Students at the University of York can look forward to a number of benefits to the “Student Experience” following a £2million investment by the university’s senior management group.
The improvements, announced earlier this week, includes further improvements to the library, additional lecturing staff, and work to improve graduation employment opportunities through internships.
The University is currently undertaking a hiring process which will see departments with some of the lowest student to staff ratios authorised to appoint an additional 20 lecturer posts, whilst it has been confirmed that the library will trial 24-hour opening times in the summer of this year.
University registrar David Duncan told Vision, “Those appointed will provide academic leadership in a range of disciplines, with a weighting towards the sciences.
“The successful candidates will therefore play a role at both the undergraduate and postgraduate stages; they will also boost York’s performance in the next Research Assessment Exercise, which has been re-named the Research Excellence Framework.”
York achieved 8th place in the UK in the last exercise in 2008.
YUSU President Tim Ellis commented, “The increase in student-staff ratios is a very welcome and and much-needed improvement, particularly in some key departments. However, this is only a first step to ensuring that the teaching at York matches students’ expectation.
“The initial commitments made by the University in spending the extra-revenue generated by the increase in fees is a good start but is by no means enough. Some of the improvements outlined are things that were already committed to before the higher fees were announced, most notably the 24-hour opening of the library and it is important that we don’t stop here but continue to increase investment into the student experience. We will continue to lobby the University to increase its spending on the things that directly affect students and will be using the results of our ‘What Are You Paying For?’ survey to do this.”
The changes are all set to come into place in time for the 2012/13 academic year.