At interview with my current employer, I was offered the opportunity to study for a post graduate qualification on a part time basis. I chose to undertake this study with UWE due to both the wide range of courses on offer and proximity to work.

What a mistake! Perhaps my expectations were slightly skewed by the memories and experiences of my first degree, but I have never known such a disorganised and poorly administered educational body.

Everything but everything is published online (and only online) from lecture notes and timetables to private and confidential correspondance (which is quickly lost in amoungst the deluge of students who must all use the "mail all" in sending invites to the various student societies).

On several occasions I have found that lectures have been cancelled via online notices, but nothing has actually been done to alert the students (bereft of their crystal balls) loitering in the teaching area! Indeed, on two such occasions I had to ask the faculty office to put up notices to avoid confusion.

Many lectures also appear to have taken the attitude that students are generally apethetic and have stated that if you do not provide your own lecture notes (available on the web - although often only posted a few hours before the lecture) you will simply not get a copy. I could not help but think there was something of a mutual apathy in this regard.

It is also impossible to review time tables without logging into the website. This proved disasterous for me on the week of my exams as the IT system failed at UWE and no hard copys of the timetable had been posted in the faculty building. This was further compounded by the fact that the student office was closed until after the start of the exam and not even the teaching staff could advise where students were meant to be. These are apparantly "seperate areas of responsibility". Good to know.....

Another example of this was with results. I recieved nothing in the post advising my exam results and was completely unaware that I actually needed to re-submit an essay. It was only when I began harrassing the university and asking why I hadn't seen anything (some months after submittal) that I was told I had two weeks to turn around my revised work! Dissapointing to say the least. Particularly when I was then informed that the title and details were only available online and that (reluctantly) they COULD send it to me in the post if absolutely necessary. Since I am paying a huge ammount of money for this course, why on earth can't UWE afford a stamp?

Don't get me wrong, the teaching staff are excellant, but the administration is dire. It needs to be recognised that whilst many students have access to the internet it cannot and must not be used as a crutch and there is really no excuse for not providing hard copies of crucial documentation such as exam results.