University of Liverpool students are fed up of getting essays back weeks late

The typical student cliché. All-nighters, piles of overdue books, stacking debt and alcohol dependencies. Despite our unrelenting portrayal as lazy millennials in the media, from experience I can safely say that we work just as hard, if not harder than past generations to maintain the work-life balance expected of students.

So with all this in mind, including our outrageous fees, the expectations that everyone seems to have of us to save the world from fossil fuels and the uphill political battle we’re having with older generations who enjoyed subsidised education and freedom to travel Europe, why is it impossible to receive our marked essays back on time?

Whether this has happened to you or someone you know, we have all been affected by lecturers returning essays and exams late. There is nothing more stressful than an approaching deadline. We all know that feeling when we’re a good few all-nighters behind schedule and are desperately flicking through textbooks for answers to essays you still haven’t chosen the title for. But why is it that when we are 10 seconds late on hand-in day we lose precious marks, but when lecturers are weeks late, we are told to get on with it?

The University of Liverpool ‘Code of Practise’ states the following:

Of course this is completely fair. In writing this article, I don’t aim to question the University’s code of practise, but to question why there seems to be no penalty for lecturers, who are paid to mark our papers, but for us, who pay £9,000 a year plus living expenses, face leaving our education with a pass for the same thing – for some, ultimately wasting our time and money completely. How do you suppose the University directors would react if their grade, their national ranking, their reputation was reduced by 5% every 24 hours after essays were returned to student late?

Alex, a third year student at the University of Liverpool, has faced this challenge throughout her time spent at UoL told The Tab: “It’s an issue I’ve experienced a lot. It’s is definitely a massive problem with management school though.

“My work is rarely returned on time, and statistically way more pieces of my work have been given back over three week mark than not. To be honest I can’t a specific example because they all blur into one!”

Alice, who studies history and politics at University of Liverpool, has had similar experiences: “I had a lecturer who was there for one semester and she was meant to give us our history essays back mid-December so we could start working on our exam revision without having to worry about it.

“We didn’t get them back after three weeks and instead got an email saying they’d be done within four. Of course this didn’t happen, so when we eventually got them emailed back go to us I was pretty disappointed to see that the feedback box said a basic bit about the good things I’d done and the to ‘check annotations’ on the paper copy we’d also had to hand in.”

I will however be the first person to stand up for our lecturers. It’s true that they face increasing pressure from their employers with rising student numbers, larger classes in smaller theatres and faculty pay cuts, especially amongst humanities and social sciences. That being said, when we pay as much as we do, someone should have to answer for these failings.