Keele University Reviews

- Very much a top-down institution. Management has no interest in listening to what teachers and lecturers have to say about problems or areas for improvement. Raising these issues will have you labelled as problem. Culture of silence. - Bullying and harassment by management is a norm. Mechanisms to address it do not work. No confidentiality or will to actually create healthy working environments. - Foreign students are treated with contempt. Keele is happy to take their money but then brief teachers working with masters students the day before on what they should be teaching, sometimes even the morning. - Teachers not given freedom to plan their own lessons creatively thanks to last minute communication of course aims/content. - Insufficient planning time. - Focus on quantity and just 'getting through the course' as opposed to quality of teaching and learning and the fact that students have paid thousands of pounds to study at Keele and have travelled from another continent in many cases. Is a covert form of racism. Very cynical. - No concept of work/life balance. - A chancellor with an interest in ecology is great, but on the ground, issues of white supremacy and patriarchy are unresolved and unspoken of at Keele.

Keele University used to be different to other academic institutions, with a strong sense of community, staff living on campus, friendly atmosphere, down to earth and approachable management... After over 10 years of being an academic there, it is fair to say this is not the case anymore. Higher management have delusional views of what Keele should be, and have dragged the university and its staff to a point where people are quitting in droves. Management-staff relations are abysmal, with the current management style being defined as dictatorial and strikes becoming the new normal. The advent of OneKeele -a move to remove admin and support staff- has meant that academics spend more time doing menial admin tasks than researching and teaching. What used to be a university that excelled when it came to teaching and learning has become a place where staff are "encouraged" to provide better marks to students. Research is on the way out, as staff have no time for it, yet management expects to compete with Oxbridge. This means that staff is expected to work and be on call 24/7, leaving little room to anything that resembles a work-life balance.