University staff and students

[OnTheMoors]

DH is University admin. Been working from home for 7 weeks. Anyone else working for a University? do you think the teaching will all be remote in September and no Freshers week? Will international students pay to start their courses in the current circumstances?

[jimmyhill]

do you think the teaching will all be remote in September and no Freshers week?

Nobody knows so we're planning for remote, face to face, and everything in between. It's a nightmare.

Will international students pay to start their courses in the current circumstances?

Doubt it

[GoatyGoatyMingeMinge]

Will international students pay to start their courses in the current circumstances?

Doubt it

This is the general consensus. One possible outcome is to leave universities fighting over home students just to get bums on seats and fees through the door. In which case the Russell Group will drop the grades in their offers, a large number of home students will be able to move a notch up the university league table, and universities at the bottom of the pecking order will go bust.

[GCAcademic]

The government is temporarily re-introducing a cap on numbers to prevent the scenario Goaty describes, though as always with these things, the devil is in the detail.

It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that there is going to be a huge drop in overseas student numbers, and a smaller but still significant one in home students. My university expects to lose £30 million as a result of the pandemic. There will be widespread redundancies across the sector, for sure.

On the teaching situation, we don’t yet know how we’re expected to teach in the autumn. Apparently my university has modelled eleven different scenarios.

[iloveeverykindofcat]

I'm a postdoctoral researcher, the only teaching i do is supervision of postgrad students. Also being working remotely for 7 weeks. Our VC has been talking about a phased return from October with only some students on campus at a time, but I've heard that office-based staff like us may begin phased return earlier in the year.

[Comefromaway]

Dh teaches a very practical subject. They are fully online via Zoom st thecmoment snd hoping to be back in September but we just don’t know.

[bushhbb]

do you think the teaching will all be remote in September and no Freshers week?

Judging by the sheer thousands of people in university campuses, I think so. Even if other workspaces are getting back to normal (offices).

It is possible some classes will still be in person like sciences, and others will be remote.

[dreamingbohemian]

My department is expecting at least the autumn term to be online. Luckily we already have an online degree programme so we have a base to build upon.

I think international students will vary a lot. We have a lot of international students on our one-year MA course and I could see a lot of them enrolling even if it's online. BA I'm not so sure.

So far they are saying they don't expect redundancies but there will be a hiring freeze. But we are definitely in a better position than most.

[IcedPurple]

I work with international students in a major university. We have seen huge numbers of requests for deferrals or even for a return of their deposits. The preparatory English language courses have already gone online but run into quite a few problems, not least the 8 hour time difference with China, which is where most of our international students come from. Many are asking for a discount in their fees, which is fair enough.

This is bad news as so many universities in GB rely on overseas students. They pay upwards of 15 grand a year for tuition alone, and maybe 500 quid a month for uni accommodation. The economy of whole cities has come to rely heavily in them, and if large numbers decide to cancel or defer, this will have significant knock-on effects all over GB.