Hi All

Appartently if you are a researcher at Manchester Metropolitan you are now lucky to get access to the John Dalton tower which is the science and engineering center as I recieved an email yesterday regarding access to the building on monday 4th which stated the following

"We have been lucky enough to get access to the building on Monday May 4th... from 9am to 4pm"

I wish somebody had told me before I did my PhD that I would need to be lucky just to get access to the building to do my experiments for my PhD :p Anybody out there who is thinking of pursuing a PhD at Manchester metropolitan better be a lucky person or else they might not get access to the building at all :-(

Myostatin, do you have a PhD rep that can advocate on your behalf for better opening hours? Are management fully aware of the problems of restricted access hours? Depts will normally work around these matters by putting in place new access systems.

I've read lots of bad press about both Manchester Met and John Moore's University over the past several months...and it all seems to boil down to poor management issues.

I think this is more to do with Monday 4 May being a bank holiday. I'm sure access is normally fine but as a lot of people don't work on bank holidays then sometimes places aren't open so special access has to be arranged. But as we all know bank holidays don't exist in the world of PhDs!

I suspect it's the downside of doing a PhD at a teaching not research intensive university. MMU didn't enter your department in the RAE by the looks of things, so I guess research resources are not going to be prioritised, and that does mean things like limited access hours, because it's expensive to provide the relevant security / health and safety cover needed. They'll choose things to help undergrads over research students because that's their priority. Somewhere like Manchester Uni on the other hand that really pushes research, and expects their lecturing staff to be in the lab at all hours and their research students with them, would probably make the opposite decision. I suppose the question your position raises, is whether teaching intensive universities should offer PhDs in areas like science where resources are so crucial.

Ya bewildered I think you make a very vaild point about teaching universites and science I also think that alot of it has to do with the management in place at such universites they just dont seem to understand the concept of research and especially they do not seem to understand the mentality of researchers who really want to dedicate themselves to their work because they love what they do. As regards our department it was entered into the rae and for the section that our research institute was placed in there was an increase in the rae score for mmu so there should be extra money for that which i believe should go towards providing better access for the researchers who helped improve this score but seeing as this is mmu that would be to smart of a thing for them to do :)

Miss spacey yes in my opinon any bad press you read about mmu is probably justified and true. I can only comment on my situation which is from my experience mmu is not a good university to go if you want to do a serious research PhD in science. As regards advocating better opening hours I have met personally with the head of research for mmu to air my grievances and have also emailed the dean of science who has not responded to any of my emails. My supervisor as well has been recieving very little if any feedback either from the dean of science regarding this issue. I also wrote in desperation to the vice chancellor as well regarding this issue and did not recieve any reply back. From speaking to other phd students and researchers there is unamious support for better access but university management just seem to ignore our requests.

Pamw yes you are right bank holidays dont really exist in the world of a molecular biologist phd student who has already been slowed down enormously by the building opening times already and is on a three year funded studentship who must complete within the three years as has no back up money to finance himself when funding runs out and just wants to get out of the negative support for research atmosphere at mmu as fast as possible.

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I think it's just because it was bank holiday.