In recent years the value of the undergraduate grant has steadily decreased.
Now it is frozen at this year’s level. Postgraduate grants from research
councils and other bodies have tended to keep in line with the weekly value
of the undergraduate grant and have also been dropping in value, although
fortunately they have not been frozen at the current level.

More and more undergraduate students have been turning to part-time
jobs during term time, and full-time jobs during the holidays. This option
isn’t available for research postgraduates, as they are committed as full-time
students to work all but six or so weeks a year, and so they lose on two
fronts.

Well, actually, they lose on far more than two fronts. To counteract
the effects of the freezing of the grant level, the government has set up
a scheme whereby undergraduates can now take out Student Loans from the
Glasgow-based Student Loan Company.

Postgraduates, however, are not eligible for a student loan, and so
they cannot take advantage of the preferential interest rates and extended
repayment schemes.

A further solid financial blow was delivered by the recent housing and
benefit ‘reforms’ for those living in rented accommodation. Last year’s
relaxation of control over private landlords and rent levels meant that
the concept of a fair rent was removed, leaving landlords free to demand
whatever amount they wanted.

With accommodation problems in universities and polytechnics across
the country, postgraduates are generally left to fend for themselves in
the private housing market, unable to get places in university-subsidised
accommodation.

The situation became even worse with the withdrawal of Housing Benefit
(the rebate payed to those paying higher rents) from all students – this
is probably the worst of the adversities facing postgraduates.

Consider this alongside the abolition of the rating system and the introduction
of the poll tax, the Community Charge.

Previously, rates were usually payed as part of the rent, but after
the abolition of the rating system few landlords reduced the rent to pass
this saving on to the tenant. So tenants, including students, will now be
paying the old rates in addition to the new Community Charge.

Many scientific research students are now also being affected by the
delay in increasing the grants to those funded by the Science and Engineering
Research Council and the Medical Research Council, as David Gray reported
in a recent letter to New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ (3 November).

The increase would normally take place in October, but it will now only
happen in April next year, helping the councils to live within their budgets,
but also depriving those students of several hundred much-needed pounds.

So what does this mean for a typical research postgraduate at, say,
the University of Stirling? The weekly value of the grant is 69 Pounds,
and that is your total income. Outgoings are 31 Pounds for rent, 23 Pounds
for food, 2 Pounds for bills, 4 Pounds for travelling to work, and 1.50
Pounds for the Community Charge. That comes to 61.50 Pounds, leaving a mammoth
7.50 Pounds, and the student hasn’t done anything but sleep eat, keep warm
and go to work! If you buy a couple of books, you spend a couple of months’
disposable income!

Morale, then, cannot be anything other than low among research postgraduates,
and little wonder. Consider the friends of our typical research postgraduate.

They graduated with the same degree as you at the same time, two years
ago. They now both earn in the region of 13,000 Pounds to 15,000 Pounds,
and one is buying his own flat, and the other drives a nice car and goes
to foreign climes for her holidays.

Material wealth is obviously not that important to the average postgrad,
but this example just shows what major incentives there are for not going
on to further study.

As the ‘demographic time bomb’ takes effect, it is employers that are
placing more and more value on graduates, offering ever-increasing incentives
to entice them into industry. For a science graduate the temptation is usually
even more pronounced, with much higher salaries being offered than to arts
graduates.

The crux, then, is the effect this will have on the future of academic
research in this country. For someone to commit themselves to a three- or
four-year undergraduate course is a big step, when they know that at the
end of it they are likely to have a large debt hanging over them. To consider
further study under even greater financial hardship may be thought by some
to be the first signs of mental instability.

Yet people do still want to extend their academic career, and undertake
research. How long this will continue to be the case is another matter.

Unless the most important resource, people, are encouraged in a manner
that reflects their value, the likelihood of an increase, or even maintenance,
of the number of research students is nil.

Steve Jones is in the Department of Computing Sciences at the University
of Stirling.

Consumers perceive that they can avoid the expense of training staff
to use otherwise unusable computer products if they buy a system that is
sufficiently ‘user friendly’ in the first place. In turn, manufacturers
have realised that consumers think like this, hence the proliferation of
products accompanied by claims of user-friendliness.

A year ago, a colleague and I took delivery of a highly regarded machine.
Over several years it has established a reputation for being both easy to
learn and to use, while maintaining sufficient raw computing power to make
it apt for a variety of applications. We were quite excited about using
it. This feeling turned to disappointment when, after a few weeks, we had
a long list of problems with its interface which had a direct and adverse
effect on our ability to understand or use the machine effectively and efficiently.

Either we were particularly inept (my colleague is a professor of information
technology and I am a graduate in computing science, so one would hope not),
or others had also experienced problems similar to, or the same as, the
ones that we encountered. I coerced three ‘volunteers’ with varying degrees
of computer experience into learning to use the machine. I presented them
with my machine, its user manual and the required floppy discs, and set
them to it. I then observed their efforts and, despite pitiful pleadings,
gave no advice.

How did they fare? Disturbingly badly. All three had difficulty even
switching the machine on. The switch is out of sight, and they searched
for it at the bottom back right of the case – it is in the middle back left.
Two of my subjects had to peer around the rear before discovering it. To
make matters worse, the switch conforms to the American standard of up for
on, and down for off.

When it came to the user manual, they couldn’t understand a large proportion
of this because of the use of jargon such as system software, installers
and system tools.

Starting up a word-processing application involved physically swapping
two floppy discs in and out of the machine almost 20 times. After a few
swaps, the volunteers were showing signs of removing and inserting the discs
with a little more force than necessary. All gave up at this point, and
they hadn’t even begun to do anything constructive. An ‘easy to learn’ computer
had lasted an hour before the naive users came across what they thought
to be an insurmountable problem.

A few weeks later, I managed to persuade the subjects to come back and
try the word processor once more. This time I attached a hard disc to the
machine, which removed the need for disc swapping (sighs of relief). They
all remembered the basic interaction techniques required – pointing, clicking,
dragging, selecting. This wasn’t much use, though, when it was not obvious
to them that the screen’s ruler was marked in inches, or that an inch of
it was missing from the left of the screen. Nor was it apparent that typed
spaces and blank spaces are treated differently even though they look the
same on the screen, or that the command to save a file had actually done
so.

I could continue listing problems for the rest of this page that these
naive users encountered. But the point is that I would be surprised if there
were anyone who had learnt to use a new computer and new applications without
experiencing numerous, unnecessary difficulties. Manufacturers claim user-friendliness
for their machines, and some come closer to achieving it than others, but
‘user tolerant’ is probably a more apt description. Some systems are still
downright ‘user hostile’.

Computer hardware and software is a multimillion pound worldwide industry.
Millions of pounds are spent each year on research and development of new
products. These improvements, however, seem to be mostly in the area of
functionality. ‘Upgraded’ and ‘improved’ generally seem to mean ‘We have
added another 25 features’ rather than anything to do with usability. Having
spent thousands of pounds developing the functionality of a product, surely
it makes sense for a company to invest in making those features easy to
learn and use so as to increase its share of the market as much as possible?
The word processor I am now using has a screen test facility which draws
nice patterns on the screen. I haven’t used it; I don’t need to use it;
it does not help me in writing and formatting documents. The system also
has a spell checker which is very useful. However, it doesn’t check the
spelling as I type and it contains spelling mistakes itself. It seems obvious
which facility deserves the development effort.

This is not to denigrate the advances that the industry has made in
computer usability, but there is still much to be done. I look forward to
the day when everyone will be able to walk up to a computer and use it effectively
without surrounding themselves with manuals, and investing much time and
effort in gaining the required knowledge. Until that day, I wish manufacturers
would restrain from making subjective and usually inaccurate claims about
their system’s amicable attitude towards the user.

Steve Jones is a PhD student in the Department of Computing Science
at the University of Stirling.