The University of Cambridge’s English Faculty will be making large cuts to supervision hours across all Colleges from the start of the next academic year.

As of October, English Literature students starting Part I of their Tripos will be subject to new “supervision norms”: strict guidelines designed to ensure equality across all Colleges in supervision hours.

A recent Varsity investigation revealed that the contact hours for English students can range from approximately 58 to 108 hours between different Colleges. The new supervision norms will aim to reduce the average to 49 hours per year across the entire University, according to the official document released by the Faculty of English.

A spokesman for the faculty of English has stated that one aim of the norms is “to level the playing field and make sure that students receive a consistent level of supervision regardless of the College to which they belong.”  The norms will also help to reduce expenditure in the University.

Bhavik Shah, 1st Year English student at King’s and English Faculty Rep, feels that the cuts are not entirely fair. “The problem is that the cuts still seem disproportionate. The new average has been set below the lowest figures.” This is partially accounted for by a reduction in compulsory papers in the new Tripos from 7 to 6. The official document claims that the old Paper 7 “contribute[d] an average of 11 hours per year to the current annual average figure of 75”. This still leads to a further reduction of 15 hours.

“To be fair, the faculty has not gone about this in the wrong way,” claims Shah. “The faculty did consult undergraduates at a series of open meetings, as well as the Senior Tutors of each College. It just seems hard to believe that it is necessary to make cuts here. It’s a shame, considering the rise in tuition fees that students have recently experienced.”

A spokesman for the Faculty of English has confirmed that all Colleges have already agreed to respect the norms. Likewise, the established supervision norms for current undergraduates will continue to apply.

“It seems problematic that supervision hours are being lowered when the course is so reliant upon sessions of close contact,” states Shah. “People look closely at the contact hours when choosing courses. It isn’t the lectures, but the supervision system that makes Cambridge stand out.”

The National Student Survey reports one to one education to be of the highest value in both English and History. Yet the English Faculty, in the document of information on the norms, cite the average figures for other subjects to be significantly lower in comparison, with the 2008-9 comparable figure for History, Arch & Anth, and Philosophy at 27 and Theology at 23. Whether such subjects share similar enough needs to form a valid comparison still appears the subject of debate.

Many current English Literature students place little value upon lectures. Jean Veraine, an Erasmus student from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon currently reading English Literature at Churchill, stated that the lectures in Cambridge seemed “rather superficial and empty” in comparison. “Contrary to my school in France, where you have to prepare something for every lecture, here you are not very stimulated - it feels like no one reads the texts the lecturer is mentioning.”

However, a spokesperson for the Faculty of English has confirmed that changes to lecture provision are being made with the new Tripos. “Very considerable efforts have also been made to improve the timetabling of lectures in order to make the teaching we provide more effective for students. We would anticipate that the impact of these improvements will be a slight increase in both the quantity and quality of lectures overall.”

Swelling tuition fees have led to an increased disillusionment in the worth of certain degrees. Reports this week from Which/HEPI show that students across the country are beginning to take a more consumerist approach to degree choices: basing their decisions around the economic value, rather than on the “intrinsic academic worth”, of their degrees. This seems to be an ideal that is rapidly slipping over the horizon.

Yet a spokesperson for the Faculty of English states that their consultations, and analysis of the National Student Survey for Cambridge English over several years, have shown that “too many students felt overburdened by the requirements of the old Tripos.” In spite of this, the tension felt by students at this change speaks for itself.