Week 3 and the 1st years are asking if they have to come to lectures, they’d rather watch the recordings

[CameForAVacationStayedForTheRevolution]

🙈🙈🙈🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

OMG, and during lock down students (and the majority of parents on MN) complained about online lectures and poor value for money due to lack of face to face on campus lectures. Lots of complaints after lockdown when it was a bit of a hybrid model for a year.

And now here we are with some students saying they’d rather not drive into town for lectures when they could watch them from home. Bearing in mind on our course our “lectures” are more of a lecture/seminar hybrid as it’s a small cohort so it’s not death by PowerPoint. There are group activities, etc, interactive stuff, quizes, etc. Trying to explain to them that discussion occurs at a better level when people are actually there in person as well! People are more likely to ask questions when not online.

Honestly, I’m baffled sometimes! I get it would save money in petrol and parking as well as less time if you don’t have to commute in but I never press ganged anyone to sign up for the course!

One of the things I wonder is why people who want a fully remote degree don’t choose OU who are a specialist provider completely set up for that. If you want to live at home and do everything online then OU is there for you, has a good reputation and a wide variety of subjects. Why try to make other institutions bend to your needs rather than just choosing a place that already fits them?

I’m a mental health professional and many of my clients with very severe mental illness have happily got part time online degrees from OU in academic subjects and done really well.

On the flip side I have been surprised by how our local Russell group uni is taking some very unwell students who wind up struggling horribly having to intermit more than once and needing huge amounts of support. Some of the adjustments requested are in no way reasonable to my way of thinking and are trying to cover over the fact that a person is too unwell to be there and actually needs to go home. On more than one occasion I have seen the uni allow a parent to move in to college accommodation temporarily to support the student. That is a clear indication to me that they need to go home.

Sometimes the poor tutors are more distressed than the students. They are terrified of having a suicide on their hands and of being blamed. I was not aware of the Bristol case until now and having read the judgement I can understand the pressure. The family absolutely want Bristol uni to admit that they were at least partly responsible for her death and make it all about this assessment when clearly there are many other factors especially her flatmate.

I have a disability and anxiety but I had 1-1 support with a mentor weekly through my DSA . I never expected the uni to deal with that . I was also on a course with an attendance requirement which was 80% over the year which was easily doable . Our uni made us make up hours if we fell under the 80%. When I did my masters as a part time student while working I was amazed at the people who thought they could either show up and talk through the whole lecture or not bother at all . I missed some lectures due to my health for my masters but i'd catch up as much as possible and speak to lecturers when I was very unwell to keep them in the loop.

Yep, all this.
Something I've seen creeping in the last few years, and again not sure where it comes from, is this idea that if someone is "intellectually capable" of completing a degree, then it is their prerogative to do so and they are entitled to unlimited time from staff in the pursuit of their goal. Sorry - if you cannot leave your bedroom or open a book due to severe depression, then I don't think you are in a position to complete a degree just now, no matter how intellectually capable you are. [And before the talk about "eugenics" flares up again - I believe that the vast majority of people are intellectually capable of completing a degree, perhaps with the exception of some people with serious learning difficulties].

I don’t think that presenting to a lot of people is at all an unreasonable or unlikely expectation of an early career scientist. After your degree if you want to carry on in academic science you do a PhD and straight away you need to discuss and present your research ideas initially to your lab group and then at conferences. It’s a metric of success getting posters accepted and doing oral presentations at conferences from at latest the 2nd year of a science PhD. Speaking at conferences is a core part of the job and you won’t get far if you are not prepared to do that. It’s terrifying and no one likes it but it is a skill required for the job.

Many people who are extremely intellectually capable cannot do other aspects of what is required for particular courses or institutions. Fortunately lots of options exist that they can do. It’s a matter of choosing the right course and institution and ultimately the right job that is a fit for you. This may require some reasonable adjustments but those adjustments can’t be so fundamental as to change the whole nature of the thing. That is an indication that you need to choose something else.

I think that in this time when unis are going under perhaps someone will set up some more wholly online unis like OU and it will be accepted that this is a choice that lots of students appear to want and then they can just make that choice. Someone is going to figure out that there must be a market for a specialist ND uni at some point.

Everyone wants a bespoke personalised service these days. It’s understandable we’d all
like that. It would be lovely but the resources required to personalise for every one of hundreds of students just isn’t possible on the budget that’s available.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow We are not eugenicists ffs, are you even listening to us?

At least it's now clear your dissatisfaction is rooted in the all too common misunderstanding that teachers and academics have the same job. They do not! For most of us, teaching and everything to do with students is allocated no more than 40% of our time. So try dealing with hundreds of students and all their pastoral needs in 2 days a week instead of 5. It's not possible to do that to the level that every student wants.

There are many avenues of support for your daughter and actually it sounds like her personal tutor is the least likely person she needs. She should be speaking to her module tutors and other sources of generic study skills. If she can't reach out due to a disability, then the disability support staff should advocate for her. No one here is saying she should not be supported, just that the exact kind of support you want from a specific person is not realistic.

You are not old and grumpy, that is terrible classroom management. Are all your classes like that?

Yep, but at the same time universities are under increased pressure to foster "transferable skills" and spell them out to students. If getting a degree in Physics simply meant that the graduate has mastered certain bodies of knowledge or can design and conduct certain types of experiments, then I agree that the requirement of presenting in public should be eliminated. But this would also mean that the only career available to a Physics graduate would be research scientist in Physics, of which there aren't that many slots. They wouldn't be able to claim that their degree has equipped them with a range of other skills they can bring to other jobs.

Why is the problem the classroom management, ie the fault of the lecturer, rather than the behaviour of the students together with the limitations within which the lecturer is working?

Maybe that is a consideration. Ultimately, people select their field of work because of their personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. It's a well known joke that anaesthics is chosen by doctors who don't like people. Now, we know that actually, it's a multifaceted role and many anaesthetists are involved in pain management which requires people skills, but in the operating theatre, the patient is asleep for 90% of contact time. I knew a junior Dr who restarted her specialist training because she had chosen anaesthetics but kept getting told off for talking to the patients too much. So she started again and switched to psychiatry.

Perhaps, rather than degrees that are broad and allow for all jobs in a field, more targeted courses might be helpful. Such as research scientist.

Well obviously the students are the source of the problem but it sounds like the lecturer isn't doing anything to address it? I wouldn't be tolerating all that in my lectures!

It seems to me that this is just the tip
of a very large iceberg. The epidemic of poor MH and SEN currently working its way through the school system will mean more and more challenges to the University sector, as what was once seen as ‘exceptional’ in terms of support needs is more and more ‘the norm’.

If universities and academics, support systems and pastoral care, are already struggling, then future years are going to become more and more unmanageable.

Schools are already accepting as ‘normal’ what was once almost unthinkable, and only the very start of this wave is lapping post-18 provision at the moment.

@cantkeepawayforever you may well be right. The question I suppose is is it the responsibility of the university to deal with these issues? Schools you can argue are funded by the government so they are funded for /accept its part and parcel of U18 education…picking up the pieces of poor mental health area support.

Universities these days consider themselves to be private businesses pretty much. So would they see it as their responsibility? I think up to a point they try to show they’re doing something, but ultimately I imagine this is all generate good PR both from a marketing pov and student satisfaction scores rather than a desire to actually do anything. Accountants run universities now and if something is not making money then it’s not desirable. Even general student counselling doesn’t generate income, it only costs. So I can’t imagine that even more in depth bespoke support is going to be the way forward. As a previous poster said an employer wouldn’t provide that level of support. Maybe the odd exception but generally they wouldn’t.

in 2022/23 The Russel Group said it cost an average of 12.5k to provide a year’s worth of undergraduate education to a single student. Tuition fees i believe are still under 10k a year? So while students and parents may feel they’re paying for a service they’re actually costing the university money on average. Obviously students who require more support will cost more than 12.5k. So the more support a university provides the more money they lose.

My institution states that they spend nearly 50% of student income on wellbeing type services already. Then when you add on things like cleaning, IT, security, utilities, library then there’s a small amount left for actual teaching. Thats not where the money goes 🤷‍♀️. But nationally spending on all areas is decreasing dramatically due to rising costs and reduced income due to fewer overseas students.

If the government want universities to provide better support then are they going to have to fund the HE sector better? I doubt it’s going to happen. So it’s probably not going to improve even as the epidemic of MH and SEN issues increases.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

A few quick points:

This thread is not representative of all academics, or the people your daughter will be working with. You're taking it very personally!

It's anonymous so more robust than in real life. Many of us are here to share moral support due to being under threat of redundancy, and being pulled in every direction. Researchers need to raise money and a very low percentage of bids get funded. We need to publish and it's difficult to control how quickly that happens. We need to work with some seriously challenging colleagues, PhD students and managers. And student demand is endless.

This part of the forum is not set up to support parents, but female academics - many of whom are older and managing both children and elderly parents.

What many of us are trying to figure out is what the proposed weekly check-in is designed to do? Apologies if you have said - am busy & may have missed it.

At any rate, the personal tutor is likely to have a calendar with bookable slots which can be attended online. It's still early in term, depending on the institution. He may not have set it up yet.

If so, your daughter with your help could book a slot each week for the whole term. She should prepare a list of specific questions, and when they are answered, she can end the meeting.

She could also contact the course administrators to find out when his office hours are and how she can book slots.

However, if he doesn't teach the course she has questions about, it will be generic advice to email the module leader, read through the materials, make a study plan etc.

It would help her to get used to checking the VLE/library resources thoroughly before adding academic questions to her list. Many questions can be answered by reading the module guide/lecture slides/VLE blurb for the readings.

Effective students always come with a list, or are clear about the specific issue for which they want advice.

If she wants a weekly check-in to feel seen, recognised, valued - well, so long as he has set up his office hours, that will be possible. Most academics are kind to students. But at some point she will have to take the step to book it or accept the invitation/calendar link - and think about what it is she wants from the conversation.

In my experience, some students just wanted to 'let me know' their circumstances/challenges but didn't actually want anything to happen as a result - they didn't want to be advised on requesting extensions, or how to contact wellbeing services. I accepted that they often simply wanted someone in my position just to listen and say that they were sorry - and did that as well as I could.

I’m not an academic but several friends and family members are so I’m familiar with these issues!

I also see it flowing through into the workplace. There’s a real sense that if graduates/young people would like to do a job/career, they should be entitled to do so whether they are actually capable or not. Often they expect to simply be excused from the aspects they can’t or won’t do, whether that’s attending in-person, presenting, managing competing and challenging deadlines…

We’ve lost the ability to have honest and supportive discussions about what it means if you’re just not suited to something, no matter how much you might want it. We manage to get children to accept they can’t be a professional footballer or a pop star if they don’t have the ability, but we can’t tell them they aren’t suited to a history degree, or a job as a project manager, if they can’t do all those things require.

My institution states that they spend nearly 50% of student income on wellbeing type services already.

I'm not sure that it can be that high. But my institution spends £30 million a year on student wellbeing services. This is more than double the yearly budget for the largest School in my faculty, which has 100 members of full-time staff.

Perhaps more disabled young people go to university before they otherwise would because society is so hostile to disabled young people in terms of employment, benefits and general opinion. It is probably also a product of the lack of early intervention and long NHS waiting lists.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow support via DSA will help. Do you mean learning disability? That is a medical diagnosis in its own right. Things like autism, ADHD and SM are not learning disabilities themselves, although someone may have a learning disability as a co-morbidity. If DD has a learning disability, it is no wonder she is finding university tough. Even a mild learning disability means DD has an IQ of lower than 70.

On @DownThePubWithStevieNicks point on the sense of entitlement to an education/career/job whether they are suited to it or not. I have a student who has struggled to make progress towards their (research) degree, when we try to press them for written work, they say they are struggling with serious mental health issues and the high pressure environment is too much for them. And, then they turn around and ask us for references for a job (a challenging/competitive one). How are we as educators supposed to be honest in our references? The honest truth is that if this student can't make progress on the degree because it is a high pressured environment they are not likely to be able to do the job. But, we can't say that - they can access the references through a DSAR, and they might claim that we are discriminating against them. So we write formulaic references and they get employed and find that challenging too.

Exactly - the university is glibly being blamed for her tragic death and there were many other factors .

I taught 500 kids week as a teacher. And deal with and remember all their SEND issues.

University is not school. No comparison, frankly.

And it was clear that the student was mentally unhealthy before university.

My harshest most cynical self (whom I try not to indulge to often) does sometimes wonder why parents use universities as dumping grounds for their DC who are "unable to launch."

That is overly harsh, but in my 40 years of teaching & running departments, and trying to help young people learn and thrive and find joy in knowledge, sometimes students and/or their parents, fixate on "getting a degree" as some kind of magic elixir.

"Yes, I know she's so depressed that she doesn't attend classes, leaves peers high & dry in group work, and resists help. But being in this degree is all that keeps her going."

Except, as I had to point out, this student had completed less than half the degree and work that had been done, rarely achieved marks above 30% At this point, I was threatened with legal action.

That is pretty much what a parent once said to me. Parents can be terrible influences on their DC in this way, and not actually helpful to their DC in the short or long term.

This is my cynical self. My sunny helpful self, in discussions wioth students, tries to celebrate what they can do. But sometimes, not doing a degree, or taking an organised leave of absence, actually has better outcomes for young people. I'm sure we've all had students whom we had to force into a LoA, who came back after some time to mature, sort themselves out, and boy, did they fly! And they recognised that our tough love was crucial.

But obviously, I'm a disablist eugenicist.

EHCP are designed for school and college provision. She no longer has an EHCP. You cannot rely on the fact she had a EHCP previously. It would now be used as a guide for previous support. There shall be neurodivergent and disabled students who have never had an EHCP due to their age. HE is founded upon independent learning and development of those skills, with support in place where required.

I assume you have applied for a Disabled Students Allowance?(DSA) The assessor should have requested a Mentor and Study Skills support. The role of the mentor and study skills support would to support the student needs and fill the gap that a personal tutor cannot be expected to reasonably provide. While the study skills/mentor cannot contact the personal tutor directly they can support your daughter to make contact with various support staff e.g., library services, career services while building her independent study skills, and developing ability and confidence in those skills.

The reality is that no she is not paying for 1:1 individualised support from the personal tutor. She is paying to access the course content, the lectures knowledge and the infrastructure required to enable a university to function. The DSA pays for the individualised support for those students who require the support and adjustments to succeed to the highest of their ability. Yes it is a challenge and it can be more of a challenge when you are autistic, ADHD or any other disability. Essentially it is down to the student to commit themselves to their studies and ask for the guidelines they need to develop themselves. The sense of achievement and accomplishment as she develops will be what prepares her for employment.

Students have a right to attend university if they want.

No, they really don't.

Your attitude, and your ignorance of the nature of a university education, really doesn't look like it's going to help your DD.

And your hostility to highly trained & experienced academics is clear. That doesn't help at all.

You decided to lambast a group of academics, barely holding lives & work together under the most extreme pressures I've seen, after teaching& researching & running departments in 3 countries/HE systems. You chose to come in and tar us all as eugenicists and terrible people.

We've given you a lot of good advice, gently or straightforwardly (anonymity enables straight talking which I would NEVER use in person to a student or parent). You choose to ignore all the experience, all the advice, and carry on with your personal hostility towards a group of professionals facing a crisis in HE.

You show us the problem your DD faces, and it's not primarily an uncaring tutor.

In terms of open university that is generally not interactive with live lectures. But books and pre recorded learning and tutorials where peopke type.
there is a market for online degrees that are interactive. But they’d be more like the professional masters in law or accounting where lectures are scheduled over say 2-3 days to fit in with employers demands.
or birbeck when lectures are 4-8 so people can also work.
(Though I did my law degree during Covid so it was a lot online after first 6 months and masters was 50% online but live.)

This is more than double the yearly budget for the largest School in my faculty, which has 100 members of full-time staff.

Crikey!

That said, we have a full-time member of staff, just in my one department (of about 65 academics and shrinking) dedicated to student welfare. We've lost a few colleagues due to voluntary severance/retirement,. They haven't been replaced.

That one Pastoral post could have been a junior lecturer (same salary) appointment to teach & research. But no, we have to have a precious post dedicated simply for pastoral issues, in addition to our Student Welfare, Counselling, Medical Service, and subsidy of student union advice, welfare support etc etc.

The tuition that students & parents think they "pay" for is often the least of the costs of things that students & parents now demand.