To think what's happening to student is discrimination against poorer young people.

[Feelingconfused2020]

Students are young, in many cases just 18 yet many are being asked to isolate in a room for 2 weeks with issues around access to food and no real friends or family around them (because they've just got there and live with strangers) arguably prison is a safer place as at least food supply is guaranteed. In Scotland they've already been told they won't be allowed home at Christmas which is beyond absurd.

So what is going to happen? Inevitably families with enough money will encourage their young people to drop out and take a gap year. Those who can't afford to do so will be stuck at uni. The poorest suffer most, as covid seems to prefer.

It's not ok for Nicola Sturgeon, and other leaders, to stand by and let this happen, there will be suicides, there will be incidents related to mental health issues.

The governments all needed to have predicted this would be an issue, they should have put more strategies in place as they have in schools.

I am so cross for young adults in this country, they have been completely disregarded by all our governments.

It’s a global pandemic ffs!

Everybody is affected, I don’t think students are being more adversely affected then some other groups. Being asked not to go to the pub for a couple of weeks really doesn’t compare to the elderly who have been stuck inside for months, people whose treatments and diagnosis’s have been interrupted, those working in understaffed workplaces etc.

We are all pretty much in the same boat and yes, we should look out for those struggling but catastrophising and handwringing doesn’t help.

Why does it always has to come back to the sane old 'the poor will have it harder'?

Some will some won't. You can also argue that those who will have to stick it will grow resilience and become stronger in the face of adversity and therefore more employable.

Is it a tough time? Yes? Is it so hard we have to consider them all vulnerable victims? No, that is unless they gave been raised to consider any life challenges as such rather than life steps to make them stronger.

My heart goes out to them.
@LocalLockdowner is the poor young man with claustrophobia getting support? Can they have electric fans? That would give the feeling of air and being able to breathe.

To be honest, the pandemic has been a catalyst for bringing New Labour’s great deception home to roost.

We are getting far too many people to do degrees with zero value. So they see Uni as three years of socialising and, when that is curtailed, there is not much left except a pile of debt at the end.

And, of course, poor unis have become a money making factory.

We should be educating max 25% of people in universities.

I know that my mental health would take a nose dive, being stuck in a room and existing only online. It was bad enough doing that in a house with my family about, a doing the same in a
single room in a depressing, noisy cell block would probably just about finish me off tbh

Quarks,

Your daughter’s situation sounds awful. However, being kept up until 5AM would go that regardless of anything else. It is not the university’s fault (unless it is on campus, in which case they should be enforcing noise rules).

She is in halls and is a fresher but wardens are not doing anything.

It is shit for them but they are being provided with food parcels and can arrange online shopping. Yes there will be a disparity between rich and poor students but thre always is, nothing new. Parents that are able to will drop food around for their child. What unis should be doing is having their counsellors phone students to check on their mental health. Some students will need the support, especially if they are struggling or freshers that don't really know anybody yet.

Not all courses can be studied online, mine could to an extent but labs were a vital part of our learning and I would not be happy paying circa £9000 for a substandard learning experience. Unis have had long enough to figure out how to implement social distancing so courses can still run.

@LocalLockdowner

My neice is locked down. Food provided has been pasta and pot noodle and long life milk. More is on its way apparently. The only communal space in the flat is the shared bathroom and a tiny kitchen. Me, my brother and 3 other parents and the 5 students in the flat have been unable to get a supermarket delivery. There are no slots. They cannot leave their flat for anything. They can't do laundry and tomorrow was planned laundry day after 9 days at uni. Neice is running low on clean undies,on a etc wants a clean towel, clean kitchen toweletc and struggling to dry what's been washed by hand in the communal bathroom. It's shit. On top of all this my niece is in a flat with a lad who keeps crying. Saying he can't cope with being so hemmed in. He's been having panic attacks and my niece and her other flatmates think he has some kind of claustrophobia, he has been trying to stick his head out the window that only opens an inch or so to feel fresh air on his face. Add on the news that coming home for Xmas might not happen and this lad has just lost it big time. It's just too much all in 8 or 9 days. Strange place, strange people, locked in, no help, no escape and being told your stuck until after Xmas..... that is going to impact on some people's mental health. This poor lad can't be the only one. My neice is trying to be stoic but admitted all of them have been in tears most days this past week.

It's shit. I really feel for them all.

That sounds bad, poor guy and the rest. He probably is claustrophobic, sounds horrendous. I could not bear being locked in like that for same reasons.

I think the university who in June said there would be online learning for the first term did the correct thing. The option to remain at home was then there.

The poorest have been those affected more by Covid 19 regardless of age.

My DD is having to isolate in her student flat at the moment with two others. Delivery slots are all booked up in her area (we tried last night to get one). Their landlord offered to get them some basics in which is really kind of him, I don't think that this will extend to catering for my daughters multiple complex food allergies (even I have to stand and read packaging in the supermarket if she is coming home) and yes, I am worried about that as I wouldn't expect anyone else to have to deal with it. The college are providing zero support in terms of groceries, but am sure we will find a way for them to manage for a coue of weeks. As for the suggestion that they shouldn't come home for Christmas, this is ridiculously unfair and should not even be suggested.

Couple of weeks (not coue) , sorry dodgy phone!

There are over 150 HEIs in the UK. All universities will not be offering the same level of support to students in isolation. Some will be amazing, others will be doing very little. So generalisations really can't be made.

But don’t they have a month off at Christmas? Why can’t they travel home, quarantine at home for 14days and then when they travel back to Scotland, quarantine for 14 days again?

It makes no sense to actually ban students from travelling when the government already has travel rules in place.

Furthermore, many students live within a few hour train ride of their home. How is that any riskier than a commuter taking the train M-F?

Inevitably families with enough money will encourage their young people to drop out and take a gap year

But there really aren't any gap year activities this year, are there? It's not like people are going to be able to 'go travelling' or do some kind of volunteer work in a third world country. All bets are off. The best they can hope for is securing a job and building up some kind of financial cushion but in the current climate of mass redundancy, that's not going to be easy either.

I think any parent with money or not is going to be telling their uni aged kids they just need to get on with it. It is what it is. We can't change what is happening in the world, only react to it. We need to help these young people build resilience rather than suggest to them they are hard done by. It's tough. But the world will adapt and change and we need to adapt and change with it. Holding onto some romantic notion that life was better last year and will be better again at some point in the future leaves people hanging on, waiting for better to return. The people who will thrive will be those able to make the adapations and run with the changes and make it work for them. We're doing young people no favours by suggesting they just need to hang out and wait for something better. It might never happen.

You're not wrong. If my children were due go off to university this year I would've been strongly incentivising them to defer.

Young people have been completely shafted by the pandemic. They've turned up to uni having forked out thousands for accommodation only to find out that their courses will be online and they can't go and socialise. Those that aren't in university are disproportionately employed in jobs that have vanished, such as in the tourism and hospitality sector. They've been villified in the press. And now we're saying they might not be allowed home for Christmas!

But asking the elderly and vulnerable to self isolate themselves whilst this virus is around? That's unethical apparently.

But the Universities seem to have put zero effort in.

Really? Do you have inside working knowledge of all universities?? Impressive 🙄

I work at a university that is really going above and beyond to support students.
My DH is a senior manager at a university that has a large number of students in isolation in halls and he spent all last night in emergency meetings putting additional support mechanisms in place - including the delivery of food.

As pp mentioned there are a large number of universities in the UK. They are largely autonomous organisations with differing issues and needs.
This continuing narrative that universities don't care about the students, or are putting zero effort in is getting pretty fucking tiresome.

The HE sector has been royally screwed by the government ( especially this year) and they've made it clear they are unwilling to offer us any financial support. We'll be lucky if large parts of the sector still exist this time next year.

I really sympathise with the students but also think they took a calculated risk going to university this year, rather than taking a year out. It’s not as if it’s a massive shock that numbers of cases change and policy adapts accordingly. Yes the situation is utterly awful but I don’t understand why people are surprised.

I speak as the parent of a DD who has just ‘done’ A levels. I really really feel for the poor students but they did know that they wouldn’t be getting the full freshers thing.

I don’t agree with the OP. I think that finances may be a factor but the number of people who can just throw away 10K + must be really tiny. So tiny that it wouldn’t create a real divide in terms of can/ cannot afford to defer at this stage.

And tbh, I’m not sure that you have to pay fees again if you defer anyway. I don’t think you do.

And I think all this talk about Christmas is ridiculous scaremongering. It’s 3 months away and so much can change in that time.

And to anyone really concerned about their DC... if I was the parent of someone who’s mental health was suffering to the point that they were vat risk, I’d go and collect them without a second thought about the ‘rules’.

I get why Christmas is so important - it's important to me, too - but I think lots of people are interpreting cautious statements from politicians as some sort of blanket 'everyone will be able to have a marvellous and completely normal Christmas! Except students, who will be sent to their rooms without any supper.'

The reality is, we don't know for sure what will be happening to anyone at Christmas, and it would be a foolhardy politician who breezily promised that all students will definitely be able to come home. (Boris Johnson will probably say it any minute.) Will there be additional local or wider lockdowns? Maybe! Will households be generally able to mix then? Who knows!

I also get the sense that a great many parents, and perhaps students as well, haven't done the maths on 'leaving home = not part of that household anymore', which is understandable since it's not normally something people have had to consider, but which is really the only way it makes sense to handle things if trying to contain the spread of a pandemic. Is it shit? Certainly. But it's shit for everyone, in so many ways, that I can't see an argument for just deciding that the same rules don't apply to students as may be in effect for everyone else at the time.

The thing I heard students from ours here REALLY moan about is that if they wanted distance learning they would do Open Uni. Many are worried more about grades and their learning than about isolation in halls as they learn better f2f and need to ask questions. You can't well do that with pre recorded lectures.
Yes, it sucks being lockdown in your accomodation, and they understand why they can't sit in a lecture theatre but it sucks even more when you went in for a certain style of teaching and support and you can't get that.

The unies in general did a lot in a preparation. Many are online, they had guidances, they told students what not to do. But what can they do when students have house parties in private rentals? They can't prevent that obviously, since the kids don't listen to "please, do NOT do house parties and mix outside of your academic/residential bubbles...🤷🏻

Sue Ellen, i should expand op on the zero effort statement...I mean wrt teaching face to face, so students can meet. As a teacher I teach hundreds of students everyday. We wear masks and get on with it. After a month now , no teachers or kids have had Covid as far as we know. It’s not a perfect system, but it works. Why aren’t the unis even trying? It’s easier with 18 year olds than 12 year olds! Online teaching is a cop out.

@Quarks69

Sue Ellen, i should expand op on the zero effort statement...I mean wrt teaching face to face, so students can meet. As a teacher I teach hundreds of students everyday. We wear masks and get on with it. After a month now , no teachers or kids have had Covid as far as we know. It’s not a perfect system, but it works. Why aren’t the unis even trying? It’s easier with 18 year olds than 12 year olds! Online teaching is a cop out.

I'm an academic and 60% of my course is being taught on campus,face to face. Me and my colleagues are desperate to continue with f2f teaching. If we move online it will be because PHE tell us to....... The amount of planning that has gone into this year is off the scale. We had to plan for 3 scenarios..... and online learning is 5x more time consuming than f2f abc is not a cop out.

I don't know a single academic or senior manager at a university ( and I know a lot) who had a break this summer. We all worked our arses off planning and working to ensure we could offer the best student experience we could within current restrictions.
We can't win - we offer on campus then we're irresponsible. Move online and we're lazy and money grabbing.

To say zero planning had happened is downright insulting.

Well they can not all defer, what about next Y13 who are next years students. There needs to be some of quota on how any deferrals they can accept next year I think to be fair on all students. ( SorryIrealise this will be controversial to some of you).

All Young people have been disproportionately affected by all this.

Unis should be doing what they said they would do which is online lectures for the large lectures theatres and smaller F2F tutorials so there is both contact and online support.

In hindsight it Perhaps would have been better for the uni to ask all the students to quarantine for 1st 2 weeks like lots and lots of international students have had to do anyway and then uni life could have resumed more normally.

Socialising / societies is possible for the general public so why not students, just with masks and in groups of 6 - there are lots of ways this could work.