is “standard practice” is anywhere near as standard as you are asserting.

Well if you want to go and do a survey of policies on HE institutions in the UK go ahead, but all the ones I've seen have some sort reporting process for conflict of interest.

> And i also happen to think the power that a middle manager can wield - on a day to day basis - over a junior employee is far greater than most lecturers over most students.

I have said before - and you have ignored before - that to my mind anyhow - one wrong does not justify another.

> And whereas you seem to think undergraduates are really just children+, I think they’re adults - just like the 50% of their age group who don’t go to uni. 

I've never said they are like children.  I have said that every year 1/3rd of them are right out of their family home and that some of them are vulnerable.  Adults can be vulnerable too and in many cases there is a sound legal framework for why both universities and employers have to give that consideration.

> so yeah, it’s easy to post a snide reply and make out like the other person is disingenuous and/or stupid, isn’t it? What fun we’re having. Isn’t the internet great. 

Well, if I'm going to be accused of being snide...

I was not being snide.  I'm not trying to make out that you are disingenuous and/or stupid.  I am agreeing that we disagree, and pointing out that declaring a relationship is pretty standard in the field  Although, given your endless pattern of making an analogy akin to "yeah well bad stuff happens in the workplace" whilst totally ignoring and now totally misunderstanding or misrepresenting my clearly and repeatedly made case for why a workplace is a poor analogy to a university, and my clearly made argument that one wrong does not justify another, I am starting to think that you're not really making an effort to keep up, or that you are just reading what you want to read.

As an example of what I see as you reading what you want to read, you said "And whereas you seem to think undergraduates are really just children+" - I have made the case - and I think another poster has - that the exploitation that goes on can be in either direction, and that the conflict of interest / reporting procedures exist to protect the staff position as well as that of the student.  Discordant?

Further, you continue to talk about the lack of staff "power" whilst apparently totally ignoring points Offwidth and I have made about the difference between "real" power and power "perceived" by students, which is real to them.  

If there's one thing I think you can take away from this discussion it's that students in HE have a relatively unique legal situation - not subject to the legal protection of students in sixth forms, not subject to the legal protection of employees, and subject to a large power imbalance between themselves and the system they are in.  

Post edited at 23:43
1
 Rob Exile Ward 24 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Didn't Student Unions used to represent the interests of students? Whatever happened to them?

 wintertree 24 Feb 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

> Didn't Student Unions used to represent the interests of students? Whatever happened to them?

I can only speak from a small set of examples but from those - irrelevance.  Very small active membership, sub 10% voter turn out, little people trying to play big people politics to fill out their CVs before moving on, endless focus on the social justice issue of the day over the welfare of their local students, all sorts of clique behaviour up to and including bullying of the opposition reminiscent of what was allegedly going on inside labour against some of the old guard under Corbyn.  

Part of what drives irrelevance is the NSS - as it’s league tabled, that’s the student voice institutions care about.

 Offwidth 24 Feb 2020
In reply to wintertree:

That's unfair in terms of student case support. SU's still usually provide good individual representation at the places I know. Too often the more naive students who most need such help seem unwilling to ask for it until it's almost too late. A good example is not getting help until a second offence plagiarism investigation panel ( which can severely curtail awards or even end study). Many overseas  students have cut and pasted in all their previous educational work with impunity and now they hit software that will uncover copied stuff even if they change loads of words : students like this need showing early on what will happen, with no penalty, and careful advice on a first offence. Plagiarism as a student is wrong but its not criminal, yet charged crimnals always get a clear verbal reminder of their rights and a lawyer is appointed as a norm.

On Paul's point, yes they are legally adults but many of these overseas MSc students and year 1 undergrads have led protected lives and only previously experienced more authoritarian education systems. Some are more worldly but lived in corrupt sytems where challenges to authority don't end well. Too many are unwilling to challenge UK academics and some of those have less awareness of their rights than most UK school kids. Another form of exploitation I've encountered is workload exploitation... researchers abusing their authority to get naive project students working excessive hours to grind out results for papers, leaving them exhausted with other parts of their project sub-standard  Outside Uni these naive students can get exploited by landlords, so-called friends, criminals etc. A small proportion suffer with severe mental health issues that have been previously undiagnosed (I still swap emails with a chinese Malaysian student who was sectioned on his undergrad degree and again on his postgrad degree, when under my tutorship... his culture is not kind to him ...but our Uni was). I think we have a particular duty of care to help overseas students as widely as we can.

I think it crucial to get a clear message across in overseas student induction, that where anything feels wrong, its vital to talk about it with a specific tutor with expertise in dealing with such problems.  It's tempting for departments not to do this as it's extra resource (and no one wants to risk disrupting perfectly disciplined classes . We impose high fees and draconian responsibilities with Tier 4 measures.. a few more rights, similar to employee protections, to go alongside their responsibilities would seem proportionate to me.

Above all Universities need to be liable and punished heavily if processes go as badly wrong as in that Cambridge case.  Too often currently, things just get dumped as an extra responsibility on standard teaching staff (still including completely untrained PhD students) and where incidents start to spiral, some management seem too poorly trained to respond appropriately.... in the end serious harrassment cases always belong with the police, not some internal committee with an incentive to cover-up and intimidate. If you follow the links under the article on that Guardian page (that I linked above) discussing the Cambridge incident, you can look at headlines on how other Universities also failed harassed students, including Newcastle and Warwick.

Finally some supporting words on your NSS views. It heavily distorts management systems and teaching ; yet, in the submission of the Royal Statistical Society to TEF, having looked at the research (TEF is the teaching quality framework  for Unis) they found no compelling evidence of any correlation of NSS style systems with teaching quality (although there are a few evidenced anti-correlations in some of the more difficult academic subjects).

https://www.rss.org.uk/Images/PDF/influencing-change/2019/RSS_Evidence_to_t...

Post edited at 09:45
 Toerag 24 Feb 2020
In reply to annieman:

It's no different to my place of work - anybody who could influence someone's career isn't allowed a relationship with them. This protects people from favoritism or the opposite when the relationship has soured.  People in different teams - no problem.

 wintertree 26 Feb 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> That's unfair in terms of student case support. SU's still usually provide good individual representation at the places I know. 

I did qualify my post as my coming from my small set of examples - it's good to know that they're more useful at some other institutions...

> some management seem too poorly trained to respond appropriately.... 

I was discussing this in a related context today.  People are exposed to sensibly structured and clear training courses and then sometimes just revert to saying stuff like "Oh well that wouldn't bother me" rather than falling back on their training and simply than signposting to the appropriate person or policy etc.   It's hard to know if its because they're just doing the training to get people off their backs and don't take anything in, or because they're overworked and have so develop sieve like memories.  

> in the submission of the Royal Statistical Society to TEF

Yes, it's insane the disconnect between what the subject experts say and what's being used in TEF.  


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