SOS: Students or Staff?

If you’re a student at Exeter, then congratulations: you’re officially going to get bombarded with opportunity and support. And while this is undeniably something to celebrate, can you have too much of a good thing?

It would seem that here at Exeter students are in a bubble of support – the news is rife with reports of the police backing street lights to be kept on at night, Dragon’s Den tycoons being drafted in to offer business advice, and Exeter’s lads petitioning the “unfair and autocratic” Timepiece bouncers.

However, will this student bubble pop once we graduate and enter the outside world? Recent reports show that, despite such schemes as International Womens Day launching vodcasts to encourage female students to go into surgical careers, statistics show that male graduates are five times more likely to be earning £40k. Does such a harsh reality mean the Exeter Emeralds should dominate their cheerleading competitions while they still can, before being sucked into a male-dominated work place?

Staff, and potentially graduates of Exeter University, left out in the cold

In stark contrast to the overwhelming student support system, we have University staff being ignored, with only 60% of staff feeling able to voice their opinions in a workplace deemed to have given them a “loss of voice”.

It seems a bit rich of the University to be looking into how gender diversity is lacking in the financial services sector, particularly at senior management level, when senior management at the University have been subject to reports of sexism, promoting men over women and not taking maternity leave seriously!

The icing on top of the cake (baked by the voiceless female University staff, no doubt) is that, while the University invest so much money in business, research and student support, senior management can’t be bothered to invest in their own staff until they’re obliged to partake in their five-yearly review in 2014.

It would appear that Exeter graduates should enjoy their student support bubble while they still can, because the outside world won’t be as friendly. And while it’s commendable that the University put so much effort into their students, surely an essential part of an educational establishment is its teaching faculty. It would seem it’s time to call for a reality check: staff need more support, and students need less if they’re going to succeed in the real world.