History prevails as students fail
Last autumn, only about half the students passed historie
grunnfag, the first-year basic course of history. Jon Spence
is one of them. - I attended classes, did the exercises and
studied extensively, he says. He feels his effort has been
adequate and blames poor lectures and very specific exams
for his dismal result. Professor Christian Meyer says one
is surprised by the failure rate in this course. Spence tells
how especially the older lecturers seem to lack inspiration.
In fact, at one point, there came to an argument between students
and a lecturer as students felt the lectures went well beyond
the syllabus. Spence says he feels there is a good amount
of arrogance within the university’s historical community,
which he describes as a closed one. Meyer on his side points
to the students’ mentality as the main reason for the results.
-When I give lectures at eight in the morning only one third
of them show up, he says.
The missing reply
Psychology student Elisabeth Kleppe asked for a written
statement on her exam result last spring. Six months later
there has still been no reply. In June, she was told to expect
a processing time of about three weeks. Following several
attempts to reach the censor there still was no response.
Kleppe was given a telephone number, which turned out to be
to a facility where the censor’s employment ceased half a
year ago. Kleppe feels it should not be her task to chase
the censor around. Birte Blomli of the department of psychology
says inquiries like this usually take a couple of months to
process. – In this case the circumstances have been extraordinary,
she says. Kleppe, on her side, says there is no point in her
considering resitting her exam now. - This has been a determining
factor in my dropping out of psychology studies, she says.
Psychologists’ performance poorest As the results from most
of last term’s exams are ready, it is clear that the psychology
students fail the most and medicine students the least. The
psychology students presented a failure rate of 24 percent,
up from 16 one year ago. This is clearly the poorest result
within the university.
Alexander Kemp
22.01.03
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