I was going to write a column on apathy...

Sitting at my desk, slaving over acres and acres of lecture slides, I hear the familiar two-tone emerging from my laptop. An email has arrived. I hurry to check it, eager to escape the dull monotony of work. ‘Dear Student, Please note that SOLE is open for evaluating...’ Aaargh! Delete the email, and continue working...

The endless SOLE emails are a nuisance for most people, who have lots of things going on with their lives, and no-one seems to want to/have time to respond. We’ve all been there. It’s completely understandable.

Until recently, I was thinking the very same thing. Then, on the last day of term, I had the chance to have a chat with my Faculty’s Head of Quality Assurance and Enhancement. He lamented that the rate of response to SOLE questionnaires was low, but what struck me was what he said next: “How can the Faculty possibly change anything, if they don’t know what the students think is going badly!”

Now a significant number of people will respond to this saying: a) Their Faculty does not do anything even if complaints are registered; b) Their Faculty has a laissez-faire ‘We don’t care’ attitude towards students (or c) Their faculty actually has done something good after receiving a complaint, but we’ll get onto that later).

Our apathy seems to be inherent in many areas. Turnout for Student Union Elections for Postgrads and Undergrads, were 19% and 58% respectively this year (we were the best in the country!). That’s still a huge number of people abstaining from their right to influence their quality of education. Considering that our degrees are our ticket into working life, I find this ‘lack of interest’ shocking.

There is very little academic help for those who may be struggling with the rigours of the course

I have to ask: why is there such a ‘lack of interest’ in our own education? Being a medic, I feel best placed to talk about some of the problems that we have been having. The overriding feeling is that we feel completely and utterly uncared for by the Faculty, as highlighted by Imperial’s recent problems with Student Satisfaction. There just does not appear to be any help or support readily available from the Faculty, contributing to the sense of apathy felt by students.

There is very little academic help forthcoming to students who may be struggling with the rigours of the course. There is no help offered to international students, for things such as accommodation, in the event that they have a resit. There is no help for the travel costs between the various campuses and hospitals that we are required to be at, which is inherently unfair on poorer students.

For our problems, we have to rely mostly upon our excellent Union, most of whom have volunteered to do the job and are working on a shoestring budget. In my view, it is completely unfair to burden the Union with jobs the Faculty is being paid by us to do.

No wonder levels of apathy are so high!

But the Faculty can and has changed things for the better. For example, we received a lecture for which the lecturer did not cover the learning objectives set out, and did not even appear to know what was on his own lecture slides. There was a lot of dissatisfaction amongst the 300-odd people sitting in the lecture hall, which was immediately made known to the Faculty. Within a very short period of time, they sent out a response, apologising for what had happened and the action they would take to remedy the issue.

The key here (unlike the other times I have protested) was that a vast proportion of those affected, complained! The Faculty simply had no choice but to respond! In many cases, the curriculum has been changed as a response to large amounts of collective student feedback.

The higher the number of people giving feedback, the more obliged the Faculty is to change things! Low response rates fly in the face of the fact that each one of us is investing a substantial amount of time and money (especially international students) into pursuing a qualification here at Imperial.

We have to collectively bevocal in our views to make a difference. Write more emails, do more SOLE, talk with your Year Reps!

We are paying customers of Imperial College London and it’s about time that we demand the service that we deserve.