Jia Hui Lee, Education Officer at CUSU, has condemned Cambridge’s complaints procedures for being “inadequate”. When asked by Varsity about the publication of recent figures that revealed that more than 20,000 students nationally lodged complaints with their universities over the last academic year, Lee suggested that the university’s complaints procedures are far from clear-cut.

In Cambridge, the collegiate system means that complaints from students about their courses are handled individually by their colleges. Accordingly, Lee suggests that the “depoliticising structure” of the collegiate university means that “the University does not know the number of academic complaints that each college receives on an annual basis”. Without this knowledge, the University cannot provide support for complainants, as the Student Complaints and Appeals Section of the Academic Division simply has “responsibility for the administrative oversight of student complaints”.

In all, says Lee, the University must do more to “ensure inclusive environments for students with diff erent learning abilities who come from a diverse range of backgrounds”, by making the resolution of any academic complaints much simpler. The current approach is “inadequate”, since “there remains a lot of confusion, even among tutors, about how best to resolve such issues [concerning student complaints].”

University policy states that the formal stage of a complaint can only begin if “the problem is particularly serious, or that when it was raised informally there was refusal to deal with it”. At the formal stage, colleges often insist upon a written statement, and at Corpus Christi students are expected to produce a list of names, witness statements, and documentary evidence with a contents page and numbered pages. At Gonville and Caius, complainants must write to the Master to initiate a complaint. These intimidating beginnings are then further complicated by standard clauses such as that which appears in Murray Edwards’ policy: “the College may take disciplinary action against a student making frivolous, vexatious or malicious complaints.”

Complaints are expected to begin informally, with the issue being raised with a Director of Studies, Tutor or Senior Tutor. There is pressure on complainants to keep their concerns informal, such that very few complaints ever make it to the formal stage of the procedure. Over half of the Senior Tutors who responded to enquiries about their colleges’ policies reported having no experience of dealing with formal complaints. The university also recommends that “the student should if possible raise the complaint directly with the person responsible for the matter”, but recognises that “It may not always be easy to do this if the complaint is about the conduct of this person”.

One first-year HSPS student experienced this lack of structure in the informal process when they complained about their supervisor, who also happened to be their Director of Studies. The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, raised concerns about the supervisor “because his supervisions were about 20 minutes long, and he failed to turn up to a few and I felt like I should say something”. Having heard that negative comments had been voiced, the supervisor then directly emailed the student, asking them to explain the grounds for the complaint either in person or by email: “I chose the email option, but a friend who also gave negative feedback got the same email and opted for the meeting. It was quite embarrassing really,as I wasn’t expecting to be confronted directly by him.”

Nevertheless, this confrontational approach seems to have worked, as a compromise was reached when the supervisor “conceded that he had been a little caught up in his other roles, [and] pointed out the fact that I perhaps could invest more in the supervisions”.

The time-scale for complaints varies considerably between colleges, with Christ’s, Selwyn and Fitzwilliam promising that the Complaints Officer (normally the Senior Tutor) will investigate and respond within 14 days, whereas Robinson’s policy vaguely promises a response in “reasonable time”. In theory, a complainant could lose a significant amount of supervision time in the interim, or repeatedly have to face the supervisor about whom they have complained.

As supervisions are integral to teaching in Cambridge, Jia Hui argues that “there is scope (and even pressure) on the collegiate University to seriously review how they deal with students who may have fallen through the cracks in terms of their access to quality supervisions.”

More broadly, David Willetts, Universities and Science Minister, welcomed the findings on the level of student complaints: “If there are more complaints because students are more aware of what they should expect of funding and are [in consequence] more demanding, then I think that’s a good thing.” 

"When there’s a fee of £9,000, the university is obliged to show what they’re doing and provide a decent service."

In February, Varsity found that College sexual harassment procedures were similarly obscure, with some students left unwilling or unclear of how to report serious incidents.