Fed up with British bureaucracy at unis...

Hi all,
I think we all have been through here, navigating through a series of bureaucratic rats trying to get solutions to our problems. Whether that's a technical issue or submitting feedback. I am a current class rep, and most of the students' feedback remains unresolved due to "bureaucracy". Having to pass the feedback to the admin, process it, pass it to another "bureaucratic rat," etc. I find the bureaucratic system very slow and constantly having to put so much effort into getting something resolved. I cannot get started with how many times I had to wait for days or weeks to get something resolved in my uni, which "happens" to be among the top in the world. I never understood the whole process of several layers of bureaucracy and what good it does to the students. It seems like institutions want to keep staff under control and students to be obedient. I don't see any benefit to the students whatsoever. I find this type of system to be very exploitative and focuses on creating obedient citizens rather than citizens who will go out and "risk" and "innovate" to find solutions to make this world better.

Hi all,
I think we all have been through here, navigating through a series of bureaucratic rats trying to get solutions to our problems. Whether that's a technical issue or submitting feedback. I am a current class rep, and most of the students' feedback remains unresolved due to "bureaucracy". Having to pass the feedback to the admin, process it, pass it to another "bureaucratic rat," etc. I find the bureaucratic system very slow and constantly having to put so much effort into getting something resolved. I cannot get started with how many times I had to wait for days or weeks to get something resolved in my uni, which "happens" to be among the top in the world. I never understood the whole process of several layers of bureaucracy and what good it does to the students. It seems like institutions want to keep staff under control and students to be obedient. I don't see any benefit to the students whatsoever. I find this type of system to be very exploitative and focuses on creating obedient citizens rather than citizens who will go out and "risk" and "innovate" to find solutions to make this world better.

What kind of issues? Bear in mind that the complaints department in a university will probably consist of one or two people dealing with hundreds of issues most of which they are not able to resolve.
We live in a complaining / moaning society these days if social media is anything to go by with many people putting their own concerns front and centre of everything without any knowledge or appreciation of a bigger picture or the fact that their moans are generally insignificant and often based on ignorance as to how a system that serves thousands is not able to flex for individual needs or meet the ever unrealistic expectations people have on it.

At my undergrad university the people dealing with complaints would proactively reach out to some students asking them to make complaints and then mess up badly with these students making the situation much worse for them. Can't explain why these admins were doing this other than trying to artificially create work for them so they don't become redundant, in addition to a general blatant disrespect for students. I also knew students who had genuinely important issues they sought support for, the staff were like nothing to see here, no merit, nothing's going to change because we don't believe there's anything wrong with it. Then after the students were gone, the staff addressed and improved the issue they sought support for. Those former students saw that and felt like the staff knew they were right, but they just didn't want to tell them that.
Having said that, I also agree with the content in your second paragraph.

But again, without stating the nature of the complaints, how can we judge?
I teach and find that some of the young people in my presence have no sense of reality. For example, I have students who hand in their coursework two months late but then think I am being unreasonable demanding that it be handed in. What are the issues your friends are encountering out of curiosity?

"But again, without stating the nature of the complaints, how can we judge?"
Same thing applies to your argument about the complaining department only having one or two people dealing with hundreds of issues. I'm just saying there's more to it than people just like to complain and moan. Some people dealing with complaints themselves just like to complain that students just like to complain and they overlook genuine cases where a given student is struggling.
"I teach and find that some of the young people in my presence have no sense of reality. For example, I have students who hand in their coursework two months late but then think I am being unreasonable demanding that it be handed in. What are the issues your friends are encountering out of curiosity?"
When I was an undergrad we had deadlines for our assignments and we had to respect all of them. We could be several hours late, but then we'd lose a percentage of our mark. I think people could also request extensions if they had a good reason to do so, but I never did so.
My friends (from a different subject) said that one of their modules was poorly taught and assessed. They tried to address that by talking to their department about it, giving them a survey from students saying that 70% were in agreement, etc. My friends told me how their attempts to improve the module were minimised and were eventually told there's nothing wrong with the module. After they graduated, my friends looked at the module next time it was taught, and said the vast majority of the module was changed.