28th January 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
This week Cambridge University announced their plans to scale back the number of one to one supervisions available to students. Currently most supervisions are held with pairs of students, but the university runs 13% of supervisions on a one to one basis. Citing the severe funding cuts to higher education, the university said that they could save up to £600,000 a year by reducing one to one tutorials.
The announcement has attracted criticism from supervisors who maintain that one to one teaching is what makes Oxford and Cambridge stand out from other university teaching programmes. Students go through an extremely rigorous application process and workload in order to benefit from this style of teaching. In a standard week, arts student will submit one or two papers and discuss these at length with their supervisor.
If one to one supervisions are axed, students will have less time devoted to their papers, and risk unfavourable dynamics preventing them from benefitting from supervisions. The university's record on admissions and results by class and gender remain a cause for concern, and increasing the size of supervision classes risks leaving people behind.
For private tutors, the benefits of one to one tuition are very apparant. They enable tutor and student to forge a dynamic tht is specifically tailored to the student's learning needs. With 2, 3 or even 4 students in a class this cannot happen in same way.