The impediments to their study most consistently identified as significant by the student respondents were family commitments and time management. Clearly time pressures are an important factor in the difficulties experienced due to family commitments, and taking these two factors together accounts for almost 70 per cent of the barriers identified as important impediments to the students in undertaking the course. Not surprisingly, financial constraints are mentioned although only about a third as often as family commitments and time management issues. Learning and assessment requirements of subjects are identified by some 11 per cent of the student respondents, probably reflecting the disproportionately high set work demands of the Critical Literacy subject. There were complaints about this from students and staff in both 2002 and 2003, particularly as it is the only subject with a non-graded pass, leading to decisions to make significant revisions as part of the 2003 program review of the Diploma in University Studies from which the PAL course derives. The three per cent who identified difficulties with accessing teaching and learning resources as a major impediment may well have been responding to the lack of access to the University’s library resources which it had been envisaged would be available to PAL students from the inception of the pilot. The internal university difficulties preventing this were eventually resolved in May 2003, with the combined cohort of students from the four schools breaking into spontaneous cheers and applause when this was announced to them at their joint conference, evidence of its significance to them all.
From that I imagine there’s going to be quite a lot of use [of the Library], so they are very keen to get in there and begin to feel like real university students.
One of the schools organised a tour of the library on one of the University’s city campuses within days of this announcement, indicating that the schools and the teachers also saw this as an important development as well as indicating the level at which the course was being taught and studied.
In commenting on the loss of some of their students, the staff interviewed were definite that in each case the decision to leave the course was a difficult one, reached after considerable soul searching. For each of the students involved this decision was made in response to outside pressures and crises, from the student’s complex lives, not because the course was too difficult for them, or due to a loss of interest or motivation. Factors mentioned included health issues, domestic violence, legal issues, financial problems, mental illness, drugs, family responsibilities, pregnancy, poverty and all that poverty brings.
There are a million different complex issues for them. And everything is made worse by their financial situation.
When we went through the reasons why students had decided to leave the program, they were all the victim of poverty stuff.
I find it’s a very turbulent, complex world…poverty issues, homelessness issues…And not just amongst the few students who have had to leave but also amongst those who remain. I am amazed at the tenacity of this year’s group