DS kicked out of Uni after 2nd year - what now?

[FeelingAtTheEndOfMyTether]

Totally furious but trying to keep my cool although he is well aware of how disappointed we are in him!

He rang me yesterday after being told apparently that morning, Has been pretending all fine for a while. I even sent him a massive treat parcel thinking he was cramming to finish his project last week!

Apparently he was supposed to resit modules from his 1st year but he hadn’t even done that (he never told us and lied that he’d passed it all), in addition to not completing all his modules this year and only 40% attendance (that’s what he said but probably lower than that!).

DH went to pick him up from his halls tonight and get all his stuff so back at home now with student overdraft maxed out (£1500) and not a penny to his name.

He lived at home in first year and we hoped moving into halls might make him grow up and sort his shit out. Bloody waste of £10k on accommodation!

He didn’t get a part time job at all this year despite promising he would get a job as going into halls as we couldn’t afford to give him extra money but been giving him regular money to buy groceries (maintenance loan covered accommodation and a few hundred a month left over).

So not working or doing his actual Uni work!

He had crap attendance last year as well and I was shocked that he got onto 2nd year. I did tell him last summer to withdraw, take a year out, work and either continue or start again when he’s ready but he insisted he’d work this time.

Uni is out now as won’t get funding for another 3 years and Uni has said he’d have to repeat Yr1.

He didn’t work last year either and has only held part time jobs for a few weeks at a time since leaving school.

He has a extended BTEC in an area which will not directly lead to a job and As and A*s in his GCSEs in Maths and Sciences (he actually ditched his A levels in Maths and 2 Sciences to do the BTEC so has already had an extra year in college), but D in English and didn’t resit it.

Uni course would have given him lots of options in career.

Cannot convey how angry I am at him (and sorry for him) but logically know it’s not the end of the world, glad he’s safely back home and he still has time to turn it around.

I’ve told him he’s got two weeks to get a job or ……….. what? I don’t know as can’t kick him out! His PC is not being set up at home. I’m surprised DH hasn’t taken a hammer to it tonight.

He’s highly intelligent but extremely lazy with a gaming addiction which he has now admitted after many years of arguing about and denying. No drugs, rarely drinks, in the main a good, caring lad but just wants to sit on his arse gaming all night and sleeping all day.

What to do?

No advice, OP, but you have my sympathy. It sounds a very difficult situation.

Sounds very like ADHD - he’s sabotaging himself. He doesn’t mean to - you mention bright but lazy, retaking years at school/college etc;

I think you need to stop being angry and work through his issues. He’ll lock down and he can’t tell you if you are so angry.

Go and read up on ADHD they can add depression on top if their ADHD is wildly out of control too.

Wow, what a waste.
I would've killed to have had supportive parents and a chance to go to uni and he has possed it down the drain.

Right now, I would be saying to him in this house you either study or work. Then I would give him a month to sort his shit out before I kicked him out.

I would've killed to have had supportive parents
Then I would give him a month to sort his shit out before I kicked him out.

the apple didn’t fall far from the tree

This is so tough, but in the end heneeds to figure it out himself

I hope he is looking for jobs/apprenticeships?

Does anyone know how to go about looking for apprenticeships when you are not at a college? Is there a gov website, or a scheme?

@Zingy123 what he needs is a wake up call to reality. Unfortunately his life style is typical of a lot of teenagers now . Tough love needed here , no one should fund his lazy lifestyle.

ADHD is crippling - can lead to addiction to stimulants like caffeine, cocaine, gaming obsessions, money issues - inability to focus or hyper focus neither controllable.

People with ADHD can be super friendly happy people and fantastic but they live with all this and are often branded lazy.

@let him stay stay home and sleep all day and game all night at his parent’s expense then . All these labels being out on people #be kind rubbish. He needs a job, work is good for depression.

First off, he's not "a boy" like some PP said, he's a bloody adult.

You need to come down hard and tell him he has to get a job, any job, and pay you a nominal rent, or he'll have to move out and pay market rent.

Wow! The parent skills of some of the one liners.

He gets a job,
You sound like you don't like him very much etc.

OP what a heart wrenching situation you and your husband find yourselves in , you must be sick with worry.

What is done is done and hopefully now over time your son will take the steps to first of all find any type of job even just for the summer. I say that because at the moment there are a lot of Summer jobs out there as students have all gone home so the jobs taken up by them in your area will become available. My Uni son as just got a job at Nandos and they are crying out for people. He had no restruant experience but he said it is easy at Nandos and the pay is £10.50 an hour. Also supermarkets are crying out for oneline orders staff, another job usually taken up by students.

The difficult part is getting him to actually take the steps of getting a job but once he is out there earning his own money it may well be what helps him pick himself back up.

I have come to realise students can become very lazy once they have the opportunity of living away from home. It is a complete life change for them and suddenly have all this independence. It just takes time to adjust to the new lifestyle. It works for some for some it doesn't unfortunately.

It is your son at the end of the day and yiu ar3 worried about where this us leading.
With your support and encouragement I am sure it will all turn out in the end.

Wishing you all the best with it all.

Your son us very lucky to have parents that want to help him. X

Hairbrushhandle · Today 06:39
Lecturer here. Have you seen his module transcripts (he will be able to see them online)? Because resits haven't happened yet so any modules with exams this year are salvageable. Even modules with 100% coursework you can usually resubmit the coursework on the resit period and it'll be capped at the pass mark. Or is it purely on lack of attendance that he's been asked to leave?

@Hairbrushhandle i was gong to post something similar. OP, are you SURE he’s been ‘kicked’ out? Because I think the uni course may be salvageable

If it helps my degree was abjectly useless and had to start entry level for my job and work up from customer service.

A job will fix this.

My thought was ADHD too, from your first post. My DS was finally diagnosed and medicated at 17. He had just scraped a pass in English GCSE despite 8/9s in maths and science subjects. First year of A levels was a total disaster. Coursework undone, teachers emailing us, predictions (for a very clever child) were low. He spent a huge amount of time online, and subverted any controls we put on that. He threatened to kill himself when we tried a total ban on his phone. Once lockdown started he HAD to be on his PC which made it even harder. We were trying to encourage him to look at apprenticeships rather than consider university.

Once he started on medication, it was amazing. He still games all night because his online friends are American, but he makes the effort to regularise his hours when needed. He got very good A levels, got an a good course and is hoping to convert to the Masters after his exam results. Nothing at all changed but the ADHD meds. This was not some parenting success. He remains annoying in all sorts of ways (the all-night gaming in particular in the holidays when he wakes us up!). It was just that he physically couldn’t concentrate before he had them and as work and life demands cranked up, it was genuinely disabling and depressing him.

Also no point quibbling over Uni kicking him out even if they took him back he’d not be arsed to resit anything?

What BTEC was it? The hole point of BTECs is they are vocational and should lead towards employment.

No, this isn’t true. They can lead to employment, but they are a level 3 qualification and can be used for uni entry.

Oh DFOD.

Bloody ridiculous hyperbole and judgemental as Fuck as well as completely uncalled for.

If he has a student bank account he needs to get that overdraft paid off ASAP. Or find full time work.

The overdraft facility will be removed as he's no longer a student which will result in an account type change. Not doing so could result in affecting his credit, massively.

If he can't afford to pay it back or get a job he needs to sign on for job seekers asap. Without a form of income he will not be able to create a plan with the bank to repay the overdraft (which also affects credit) which can result in default.

I've spoken to several ex students through my work who have unfortunately defaulted due to this. It's really sad. 😔

Should be able to get onto a decent apprenticeship with one.

What was he doing at uni/BTEC. Was it a subject area he was interested in?

This could be a big wake up call for him OP. I've had friends go through similar and their kids have reached an 'oh shit, I've fucked it up haven't I' point and turned it around. Not necessarily what their parents would have wanted (ie no uni etc) but got an apprenticeship and got a skill. Maybe academic education is not right for him.

I would try to find out more in writing from the university. My son was late with some dissertation outline submissions in year 3 and I only knew when letters started coming by post to the house (thank goodness they did), he did appeal, that appeal failed so he stopped year 3 in about January and restarted that next Sept so did a 3 years degree in 4 so it was not disastrous. In your case he says the university says he has to restart year 1 all over again but perhaps either there is an appeal process or as people say given the strikes etc there may be some kind of work around to it that allows him to get the year 1 modules he missed done whilst doing year 2 again and then follow that with year 3 or something along those lines (whilst he lives at home as clearly living at the university in year 2 didn't work)

I would certainly start by making a folder of every communication he has had from the university and start clear written correspondence about it rather than just go on things he may not have read properly nor understood. Then look at appeals processes. If he could just redo year 2 then it would be pretty normal and not too bad. That is the position you might be able to achieve so that he restarts year 2 in September and makes up the year 1 missed work in the mean time whilst living at home.

My son by the way asked me to remind him of essay deadlines etc. It sounds really weird and interfering that I did but he wanted it and he and I found it did work. I would never have done that with any of the other children as I am pretty hands off as a full time working parent.

Similar situation with my friends DD. She had depression/anxiety and that was my first thought here (actually thought this might have been my friend posting and she switched the sex around).

Her DD didn't want to go to halls though which is what might have made it worse for her.

If this was my DS I'd try a bit of a softer approach until I could be sure its not MH related.

I think mumsnet used to be a wise site - now an op is being told she doesn’t like her son because she asked for advice about him messing up at university!!

so many entitled young people now (not all but a lot)

you are going the right thing about the computer. Your son should learn to respect what you have done for him and needs to figure this all out. I really feel for you

If you have kicked him out now, it won't be for academic reasons as the exams have only finished on Friday.

I wonder if you are getting the full picture?

If he's had a tuition fee loan for 2 years, then any further study will have to start with a year self funding, unless a good, evidenced 'compelling reasons' case can be made for why one of the first two years didn't work out?

It's sad to see 'gamers' falling into this addiction, especially as there are so many 'games' based university courses now ( literally a 'Games Design' degree at my place) . I guess tackling this issue is the priority, build your sons self esteem and self worth back up, before tackling the job market.

Army or Navy. Three years. 100%.

We are currently going through this with DS18, I'd say he left college last month but it was more of a fading away, a month before A-levels!

There have been tears, me, shouting him and DH and stalemate. He also spent copious amounts of time gaming, I actually do blame Covid in many ways.

Anyhow I said he needed to sort his shit out & pay board of £200, he's got himself a bar job and paid me his first board this month.

It's his life but if he thinks he can live here for nothing, he is mistaken - he moaned about the cost but I told him if he could find somewhere cheaper, I'd help him pack!

It's not been easy and I totally sympathise - bloody kids!

Fear not, its not the end of the world (I got booted out of uni at end of year 1, best thing that ever happened to me!)
He needs to find what he loves doing, maybe thats working, or studying at his local college, maybe something that involves the PC in a practical way.
I did a bit of retail work over the summer, then enrolled at the local tech, did an HND, then was asked if I'd like to train to be a lecturer, which I did and enjoyed a wonderful 20+ year career in FE & HE lecturing. Then, the college got absorbed by the very same university and they deemed all lecturers needed a degree, so they assessed our work over our careers and in the post arrived a BA degree certificate in my subject just to keep them happy, its hung upside down on my office wall behind the door, covered in coffee rings from the 6 months I used it as a coaster!
It's a weird world.
Key is, he needs to find something he enjoys doing and that he can make a living from.