Timetabling chaos at Cardiff University as new term looms

Martin Shipton

Academics at Cardiff University are expecting chaos when the new semester starts because of huge problems involving the timetabling of teaching.

Lecturers who have spoken to Nation.Cymru say a decision to centralise all timetabling is going to leave newly arriving students unsure of where to go for lectures and seminars.

One academic said :“Up until now all the timetabling has been done in departments and schools by administrative support staff. Now the university has decided that responsibility for timetabling will be removed from the departments and organised centrally by staff who are not experienced in the complexity of what needs to be done.

“Up until now it’s been possible as an academic teacher to arrange spaces for teaching sessions in liaison with admin staff in the department. That’s no longer going to be possible.

“When students turn up next week or the week after, many will not know where they will need to go for teaching sessions. In the past timetables have been sorted out months in advance. The students will blame the teachers and the support staff when it is not their fault – it really is a shambles.It’s going to be even worse for students doing joint honours, because they’ll be involved with two departments.

“All the academics in the university know about the coming chaos and realise it will have a huge impact on student satisfaction and cause reputational damage to the university – the exact opposite of what the senior management wants.

“I have no idea how this came about, but Wendy Larner, the Vice Chancellor, was criticised over a similar restructuring exercise at the university she ran in New Zealand.”

‘Doesn’t work’

Another academic said: “I’m told someone’s spent £9m on a new timetabling system at Cardiff that doesn’t work.

The university has centralised timetabling so schools don’t do it themselves any more. This process has been described as ‘complex’ – code for ‘completely f….d up’. Even now some academics don’t know where and when they will be teaching, and the Autumn Semester starts in 10 days.

Alongside this, the university has bought new timetabling software – which I am told, putting it generously, is no better than the old system. Parts of it don’t work. I am told £9m has been spent procuring this and the senior person responsible has either been moved or sacked, I don’t know which.

“I have also been told that medical students had been scheduled to do clinical sessions in Treforest, then 10 minutes after that ends they are meant to be back in Cardiff for lectures. Obviously the Tardis isn’t an available form of public transport.

“By the way, the university was due to publish the next phase of Academic Futures on September 10. This involved more centralisation and more expensive managerial jobs at the centre. It hasn’t been published yet, so maybe there has been pushback.”

Turmoil

Since the beginning of the year the university has been in turmoil involving job cuts and school closures.

A Cardiff University spokesperson said: “We do not recognise the £9m figure you are quoting. We are experiencing some delays with timetables as we implement a new timetabling system.

“We’re working hard to resolve the issue. The majority of our academic Schools have either published their timetables or are on track to do so by Welcome Week.”