As a university administrator, I have been worrying that the current series may give a slightly unrealistic impression of what can be expected from a personal tutor. One of my colleagues has been doing quite a lot of work recently on personal tutoring arrangements, so I asked for his views on the Doctor's arrangement with Bill.
It turns out that there are quite a few problems:
- Giving tuition to a non-fee paying unenrolled student (unless the Doctor went back in time to sort out Bill's UCAS and Student Loan applications)
- Favouritism
- Teaching outside core hours (tutorials at 6.00 p.m.)
- Daily tutorials, which are not scalable in today's mass higher education system and are not sustainable from a resource point of view
- 'Field work' undertaken without a risk assessment or ethics approval
- MASSIVE health and safety concerns
His conclusion? "Mind-blowing educational experience notwithstanding, this clearly calls for a solid bureaucratic crackdown, BUT if ownership of the bigger-on-the-inside technology reverts to the university* then all is forgiven."
* This would depend on the university's intellectual property policy.
Thanks to Dr Arne Hofmann for kindly giving me permission to post this.
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