The Secret Lecturer by Secret Lecturer
'You don't have to read too many pages of this sizzling personal account of day-to-day life as a university lecturer to appreciate why the author has chosen to remain anonymous...' - Dennis Sherwood, Author, Missing the Mark
Oddball students, racist colleagues and inept administrators.
Rising business influence and crumbling academic freedom.
Absurdly wasteful corporate schemes and broken toilets.
Low student welfare, an unwillingness to fail anyone and an A+ explosion in cheating...
For a decade, students and academics have been painfully aware of the deteriorating state of UK universities. But the public has only been able to glean anecdotal accounts about poor value for money, underwhelming lecturers, falling standards and creaking facilities.
Now, after a decade of frozen tuition fees, an anonymous academic presents a no-holds-barred account of life on campus.
Unsparing in their remarks, the Secret Lecturer takes you into the seminar room (a repurposed store cupboard, as it happens), the cranky staff meetings, the botched disciplinary meetings and a complicated town vs gown relationship.
If you've ever wondered what it's like to study or work at many British universities in the 2020s, The Secret Lecturer will have you rattling through a book faster than a panicked undergraduate on an essay deadline.
Whether you are filling in your UCAS form, moving into a university hall of residence, or just want to know what life is like in a modern college, this book has the low-down.
The Secret Lecturer does for higher education in the UK what The Secret Barrister did for the law courts: reveal the unedifying, sometimes strange truth about a system we think we all know.
'There’s incredible impact in this book because the nonsensical administration, the casual acceptance of corrupt or lazy practice, and the sheer frustration of those doing their best to counteract such things all feel sadly all too familiar. Reading The Secret Lecturer reinforces the feeling that we have lost our integrity in order to retain wealth and our own status and self-importance. But if this sounds unremittingly negative, then don’t be misled. The Secret Lecturer (both book and author) conveys a dry, ironic and often self-deprecating humour and considerable humanity, particularly through consideration of mental health, sexism and racism... I found The Secret Lecturer fascinating. It’s pithy, political and revealing. It’s a book that will astonish some and feel all too familiar to others. I urge you to read it too.' Linda Hill, Linda's Book Bag
'Beyond the often amusing accounts of interactions with difficult people, there are also numerous moments where the author offers a glimpse into what reads as more systemic issues such as grade inflation and student cheating, institutional relationships with the arms trade (an issue the author is especially morally outraged by) and the wider influence of corporate interests on academic research, the struggle for research time and pressure to produce, casual instances of prejudice that appear to go unremarked and unchecked, and a particularly poignant account of advising a disabled student who is struggling to get the support they are entitled to from their institution. Many of these issues are all too familiar to anyone working in or around the sector, and the effect of seeing them all in one account is, as the author intends, to push the reader towards the conclusion that higher education is on an “intellectual, moral, ideological and administrative precipice”.' Debbie McVitty, Ediro, WONKE * Dennis Sherwood. Author, Missing the Mark *
An anonymous UK academic exposes what really goes on inside British universities: debt, grade inflation, burnout, racism – while still believing in the power of education. Sharp, funny campus nonfiction for parents and students.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781914487217 |
| ISBN 10 | 1914487214 |
| Title | The Secret Lecturer |
| Author | Secret Lecturer |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Canbury Press |
| Year published | 2024-03-28 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |