I’m coming to the last bit of my exchange (as an arts student). Before I went on exchange there were many things I didn’t like about unimelb, but I can promise after my exchange, other unis are worse. And I won’t say where I am on exchange, other than it’s a European university. Because, I want my exchange subjects to actually be credited by unimelb to my degree.
Unimelb generally has 12 week semesters (plus seasonal terms). Here, we have university continuously from mid January until the start of June. No week long mid semester break, even for easter. Just occasional public holidays. Though instead of unimelb having everything condensed, we do two subjects at a time. And arts has even less contact hours than unimelb. Often it’s just one lecture a week (can be two or three hours). Tutorials? They don’t have them here. And only one subject uses seminars, in which participation is the assessment.
Administration: I thought stop1 was bad. Here it’s even worse. Admin support is only available ~6 hours a week, and the hours are usually Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays from 8 to 10am. Working/have class and can’t call at that time? Too bad.
With unimelb you just enrol in subjects and class times. Here, we first enrol in a subject. Then we have to “register” for the subject in the week before classes start. Then we have to attend the first lecture, if we don’t we lose our enrolment if there is a waiting list. Oh and you have to register for exams too, which leads to me to:
Exams: Well, my first exam was on a Saturday. So that sucked. (And that is normal here).
We have to register for exams. If you don’t, you may be able to sit the exam on the day. But only if someone who signed up for the exam doesn’t show up, and then you can sit their paper. But you have to wait for the first half hour of the exam, in case they do show up. And if they don’t, you can take the exam in the remaining time but can’t get those 30 minutes back.
Oh, and having a student card is not enough, you do have to bring your passport to verify you are who you say you are. And if you don’t have it, too bad.
On the plus side, you can signup for re sits. There is no need for medical reasons. However, if you passed the exam on the first try you often can’t resit it for a better mark.
Coursework: So much easier than unimelb. Here English is taught as a second language for most staff and students. So the content is much simpler. In one week, we had to read a document. And then the lecturer had us say “what goods were being exported? How many farms were there?” Yeah, uh, like year 7 reading comprehension.
We don’t really have research essays, all my take-home exams so far have been “write an essay restating the course content”. And lectures are completely acceptable materials to cite, in such cases.
Lectures are never recorded. If you are lucky, the lecture slides might be uploaded to canvas. Or not. In one of my subjects, only 2 of the 10 lecture slides were uploaded to canvas. And we only had 2 journal articles to read in the entire course.
In one of my current subjects, the lectures are being given by a PhD student. Others are taught by lecturers (with PhDs). But their teaching methods are sometimes, well, unorthodox. One tried to teach us democracy by turning the lights off, and then said “by show of hands, who wants the lights back on?”
Attendance: Generally no real attendance requirements, if you pass the exam you’ve completed the subject
Ethnicity: Treated much more flippantly here, even to the point of racism. One lecturer instead of calling people’s names when she wanted them to answer, would just yell out their nationality instead. As in “Ukraine!’; “Finland” etc. Another older student asked “if an indigenous person, moves off the land to a big city. And gets a job there. Is that a good thing, or is that sad. And are they even indigenous anymore?” Yikes!