Sir, The purpose of the Oxford Colleges' student contract is not, as your correspondent says (report, Jan 31), to allow colleges to defend themselves more easily against complaints by students. It is, rather, to codify the existing, informal, contract between college and student clarifying for students what will be provided for them and what we expect of them in return. In drawing up this contract we have consulted student bodies and listened to their views.
The introduction of the student contract has no consequence for the tutorial system. We are fully committed to tutorial teaching, which is at the heart of the Oxford undergraduate experience, and will continue so to be.
SIR MICHAEL SCHOLAR
Chairman of the Conference of Colleges
Oxford University
The Times 2nd February
Sir, I am a mature undergraduate student, self-financing my studies. Surely if one contracting party is forced to sign, the contract has all the elements of "duress, undue influence and inequality of bargaining power". Universities still operate a master-servant relationship with their students.
Students enrol in a three-year degree course and are subjected to unilateral changes to the conditions of contract, such as module choice, module content and coursework assessment. The student "slave" has limited ability to complain when lectures are cancelled or when seminars provide limited opportunity for discussion between teacher and learner. The autonomous student may not make an informed choice on which lectures to attend due to the threat of ex-matriculation.
Is that reasonable? But we still have to sign along the dotted line.
MARY McLAUGHLIN
Eglinton, County Londonderry
The Times 2nd February
Sir, In practice, attendance at tutorials and classes and the production of written work are already compulsory - the accepted method by which we are taught. But the system has an element of flexibility and personal responsibility, which will be entirely undermined by the rigid enforcement of the proposed contracts. Surely a student at any university is mature enough to make a decision upon the relative merits of spending an extra hour in the library or attending a lecture.
HARRY SOUTHCOTT
Brasenose College, Oxford
The Times 2nd February
Sir, Why increase the strain on the service you provide with no benefit for your students and no revenue increase for you? It is claimed that this nonsense is in line with "modern business practice", which makes me feel very sorry for anyone studying business or economics at Oxford.
SAMUEL BLANNING
Southampton
The Times 2nd February
Sir, University contracts (letters, above) are an interesting idea, but I wonder whether anyone has considered the simpler principle of pay-as-you-learn? Students would pay directly to the academic concerned. Customers would be empowered, smart students would get the best teaching, good teachers would get rich and good universities would flourish. Everybody (except litigious lawyers) would gain.
TOM FOULKES Fleet, Hants
The Times 6th February
While, no doubt, a new contract might not be of much help in their case, they could well be asked to show, under examination conditions, that they understand the difference between a university and a business.
VERNON BOGDANOR
Professor of Government, Oxford University
The Times 7th February
The Oxford student contract was born several years ago from a laudable wish to ensure that students know the terms of the contract that exists between a student and a university. In the case of Oxford and Cambridge, there are two contractual relationships, one with the university and the other with the college. Each institution promises to provide certain elements in the total student experience. Students should understand which is responsible for what.
The Oxford students were consulted at the time the contract was being framed. It is unfortunate that this project is being presented in the media as a device to protect the university from litigation. It is primarily a way of ensuring that students have a clear understanding of what they are entitled to by way of adequate provision and course delivery to an appropriate standard.
The notion that students may have reciprocal obligations is not new. This is not a bid to "require" attendance at lectures. Tutorials have always been "compulsory" because that is where essays are discussed one to one or in twos or threes. The contract merely means that a failing student cannot reasonably complain that he or she was not properly taught if he or she never went to get the teaching on offer.
G. R. EVANS
Cambridge University
The Times Higher 10th February
Sir - The idea of instituting student contracts is both crazy and insulting. I have found myself teaching in Oxford, off and on, for over thirty years. Admittedly I have been teaching in minority subjects, and the number of individuals have not been overwhelming, but in all that time I cannot have come across more than one or two individuals who did not quite pull their weight.
As for the rest, I have been amazed and moved by the amazing qualities of the people we have here, many of whom have become close friends. How often have I been struck by the enthusiasm and eloquence of an undergraduate essay on Roman art that is a delight to read, or found real originality in an undergraduate dissertation. It is we teachers who are privileged to have been able to guide these young, but already wise, minds.
However, I do sometimes allow myself a passing thought whether every one of my colleagues might not be devoting a little too much time to his own research at the expense of his tutoring and pastoral responsibilities. Maybe ours is the end where contracts should be tightened.
Yours sincerely
MARTIN HENIG
Institute of Archaeology
Oxford Magazine, 13th March