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?

Bang in @MabelX I was told the same when my DD has 16 days of strike action last year. Absolute BS and they know students are caught and they won’t deal with parents.

Bang on

Just for the record. Universities get a lot of their income from student hall rentals, catering facilities, conference space, sport facilities, etc which many unos have not received since we went in lock down. Lecturers still need to do lectures, do tutorials, mark papers, etc. Moving teaching to online mode has required a massive amount of extra time and investment on extra resources. I don’t see why reducing the fees would be fair given the amount of extra work they are doing, obviously, universities are closed and saving in other stuff but I hope you are not suggesting they should let go of the thousands of non teaching staff like cleaners, technicians, researchers and administrators to allow the fees to be lowered. At the end of the day, we are going to come out of lock down one day and paying the tuition fees may be supporting your university not to go bankrupt through this because believe me, lots of universities particularly those that are not highly regarded are only surviving (barely) on tuition fees.

If your kid doesn’t have the will or inclination to study online for a few months ask for leave of absence. I would advice against deferring starting university until next year as many people are thinking of it and it is very likely that the competition for a university place starting in 2021 would be nothing less than fierce with people completing A levels this year and next fighting for the same number of university places. I much rather my kid did a semester online than risking him going to a much worse university next year due to the competition.

Universities are not forced to approve every deferral requests and it would be silly to approve many when they will have a massive pool of candidates next year.

... if we add to that that universities will be working hard to bring students who didn’t have proper teaching during lockdown get up to speed, a kid who graduates this Year but doesn’t start until next might miss a lot of remedial study that might not be in offer in 2021.

The model is outdated. Why do we need so many lecturers when this can be done online? It’s not about ‘how hard people work’ but whether the investment is worth it for those funding it.

People are looking at the system and seeing that it could be done a different way that’s much more beneficial and affordable to students. Propping up an inefficient sector doesn’t sound like a good use of anyone’s money right now.

Because the lecturers are advancing knowledge so you can continue to have books to read, nice technology and even the bloody vaccines? 😁

Because the lecturers are advancing knowledge so you can continue to have books to read, nice technology and even the bloody vaccines?

That’s research. Not teaching.

We’ve conflated the two roles and that may not have been a particularly effective thing to do.

Lots of very important breakthroughs aren’t happening at universities anyway.

With regards to teaching, it’s clear that much can be consolidated as things move online.

The entire sector needs rethought. What is it’s purpose, how should it be funded, run, administered. Now is probably a good time as its under severe pressure anyway with the loss of foreign student income.

The entire sector needs rethought. What is it’s purpose, how should it be funded, run, administered. Now is probably a good time as its under severe pressure anyway with the loss of foreign student income.

I agree. The whole Uni system should have been rethought when Blair decided 50% of kids should go to Uni. That changed the entire sector, yet teaching methods etc didn't change. Over the past 20 years, we've also had the IT/internet revolution, and yet, still things didn't change that much - yes most Unis now video lectures and some have apps to register students into lectures, but that's pretty superficial when you compare to how IT/internet has revolutionised most workplaces. It's the "we've always done it this way" mentality of the public sector I'm afraid.