Workloads mount - Arts Fac. stalls

'That individual students have heavy workloads is not to be dented' -

Professor D Sloane (Economics)

'Many students, their teachers and the bursary provisions are quite unrealistic about the realities of completing the B A in three years' -

Professor D McKenzie (English)

It is necessary to attempt to control the amount of work prescribed' -

Professor C Dearden (Classics)

In August 1973 hordes of students emerged from their library corners to attend a forum called 'Why am I pissed off with Varsity?' This revolutionary action was inspired by a nostalgic look back to 1971 and 1972 when students spent most of their time in the Union building participating in social activities and talking to tutors and fellow students about the issues that concerned them as individuals.

The 1973 year was heralded by a doubling of in-course assessment and a [unclear: triplig] in the workloads required of individual students. The Professorial Board, always aware of student unrest, sent an urgent memo to the Faculties 'to examine assertions that the work programmes being required of students by present courses and methods of assessment have become unduly onerous and destructive of both effective learning and -joy in university life.'

Although students considered the problem urgent, not so the Faculties of Arts Languages and Literature. After 18 months of deep thought, they have responded by setting up a Permanent Committee on Workloads, while ignoring the specific action-recommendations that a previous sub-committee had drawn up.

Accompanying these recommendations was a list of courses that were definitely exceeding the workload limits. They included nine Classics courses, eight from Mathematics, five from Geography and four from both Pyschology and Asian Studies. Courses exceeding the limits for amounts of assessable material included Anthropology with 19 courses, Education with 13, Asian Studies. Economics and Psychology with 11 courses and English with 10 courses in excess.

Despite these figures the only positive measure that the Faculties' passed (besides the setting up of the permanent committee) was one pushed through by Dr McKenzie (English) to restrict for contact hours (lectures, seminars, tutorials and laboratory periods) to four hours per week.

Judging from the use of library facilities in the pre-Easter period, student workloads are certainly not dropping. Hopefully the health of Arts Languages and Literature students will be considered if the permanent workloads committee decides to spend another 12 months going over work that has already been satisfactorily completed.

- by John Ryall