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The situation was quite hopeless.”I felt if I had stayed on I would not have had a degree of any academic standing. The teacher gave us photocopied sheets with pictures of chromosomes. The idea was to cut them out and stick them on another piece of paper. The photocopies were so bad you could not tell between the chromozones. But it was the first year of the degree course and they were not prepared for becoming a university.”In the first week I went to the library to get some books for the course, only to discover the whole biology section had disappeared – everyone else had taken them out.”The final straw came when we were doing a practical in biology and genetics. She was a student in 1993, the first year that Luton gained university status The student-staff ratio at Luton is 20:1″It was chaos The practicals were a nightmare.

On my course there were about 150 students, spread between three or four rooms and the lecturers ran from one room to another.”I had done an access course at Luton, which had been brilliant, before starting my degree. She claims overcrowded classrooms and shortage of basic course materials at Luton University, Bedfordshire, made effective study impossible. I think we will see that happening in the UK in the not too distant future.”Lecturers in many institutions feel a tacit pressure to pass their students Higher education is all about meeting targets. If you lose students, you lose funding.”It wasn’t worth continuing Nicky Fleet gave up her degree in biology and health science after three months. The number of appeals by students against poor marks are going up.”In America students take out litigation against their schools. They feel they own their degree and they have a right to their qualifications.

It’s catch 22, we are so busy with administration they cannot get the help they need.””Another pressure is that as more and more students pay for their courses, they feel cheated if they fail. That is not a bad thing in itself, but it should not be at the expense of teaching time.””The responsibility for learning is being placed increasingly on the students. But in order to teach themselves effectively they need a lot of support from their teachers. Now it is down to three hours a week.”The students spend more time learning on their own. It has meant that we have had to change our teaching methods to keep up.

There is less personal interaction, less time to do the thing that really gives you a buzz and fulfilment – the teaching.””The students used to have four hours of language tutorials in classes of around 20. I finished the sessions after two-and-a-half years last summer.”I didn’t just go to counselling because of the job, there were other things I wanted to work out – but my work was a large part.”In my school classes have grown by between 50 and 100 per cent. To help her cope with the stress of her job, she turned to counselling.”By going to counselling I realised that part of my stress is due to the fact that teaching has changed a great deal since I entered the profession. Now I feel I have been let down by the system twice.”Stephen George, professor in politics at Sheffield University, insists the recent expansion in student numbers has not affected quality.He points out that the final year of degree studies is structured so that every student receives one-on-one supervision during the third term, during which time they work on a dissertation.”There are higher numbers in Janine’s seminars because she has chosen the most popular courses.”We can’t give enough time Janet Fraser is a lecturer at Westminster University’s school of languages. It’s such an important time, you need more attention from your tutors, not less.”I failed my 11-plus and went to a secondary modern which didn’t do A levels, left school at 16 and then went straight to work.”I always wanted to go to university.