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Matt N
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Here’s a question I have this evening; why on Earth are universities so needlessly rigid about very unimportant things?
I’m currently finalising my MSc dissertation, and the university’s requirements around certain things are… very specific, to say the least.
Firstly, let’s talk formatting. Now, I understand the need to have some standards around formatting. Good formatting is important, and if your work looks sloppy, it can make it harder to understand. I would never advocate blatantly taking the mickey with formatting (e.g. huge font size, small font size, overly brash colours, indecipherable fonts etc). But provided your work looks clean, professional, legible and generally consistent, does it really matter if your line spacing isn’t 1.5? Or your margin size isn’t 2.54cm on the left and 4cm on the right? Or if your font isn’t Times New Roman? The level of specificity seems unnecessary, in my view; provided the work looks generally clean and professional, I don’t see the need for such specific requirements.
Let’s also talk referencing. I completely agree with the need to reference; acknowledging sources and giving people due credit is important, and I would never advocate plagiarism or not crediting sources. But what I don’t get is why universities get so het up about specific referencing systems; provided I do reference where I have used external sources, does it really matter if the et als in my in-text citation are italicised or not (something I have been pulled up on before)? Or if I refer to et al with more than two authors rather than more than three? Or if I use (author, year) citations instead of little Wikipedia-style numbers in square brackets? I lost a fair few marks in my first year at undergrad because while I used lots of references, I inadvertently cited in APA instead of Harvard… despite the in-text citations looking very similar, my lecturers seemed very focused on the fact I wasn’t italicising my et als!
Another one I can think of is coursework submission. Now my current university is pretty good for this, to be fair; their online portal allows multiple submissions before the deadline, and it’s a generally intuitive system of “upload file/files, press submit”. When I was an undergrad, my university had a system that only allowed one submission. But the worst part was that when you uploaded your work, it initially only uploaded as a “draft”… and you had to press a second button to properly submit it, or else you were instantly failed and given a 0 regardless of the quality of the work submitted as a “draft”. This was very easy to miss, and in my first year, I knew lots of people who got 0s and were instantly failed without a resit opportunity purely because they only pressed one submit button and not the second one. They did change this in my 3rd year to only fail us and let us resit rather than get an instant 0 and acted like they were doing us a huge favour as a result… but I think that system almost sets students up to fail and tries to trip them up!
Does anyone else who’s been to uni think like this? Or is it just me? I get the basic principle behind having standards with these things, but I think the rigidity and specificity are excessive at times!
I’m currently finalising my MSc dissertation, and the university’s requirements around certain things are… very specific, to say the least.
Firstly, let’s talk formatting. Now, I understand the need to have some standards around formatting. Good formatting is important, and if your work looks sloppy, it can make it harder to understand. I would never advocate blatantly taking the mickey with formatting (e.g. huge font size, small font size, overly brash colours, indecipherable fonts etc). But provided your work looks clean, professional, legible and generally consistent, does it really matter if your line spacing isn’t 1.5? Or your margin size isn’t 2.54cm on the left and 4cm on the right? Or if your font isn’t Times New Roman? The level of specificity seems unnecessary, in my view; provided the work looks generally clean and professional, I don’t see the need for such specific requirements.
Let’s also talk referencing. I completely agree with the need to reference; acknowledging sources and giving people due credit is important, and I would never advocate plagiarism or not crediting sources. But what I don’t get is why universities get so het up about specific referencing systems; provided I do reference where I have used external sources, does it really matter if the et als in my in-text citation are italicised or not (something I have been pulled up on before)? Or if I refer to et al with more than two authors rather than more than three? Or if I use (author, year) citations instead of little Wikipedia-style numbers in square brackets? I lost a fair few marks in my first year at undergrad because while I used lots of references, I inadvertently cited in APA instead of Harvard… despite the in-text citations looking very similar, my lecturers seemed very focused on the fact I wasn’t italicising my et als!
Another one I can think of is coursework submission. Now my current university is pretty good for this, to be fair; their online portal allows multiple submissions before the deadline, and it’s a generally intuitive system of “upload file/files, press submit”. When I was an undergrad, my university had a system that only allowed one submission. But the worst part was that when you uploaded your work, it initially only uploaded as a “draft”… and you had to press a second button to properly submit it, or else you were instantly failed and given a 0 regardless of the quality of the work submitted as a “draft”. This was very easy to miss, and in my first year, I knew lots of people who got 0s and were instantly failed without a resit opportunity purely because they only pressed one submit button and not the second one. They did change this in my 3rd year to only fail us and let us resit rather than get an instant 0 and acted like they were doing us a huge favour as a result… but I think that system almost sets students up to fail and tries to trip them up!
Does anyone else who’s been to uni think like this? Or is it just me? I get the basic principle behind having standards with these things, but I think the rigidity and specificity are excessive at times!