Tutorials are sacred
From Bill Macmillan
Sir: James Howard-Johnston suggests that some of the most stimulating students are the ‘hot-air specialists who concoct essays out of very little hard material’ (‘Save the Oxford tutorial’, 26 February). Well, yes, if the evidence they draw on is reliable and their arguments are robust.
His principal argument is that Oxford’s academic strategy green paper proposes the phasing-out of tutorials. It does no such thing. Indeed, it calls for all disciplines to cement the position of the tutorial by specifying the number of sessions which stu dents should expect to have. It notes in passing that the idea of standardising one tutorial per week across the university has been rejected in favour of higher figures, varying from subject to subject.
The purpose of the green paper is to map out a strategy to enable Oxford to remain at the forefront internationally of research and teaching. As the tutorial is, to use a bit of the management jargon that Mr Howard-Johnston dislikes, one of its unique selling points, why would the ‘university authorities’ wish to diminish it? We don’t, we want to enhance it. I say ‘we’ because I am one of the tutorial fellows currently numbered among those dread authorities.
Bill Macmillan
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic), University of Oxford
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