To think life will be pretty much normal by early 2021?

[itsaweddingone]

I hope we are! A colleague said today (he has no extra knowledge or info) that he can't see us being back in the office before 2021.

Do you think Covid will be mostly behind us by then or we will still be living with restrictions?

£9250 tuition plus college/halls costs (circa £167 per week where I am) is a lot to pay out on the possibility of some face-to-face tutorial or lab teaching maybe taking place at some unspecified point in the future.

The 'student experience' could be very poor, perhaps very lonely for many. There are already plenty of worrying issues with students' mental health.

Guardian reporting huge university financial losses here
www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/20/uk-universities-facing-760m-hit-one-in-five-students-plan-defer

Can't see the pay and conditions of lecturers improving. And they're already exploited enough.

Test students regularly and let them crack on. My DD will take her chances and I don’t blame her.

Christ.
I work at a university (non-academic) but am on ML. Stupidly I hadn’t realised quite how dire things are for the industry. Shit.

Unis are seriously going to regret making hasty decisions as they're going to see their student numbers plummet

I can see this being the death blow for higher education for 50% of the population. A lot of courses will just not exist in a year’s time and kids who would have stayed on the educational conveyor belt will be far less likely to step back onto it in a year’s time. Especially with the value for a £50k plummeting. This looks like a reset to me.

I work in Liverpool & our boss has said it’s unlikely we’ll be back in the office till after xmas at the earliest. My hubby works for a charity based in London & they’ve been told the same.

*£9250 tuition plus college/halls costs (circa £167 per week where I am) is a lot to pay out on the possibility of some face-to-face tutorial or lab teaching maybe taking place at some unspecified point in the future.

The 'student experience' could be very poor, perhaps very lonely for many. There are already plenty of worrying issues with students' mental health.*

It's a really shit situation because in normal times, if a student deferred, he/she could take a gap year to travel and/or to work, but both of those options will be much more difficult this year. Plus, if so many others make the same decision to defer, the competition for places next year will be more intense.

It's crap.

Not that I blame students for deferring. Nobody can convince me that spending a year 'interacting' with staff and fellow students from a computer screen - while OK as an emergency stop-gap - is anywhere near as worthwhile as a year on campus. And while I get the argument that staff are working at least as hard as they normally would - I work in a uni myself - that's not really the students' problem. They aren't paying for lecturers' labour - that's their employers' job - they're paying for a "product". And in the case of online teaching, it's a "product" most of them will consider vastly inferior.

Well said @icedpurple

Totally agree Iced. DD is going into her final year, it's a grim prospect, considering she and most fellow pupils are at incredibly low risk from CV.

I think she'll go to her uni town anyway, she's already tied into a house contract. For her, the student societies are a hugely important, but it's difficult to see what's going to happen to things like student theatre. It's so disappointing.

@cathyandclare And at least your daughter has presumably already established relationships with her tutors and fellow students. For a fresher, going into uni for the first time without knowing anyone, it's going to be incredibly hard to build up real relationships via Zoom. It's grim, but if social distancing guidelines remain in place, it's hard to see any way round it for the time being.

I agree that lecturers have treated like crap by their employers, the universities. Agree about the 'product'.

If online universities are going to exist, perhaps lecturers' collectives should set up their own, apply for degree awarding powers, and charge students a hell of a lot less.

I used to work for the OU are we had some brilliant distance learning material, as well as telephone tutorials. The occasional group seminars were in booked regional centres, sometimes school buildings on Saturday mornings or in community centres.

Anyway, it's all going to change, quite profoundly I think.

Yes, established friendships will make a big difference. She said she'd defer if she was a fresher, it's difficult and scary enough in the first few weeks. At a social distance, and without parties and societies running welcome events, it would be miserable and lonely.

Yes productivity goes up WFH.

Many of the obvious reasons being no commute. If people commute and hour on train or in a car during rush hour they aren't at their best on arrival. Much more ready if they walk into kitchen and make a coffee. Dress code. At home you can dress comfortably. You may need a smart top for meetings online but if you are comfortable you are more productive. Also people work better with flexibility. If you are in a noisy or busy building you may well take your full lunch break to get out for a walk or you may eat less healthy meaning you are sluggish in the afternoon. People may not start a task towards the end of their working day as they will need to leave on time to make transport home, pick up children etc. I also think the flexibility works for people. Some people are great at getting up at 5am, doing some exercise and working from 6am. This doesn't work if you have to maintain office hours. Others are best working up into the night - again doesn't work with set office hours.

The evidence for working at home productivity isn't actually that great, it depends on the work and very much the individual, it depends on the home environment - most of the "studies" have been with folk privileged enough to have an actual home office (so for two working adults that's two offices in the house) and to do work that is easily done at home.

Also many of the studies actually had lots of people wanting to return to offices to work, the isolation was a problem. Certainly though working from home is good for a great many - I'm much more successful with it and have done it for years - it's not as simple to declare it being better though, and it also needs the whole company and team to be willing to work the ways that allow it to be more productive. Asynchronous communications, not meetings being the one that is most challenging for many.

We shall have settled into a new normal. We are staring to already

But normal as in how life was before mid March this year no we won’t be

I’m an academic and would rather crack on as normal and take my chances as well. But nope. Will be all online until at least Xmas.

If I was 18 now I'd probably choose to stay living at home and 'go' to my local uni, at least then I'd have family and local friends - of course that depends on where you live and if your local unis are suitable.

DH usually works in London (we live in Brighton), I don't think he'll be back before 2021. This thread has just made me think we could probably fit a big desk along one wall of our bedroom so I could get the living room table back.

Are they supposed to stump up full fees for this online experience?

Yes, @LaurieM. If I were a prospective student I'd be tempted to look at the much less expensive online degrees being offered in English by many European universities.

Are they supposed to stump up full fees for this online experience?

Yes

Well that seems dreadful value for money.

It does make me laugh, @LaurieFairyCake. During the many strikes over the past two years, students asked for some money back and were told that teaching is a TINY part of the university experience; look at the library, the resources, the study rooms, the buildings!

Now that all of that stuff is no longer available, students ask for some money back, to be told: you’re still getting your lectures! And THAT’S where the value is!

Absolute bullshit from the unis!

@MabelX

Absolutely. Also, as and when things go back to normal and ss start wondering if they should apply to cheaper online unis overseas as an above poster said, they'll be told that online teaching is a poor substitute for the real thing. And they'd be right, but they've spent the past 2 months telling them that actually, Zoom lessons are just as good.

The uni I work for has reluctantly agreed to give overseas ss a reduction on their fees for the pre-sessional English courses this summer, but I assume they'll be charged the full whack for their first year, even if's all or part online. I think the uni recognised that they depend on foreign - mostly Chinese - ss for their income and had to offer them some sort of sweetener. Let's hope things get back to normal sooner rather than later.

It will need people to grow up and look at the actual statistics. For the vast majority of us it will be a very mild illness - that's if we even get it. Of course we all need to take precautions and live altered lives for a long time, but the reaction to it is hysterical among some people.

Just look at the most recent stats from the ONS. Under 45s are at a relatively tiny risk of dying because of this thing. For children it is miniscule. We need to be protecting (not isolating, bordering on imprisoning which is what is happening at the moment in some cases) older, vulnerable people while the rest of us accept the risks are small and get back to our version or normality until immunity/theraputic treatments/ vaccine are found.

@MabelX So very well said.