Personal Points
Since I have been trying to show here that Universities in Britain have maintained an arrogant unaccountability, it will come as no surprise to hear me maintaining that, by
virtue of this, Newcastle University have severely blighted my one and only life.
I hope it appears more logical to put forward the idea that something is wrong with the way Newcastle University do things, rather than accept Newcastle's view that I am a mediocre mathematician who achieved high results early on in my education by pure fluke.
Earlier on:-
I took my O levels one year earlier than normal, at the age of 15.
I got into University originally with 4 A-Levels after just one years study (instead of the normal two years), with
a year mark in Mathematics of 98%. This was to study Mechanical Engineering.
At the bottom of the following document, you can see the name of a member of the British Cabinet, and holder of a first-class degree. At the top of the document, you can see the name of someone originally destined to follow the same path, at least academically. I should think that all the top prize winners on this page probably now have a first-class degree, apart from yours truly. .
This document from Riversdale College shows my marks in Mathematics immediately prior to going to University. I didn't have to dedicate myself to the course as a whole, because I had received an unconditional offer from Coventry University. I did simultaneously sit A-Levels, so if the date of an A-Level exam coincided with a Riversdale exam, I obviously did not sit the Riversdale one.
I experienced two main problems at Newcastle University
I had to pay for myself entirely thru my second year at Newcastle - this was actually my first year in Newcastle because I had transferred directly on to the second year. (This is on top of already having had to finance myself thru a year of study at the Polytechnic of Wales-this itself was the result of me deciding to transfer to Mathematics after studying Mechanical Engineering for one year)
There were irregularities in one of the final year exams. Given the hard time
I had during the second year (for reasons given above), my only option was to
both catch up and to achieve decent results in the final year - and then claim extenuating circumstances. Therefore these irregularities hit me very hard (the degree results were based on both second year and final
year exams).
As stated elsewhere: in a nutshell, the irregularities were as follows
To compensate for the fact that the lecturer on the Supersonic Fluid Mechanics
course was, to put it very, very mildly, not very good, the exam questions in Partial
Differential Equations (Stage 2) were fiddled - most obviously by inserting a couple of questions similar to questions set on the previous year's Partial Differential Equations (Stage 1) exam.
The said "lecturer" was actually a Professor Freeman who was due to retire at the end of the year.
For the reasons
already stated, including second year material was not a particular advantage
to me. But the real hammer blow was the fact that full completion of these
questions required knowledge of some first-year Mathematics that I had
never seen before in my life. In effect, right from the word go, it was
impossible for me to attain
decent results on this exam. It reminds me of the quiz on the Kenny Everett Show where you had to get
31 points to win anything, by answering three questions each worth 10 points.
Since I cannot, under exam conditions of 3 hours allowed
time, solve mathematical questions of the type that I never seen before in my life, I was rather disadvantaged. In short, no matter how hard I worked
at the 3rd. year material, I would never have been able to do the questions which stemmed from the period
when I was not a student at Newcastle - the option
of getting a result which reflected my true ability was just not open to me.
One very important point needs to be stressed, a point that is extremely important in itself, but which also needs to be stressed in view of the fact that it is never considered by people who just form opinions with their clairvoyant hats on.
The amount of time that I spent working on Supersonic Fluid Mechanics was absolutely enormous - at least twice as much time as on any other unit, on a very conservative estimate. If the course had been taught properly, then not only would I have achieved a much higher result with much less effort, but I would also have had an enormous amount of extra time to dedicate to the other units. I cannot envisage ever putting more effort into any piece of work as I the amount of work I put into the study of A3/2. I put in at least twice as much work as on any other unit - and the result :- a mark which was only 2% above a fail.
This situation is most definitely humiliating for me. How am I supposed to feel, given there are people who are aware of my past educational history, and can compare it with my present low qualifications. What am I supposed to say if anyone asks me how I managed to achieve such a low degree?.
Previously, I would have been made up to be following a career
in Fluids - Aviation, Jet Engines etc. are a particular passion of mine. That
all went out of the window completely when, despite the enormous amount of work
that I had done on the Supersonic Fluid Mechanics unit, I found that I could
not do any of the questions on this exam.
O.H. King (my personal tutor)
This situation was not improved when I complained about the situation to my
Personal Tutor, a Pure Mathematician. He just baldly stated, after
investigation, that I had hardly done anything on the Fluid Mechanics section
- blithely unaware that no-one else had done anything on the Fluid
Mechanics section either. So as a result of this, every chance of a good reference
from that particular person !
Although King knew full that I was having to pay for myself, it is remarkable that he never once, during my entire time at Newcastle, asked about my financial situation. He never asked what I was doing to get some money together, or how hard I was finding it, or about anything at all related to my financial situation.
What kind of idiot does King think I am by sugesting that I would enter my final exams,
the crucial exams for my entire future, and achieve fairly decent marks in most exams
while simultaneously doing so little work for one particular section that I could not do
any of the questions? I find it offensive that anyone could suggest that. What kind of employer would be happy to accept someone who
acted like that as a student?
On one occasion. Tyne Tees Television tried to contact me by phone, but
were told by the Maths. Department that I was not a student
there. On complaining to King about this he said :
"They probably didn't have the list of students handy"
indicating that he wasn't going to do anything else about it. I had been informed by Tyne-Tees that they would telephone me if they wanted to see me again, and contact me by post if they didn't. In the event, I never heard from them again at all, which leads me to suspect that they did ring the Maths. Dept. only to be told again that I was not a student there.
On being awarded a worthless degree (not just a worthless grade, but also
containing an extremely low mark in Fluid Mechanics which previously would have been
a favored area for employment), King says
"Don't worry - not everyone has a Maths degree"
On complaing to King about the highly-likely scenario of
attaining (fairly) good marks in two Applied Maths units and doing
absolutely nothing in the other, King replies
"I have looked at your paper and you did practically nothing on the Fluid Mechanics"
- A classic case of what is known as Goebbel's Rule i.e how to lie without saying anything untrue. What King said was perfectly true, but takes on a different light when it is realised that all students did practically nothing on the Fluid Mechanics part of the exam. That's why it was necessary to fiddle the other half of the exam.
Following on from the above, although I have no way of actually proving it, I do believe that every student (all 10 of us) attempted to answer the three "easy" questions on the P.D.E. (Part 2) section of the exam, got disproportionally high marks for these three questions (most of us anyway !), and then found they could not do any of the other questions on the paper.
Whenever Newcastle University have threatened me with libel action if I continue to make certain accusations, I have immediately repeated these accusations, as often and as widely as possible. No action has been forthcoming.
I have also gained a B.A. in German as an external student at London University.
This was very much like a hobby - a lot of people relax by reading
books etc., and likewise I would
just relax by reading German books, when I needed a rest from everything else.
Despite this semi-prepared, casual attitude
- I reached an overall mark not all that different from that of my Maths degree from Newcastle.
- Once I had got exciting subjects like Mediaeval German out of the way at the first level, I never achieved a mark as low as the 42% that I achieved in the final year A3/2 Maths unit at Newcastle - and this is despite the fact that I have never worked so hard on a unit, in my entire life, as I did on this A3/2 unit - at least as twice as much time as on any other Maths unit at Newcastle.
The Head of the Mathematics Department at the time was R. Dye,
whose leadership qualities first made themselves known to me when he refused to do
anything about an second-year exam that had been brought forward by two full weeks at the last
moment. Since then, he has been elevated to the rank of
professor.
-
The only way then left open to me to pursue my objective of a Ph.D. was to
study for an M.Sc first.
I was not eligible for a grant for an M.Sc, so the old problems started surfacing again.
On top of that,
the only option open to me that was within my financial constraints was to stay
in Newcastle and study at Durham (I did have offers from other Universities, but I couldn't
contemplate the cost of a move).
I soon had other problems because I was not really
properly qualified to study this particular course - it relied
heavily on Quantum Mechanics, which was not a subject offered at Newcastle, but which
I had studied on my own initiative
with the Open University. Unfortunately I had not reached a high enough level
with the OU to enable me to
step right into the course at Durham.
So, in fact, what should
really be an advantage i.e. the
fact that I studied to acquire some knowledge
of Quantum Mechanics totally on my own initiative, actually becomes a great disadvantage
as I struggled to complete the course at Durham, with no great honors (or references) at all.
And after all this, I find that, by virtue of my extremely poor degree result (2/2), there is no chance of me getting a grant for a Ph.D, in any case.
And at the end of all this, this is the financial situation I am left in