Arts is pretty much the same, I haven't sat a tutorial at Macquarie university in any of my class (arts/law) that is more than one hour.
To be honest, I don't think for Arts it matters so much. When I was at my old uni, we had 3 hour lectures and 2 hour tutorials and I used to hate my life, especially since they seemed like such a waste.
Having said that.... for Law I think the extra hour in the tutorials would certainly benefit students a hell of a lot, especially since lecturers are so pressed for time during lectures to deliver all the relevant information. The tutorials are really what you rely on to ask those significant questions and to have those super-significant topics addressed.
So yes, I think it would certainly help to have that extra hour in tutorials for law. I've heard 2 Law tutors mention already that they think it is a shame that the university has cut that back.
No they're not paid, but it looks incredible on their CVs and also I believe you need to have done quite well in order to be a mentor for a particular subject. It also helps them rehash what they've learnt so they don't forget/become slack.
Yeah we're pretty active in that regard, lots and lots of mooting we're also participants of the international jessup (look it up).
To be honest, I don't have anything tangible to compare it to. I haven't studied law at any of the other universities, I know people who study law at UWS and at UTS and I also know someone who studies at UNSW.
UWS and UTS don't have the reputation in the industry that Macquarie does (as far as I know), which goes right back to the whole prestige thing. Because Macquarie is the third law school in NSW.
From what I know those two universities adopt a very pragmatic and practical approach, they really just teach you the bare essentials of what you need to know. Again I don't know this as a matter of fact, but from what I've heard. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I guess it doesn't really help in the way of wanting a more wholesome experience.
Macquarie on the other hand I feel probably tries to imitate UNSW and USYD a lot more in their black letter approach. Sure they promote that they adopt an "alternative" approach to teaching law, and to some extent this is quite true. But they still are quite black letter especially in the subjects that require that, for example torts and contracts.
Does the quality of teaching bother me? Sometimes. For example when I'm sitting an interview and I know that there are others in the room from USYD or UNSW that can be quite intimidating, that doesn't mean that they're smarter or better than me. At the end of the day we're all really learning the same law from virtually the same cases and the same bits of legislation.
But the fact that they have a 200 year old institution backing them with its reputation and all that it carries is for some reason super appealing to employers. Having said that, I'm sure that if you excel and do really well at any law school that won't hinder you as much but it just means that you don't have that initial advantage of being from a Go8 university. Aside from that, the other thing that probably frustrates me a lot is what I mentioned earlier about the tutorials.... Like right now I have a massive torts assignment and I have a whole bunch of questions I'd love to have answered, I know I won't be able to have them answered in a tutorial because there's not enough time.
But all that does is encourage me to work more independently, I've got the resources, I've got the whole bloody internet if I really want... So I guess it just means you gotta do a little bit more work and you become more reliant on yourself as opposed to being spoon fed. That of course has its pros and cons.
For every 3 Credit Point subject you have a 1 hour lecture and 2 hour tutorial or vice versa. Usually its an hour tutorial and 2 hour lecture. Some classes have introduced a new type of seminar system in conjunction with tutorials and lectures. You can decide which you want to attend.
Also some lectures are given twice a week.
Aside from this, the general university rule is you take the credit points and multiply them by 3 hours and that gives you how much work (in terms of hours) you should be doing per subject. Since each class is 3 credit points:
3 x 3 = 9 hours per week, per class.
So if you're doing 4 subjects a semester (which you probably will be) that's 36 hours a week of individual study time and 3 hours per week, per subject of contact time.
Also, ALL lectures are recorded and are available within the hour. We usually have like 200-300 people in lecture theatres.. with about 600 students enrolled in the LLB at any one time (a combination of graduate/undergraduate and distance).
