The trouble with Open University tutorials are........

...... sometimes they are just too far away.

This is my 4th Open University course, so my 4th tutor and my 4th set of tutorials, and thankfully this hasn't happened to me yet, however,  it does appear to happen quite often to many other students.

It appears that as a general rule tutors will have no more than 20 students per course to look after, and in my experience tutorials have never had more than 50% student attendance, and an attendance of 35% (7 out of 20) would be unusual.

So why is it that there seems to be so many people that would like to go to tutorials, being allocated tutors that are simply far too far to make attending tutorials viable either in terms of travelling time and/or cost. While students who aren't going to attend tutorials are allocated local tutors.

Could the Open University not simply ask students registering for new courses to tick a box to indicate if they will or will not be attending tutorials. That way students with no intention of attending tutorials should not be allocated a tutor until after those who wish to attend tutorials have been allocated whatever local tutors are available.

C'mon Open University, this seems a fairly easy solution to a common problem.