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There's only 8 hours teaching time a week, which is not enough considering how much we're paying.
Vast amount of reading but nothing is dealt with in depth. I'm studying English, and I know we're meant to be reading a lot, but if you're doing something like a novel a week per module how can you develop deeper thinking about literature? It's very superficial.
There's also a flaw in the structure of the degree in that we read loads of literature, and the odd bit of pretentious, useless lit theory, but never any actual literary criticism. We have to reference lit critics/scholars in our essays but you're not going to learn anywhere near as much as you would if, say, they put some of the great/significant works of literary criticism on the course so we can really understand what the discipline is about.
The lecturers often don't seem to find literature interesting for what it is, as pieces of art, that might be beautiful, that might have something deep to say about life. They only really look at the surplus, less interesting, less important aspects of literature. The lecturers really are, generally, quite tedious people and I really can't work out how you can go from having a passion and love of literature to the sort of interests they have. Not that what they do is valueless, it's just that the most important thing is left out.
The are just generally quite bad. I had one lecture last semester in which the lecturer spent about 15mins explaining what a allegory was, clearly padding out his lecture to make up the full hour.
The quality of the other students is really low which is quite depressing. Though if I had made sure I had got into a better uni I might not be complaining about that.
I'm sure there are other things...
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