‘I feel short changed’: Students disgruntled by state of Creative-Writing course
- KNACK
- Dec 27, 2017
- 3 min read
SECOND-YEAR students at Kingston University are in dismay over their Creative Writing course, after a survey revealed consistent student-dissatisfaction with almost every aspect of the subject.
A ‘course review’ survey was created after more and more students expressed concerns to each other about the course, including how they wished it would ‘change for the better’, according to sources.
Student Ellie Bowker, 20, who helped create the survey, said: “I think having a survey written by students for students on topics like this is great, because you are more likely to get genuine answers. Students aren’t as afraid to say what they feel, as it isn’t a random third-party survey.”
The survey, carried out in November, asked the students to evaluate different areas of the course and why they chose to major or minor in the subject.
Respondents could be optionally anonymised, and areas of evaluation included time allocation, lectures, seminars, module topics, set work, and quality of teaching.
Out of the 64% of respondents who minored in the course, 86% said they would have dropped the subject if they were able to.
This included 19-year-old Leah Edwards, who said: “If I had the option to I would have dropped creative writing entirely. It feels like I’m paying upwards of £9000 for stuff I could learn for free at home.”
Miss Edwards also revealed in the survey that she had been told to ‘get over her anxiety’ by a lecturer in a tutor meeting, an incident she recalls to have put her off attending university in her first year.
21-year-old student Alessia Hildenbrand also shared strong views, stating: “There appears to be no hope for the course; there is little help for progression and very little work for the final assessment.”
When different course aspects were evaluated, lectures, module topics and homework set scored the lowest, with the largest percentage equating to ‘extreme dissatisfaction’ for each category.
One anonymised student elaborated on their dissatisfaction with module topic choices, saying: “Useless. I learned all of it in highschool. My parents shouldn’t be paying for me to learn nothing,” whilst another student commented: “I feel short-changed”.
Other concerns in the survey circulated around the simplicity of the taught modules, lack of consistency between groups, poor lesson structure, and that lecturers ‘plug their own books’ too often.
International student Ashley McCardle, 23, came to Kingston from Sydney to further her writing passion, however mentions in the survey that she felt belittled by its lecturers and believes it is a waste of the 17 thousand pounds it costs her every year to study, excluding living expenses.
Miss McCardle also notes to have felt discouraged after a lecturer told her she ‘shouldn’t write creative fiction’.
“I am spending a fortune to be here,” said miss McCardle. “The only reason that I’m studying here is because there are no creative writing courses back in Australia. However sometimes I feel like there’s no point in studying here with all the disorganisation.”
Postgraduate student Sophia Yamamoto, 27, also studied creative writing at Kingston University as part of a Masters in fine arts last year, and notes that she encountered similar problems that she doesn’t see changing anytime soon.
“The creative writing department has something deeply lazy about it,” said miss Yamamoto. “The professors are not up to date on current publications, writing trends, or anything other than their own specific literary genres. Plenty of students have been humiliated in class for making errors that they were not taught how to avoid, or simply for choosing a genre of which the professor disapproved. As an arts program, this behavior is unthinkable.”
We were unable to receive a statement from any representatives of the course.
Photos taken by KNACKONLINE.
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