Education
Student leisure
Antony Flew
Michael Drake is Dean of the Social Sciences Faculty of the Open University. In the academic year 1969-70 he gave a lecture in a series organised by the Royal Institute of Philosophy in London. These have since been published in a volume called The Proper Study”, a volume edited by Godfrey Vesey who both organised the original lectures and is now himself Professor of Philosophy in the Open University. Most of the other contributions are unequivocally philosophical. These I have discussed already in another and more private place. But Drake's lecture on ' A Theme for the Social Sciences?' is a different matter. In view of his position at the Open University some of Drake's remarks must constitute grounds for public concern. They cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed, buried away in a book little reviewed and read only by a few specialists.
Drake starts by referring to his previous experience in Canterbury:
Four years ago I joined a spanking new university. The concrete had hardly set as we welcomed the first cohort of students to what the prospectus called a pattern of first degree studies . . . somewhat different from that usually encountered. The most striking difference lay in the first half of the degree — the so-called Part I.
Drake concludes this sentence with an apology — a sort of mental genuflexion towards the Wedgbenn of Mintech: "not, I must admit, a particularly trendy title."
At the end of Canterbury's Year One Drake issued a questionnaire to those " students who had successfully completed Part I of the social science degree." He got a 75 per cent response. After considering what this exercise may or may not have shown about weaknesses in the initial course design, Drake continues:
Our questionnaire revealed that the av2rage student spent, and thought it proper to spend, some thirty-three hours a week studying during term time. About ten of these were in class, which left some twenty-three hours for reading and the preparation of essays and various other exercises. Out of term, students on average said they spent sixteen hourj, a week at their books, but admitted that this was only during nine of the twenty-two weeks. In other words, for a quarter of the year (thirteen weeks) they admitted to not doing any academic work.
Drake adds the realistic comment: "One can assume, I think, that many students • probably exaggerate the amount of time they spend studying . • . "
Now various morals might be drawn from this evidence. You might, for instance, urge that it should throw doubt on that great unquestioned assumption of all our university expansionists: the assumption that we are confronted with an everrising tide of school-leavers who are not only qualified adequately academically, but also sufficiently highly motivated to
pursue courses at university level. Or, again, you might pick on Drake's findings to strengthen the case for introducing at least some element of loan into the financing of the payment of student fees and maintenance. (The present position is — roughly — that both are met by outright grants from public funds; except, of course, in those cases where a virtuous and not a vicious means test reveals that the parents are committing what are thought to be excessive incomes.)
But no such untrendy thoughts enter Drake's swinging head. For the moral which he draws, in the first sentence of the paragraph from which I have been quoting his figures, is wholly different. He says: " Another reason for our failure to devise a satisfactory course was our unwillingness to tailor it to the time our students were prepared to spend on it."
Let us hope even against hope that — beset by the much greater temptations of the Open University — Drake remains still unwilling to develop courses which are, by this criterion, satisfactory.
The Proper Study edited Godfrey Vesey (Macmillan 1971)
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