Making accommodations isn't always 'kind' (uni)

[Jourdain11]

I'm interested in knowing general opinions on this. I would accept that the last few years have been tough for students, and UG finalists in particular have had their full course horribly disrupted. But I am struck by how the accommodations made for students have really not helped them, in a large proportion of cases. I work in a uni (London Russell Group, competitive and highly-rated) and the number of students who have requested deferrals and so on for MH reasons is huge. In my role, I pushed back a bit and said that we shouldn't be advocating this as a way of dealing with any level of pressure and anxiety. In some cases it was absolutely necessary, but in others I felt that it was just becoming a pattern or a way of buying more time.

Ultimately, in the careers many of these graduates will go on to have, they will have to work to deadlines and deal with pressure, and part of the uni experience is providing preparation for that.

We now have students who are very upset because they cannot graduate with their peers, who are very anxious because they've deferred half their year's assessments to a one-werk resits period and feel they will not cope, or who are just disappointed that they haven't completed the year and have uncertainty as regards progression. Plus those who have now come to see assessment as an absolutely terrifying and insurmountable thing because we have agreed that they clearly weren't capable of sitting their exams, when they probably were.

Overall, I feel that we need to be encouraging coping strategies and empowering students, rather than encouraging them to opt out on the most tenuous rationale. But some of my colleagues would consider this to be virtually heresy and I'm not sure how we're going to get out of this place we have found ourselves in.

@user1497207191 did you not read my post above about how non-academic staff were largely furloughed to protect jobs, or they would have to have been made redundant because finances completely crashed, just like other sectors? Do you understand that those staff were often older and some of them more vulnerable?
Do you remember that we were actually told to shut for periods by the government to avoid students from different parts of the country mixing and spreading Covid? And that academic staff were literally doing huge amounts of extra work to keep everything going from home? Do you remember that even in that September and October no-one could meet indoors in groups larger than six?

Again and again you keep complaining about how universities should have been enabling all this student fun but (a) we weren’t allowed to by government and (b) non-academic staff were furloughed to stop us having to make redundancies and (c) it’s so unbelievably entitled to act as if despite the fact that all non-essential sectors were literally told to work from home or furlough, that universities should have been spending money from capital reserves to enable students to have parties?

We opened up at one stage and literally half the students got Covid within two weeks through mixing across bubbles when they weren’t supposed to. Public Health England had to come round with a mobile test centre to monitor the outbreak. Yet universities should have been forcing staff to come in to open the buildings for clubs? Staff who really do not get paid a lot?

Indeed it "should", but Unis and their staff don't see it that way. They're still in the old public sector mentality of thinking that students should be grateful they're being taught for free (like the NHS poor service mentality). They still don't recognise the £9250 p.a. fee as a price paid by the student for the education unfortunately, and are indoctrined into thinking because you only pay it back if you earn over the threshold, then it's not a loan, and therefore not a "fee" for tuition as such, but more of a graduate tax. That's exactly how Unis explain it in their open day talks/presentations about student finance! They use the Martin Lewis line that it's not a real debt, not a real loan, as you don't pay anything back until you reach the earnings threshold (set pretty low for someone with a degree expecting a higher than average income!), so tell prospective students not to think of it as a fee nor liability!

The point I was making, quite clearly, was that war experience is not comparable to lockdown experience, in response to the silly points being made by others that the war generation managed better than the covid generation. The two sets of experiences are not remotely comparable. One involved forced inaction and forced removal of social contact - the other, very much the opposite. Wartime experience, whatever it’s other hardships, quite clearly had the effect for many of increasing resilience in the face of difficulty, whereas lockdown experience seems likely to have reduced it - particularly given the fact that the response of government when demands ie exams were made difficult was to remove the demand, and instead massively inflated grades were awarded.
it is hardly surprising if some young people learned all the wrong lessons from this.

Completely agree with OP. Very well said.

I think back when university was cheap it was also less problematic to spend half your time e.g. running a club and therefore doing essays at the last minute. And I suspect the way in which we were taught A-level and our degrees made us more independent and resilient we had to be you had to be pretty crafty to find resources pre Internet and academics certainly didn't have office hours!

@theclangersarecoming

Again and again you keep mentioning student parties. You're really obsessed with that aren't you? Don't you realise that most students weren't partying!

You also mention staff pay - what about the lowest paid who managed to keep the country operating, such as shop staff, delivery drivers, factory workers, etc?

You're still not addressing the issue of flatmates (a household as defined as being allowed to "socialise), being prevented by campus security from even having a walk out together.

Nor do you address why Unis conned students into signing accommodation contracts on the promise of "blended learning" which simply didn't happen and was never going to happen, as teaching staff simply weren't on campus (and told they wouldn't be on campus that full year). You mention outbreaks of covid when students mixed, but the biggest outbreak at my son's was at the start of the year when thousands of students were "encouraged"/conned into moving onto campus in the promise of lectures etc, but in reality, there was no reason for them to be on campus, other than the Uni wanting the accommodation fees!

But you are the one saying that universities should have been enabling student socialising, clubs etc, not me?

Factory and shop workers in essential shops were designated as key workers! People shelving books in the university library or caretakers of lecture buildings were not! Do you not understand that universities are charities and moreover there is now almost no public funding, so run like other organisations do by bringing in income to fund most of the operational business? Student fees cover hardly any of it. (In fact they don’t even cover anywhere near the basic teaching costs.) There was suddenly a massive black hole in the finances and the only reason we didn’t have to make huge redundancies amongst non-academic staff was putting lots of people furlough. How do you suggest universities managed otherwise?

I totally agree- I suffered a horrendous series of traumatic bereavements at university but just buckled down and studied in between the tears and trauma. I came out with a first and the knowledge it is possible to compartmentalise and not let life defeat you.

Now I should have had better pastoral support and care. But the grit and knowledge I can keep going has served me well throughout adult life.

@user1497207191
Assuming that everything you say is true, do you think — returning to the topic of this thread — that this means that students must now be given extensions on demand, not have to ever meet deadlines or prepare for seminars? Because that is what we are trying to discuss here. Is it in their best interests to allow them to hand in work whenever they like, if ever?

You're still wrong. For a great many, war involved forced removal of social contact. Do you think it was harder to be a child sent away for up to 6 years from your entire family and everything you know, not knowing if any of you would survive it, or was it watching netflix in your dorm room unable to socialise for a while as you had the whole world available to you online and the ability to go home any time you choose?

And WHY did it make those, who suffered much more, so resilient while a comparable much easier situation made modern youngsters so depressed and anxious? Is it because they have a learned victim mentality where every norma emotion is pathologised and labelled as a disorder? Is it because they are babied and mollycoddled?

No of course not, I've never advocated a free for all for deadline extensions, etc. But a little compassion wouldn't go amiss for those who generally are struggling, and not just because of a diagnosis. There should be a general appreciation from the teaching staff that students have had a very tough time and a level of flexibility is needed, not just for those with a written diagnosis. There's a hell of a lot of middle ground between rigid adherence to the strict rules of pre-covid and a complete free for all where extensions are given on demand. Just because some students had parties certainly doesn't mean than none have suffered in numerous different ways. Some comments on here are abhorrent and are minimising the genuine distress/suffering of some (if not most) students over the past couple of years, just because some (probably a different group) had parties! It certainly sounds like some Uni staff/lecturers are completely unsuited to working with students as they clearly despite them!

Outside Unis, if a shop or office or factory didn't open and didn't provide it's usual goods/services, their customers didn't pay.

In Unis, students were conned into accommodation contracts and conned into signing up for degree courses, both of which they pay for, by promises of "as normal as possible" and "blended learning", and didn't get the usual "basket of goods/services" provided by the Uni as expected in return for their fees.

Don't you see the difference?

There should be a general appreciation from the teaching staff that students have had a very tough time and a level of flexibility is needed, not just for those with a written diagnosis. There's a hell of a lot of middle ground between rigid adherence to the strict rules of pre-covid and a complete free for all where extensions are given on demand.

But we’re nowhere near the middle ground, that’s the whole point of this thread. It’s absolutely a free for all, and some universities (including mine) are talking about continuing with self-granted extensions indefinitely. The middle ground is where we want to be, but it’s proving very hard to get there because there’s a mindset from university management and students that we’re to go back to “normal” in every respect except in asking students to complete work on time.

Well of course there's a difference. However, do you really think the lecturers made any of those decisions? You're blaming the wrong people. DH has been a lecturer for nearly 20 years. I've taught A-level for about 12. I think we're both kind. But if our respective organisations don't back us up on deadlines and behaviour, the students do less and less, which is not kind to them in the long run.

Most students never pay back their full loan. So you may think the threshold is set pretty low, but many never make enough to pay it all back or in some cases any of it back.

There should be a general appreciation from the teaching staff that students have had a very tough time

But they haven't, most of them. You telling them they have is part of the problem.

But they have. Maybe not as tough as youngsters in World War 2, or youngsters in the Ukraine at the moment, but compared with students of the past 20-30 years, they're had a much tougher time, and much tougher than a lot of their lecturers! I'm sure there were people saying British WW2 youngsters weren't having a bad time compared to youngsters under Nazi Germany, or Jews hiding in Amsterdam, or youngsters in the trenches in WW1. You really can't say that because others have it worse (past or present), then those "suffering" today aren't suffering at all!

When you look at the forecasts/spreadsheets, "most" don't pay it ALL back including interest. A huge proportion pay back all the capital, but because the interest is high, they don't pay back the capital AND the interest in full. So, they continue to make repayments for the full term, but never get on top of it - the interest just continues to accumulate. Even those who are just over the threshold and make modest repayments won't even be paying off the interest, let alone the capital.

The narrative that most don't pay it back is quite a fundamental deceit as it makes out people don't pay back the average £50k or so they'll have "borrowed" from the outset, but the reality is that students in fairly well paid, above average, jobs (as expected for a graduate), DO pay back most if not all of the amount borrowed (capital), and it's the accumulated interest they don't repay because it grows so high so fast (compound interest at a high rate does that!).

Anyway, what does it matter to someone with a well paid job who DOES pay it all back, that there are others who don't?

Ironically, it's another "tax" that hits the middle people worse. If you quickly get a high paid job, you pay off the full loan pretty quickly, so the interest doesn't get chance to accumulate. If you are low paid and never hit the threshold (or just over it so pay minimal repayments), you'll never even pay off the capital, so you don't care about the interest. But someone in the middle, who may take, say 20 years to repay the capital, will continue to have deductions for the next 10 years to start paying off all the accumulated interest. So the "middling" earners will end up paying more than both the higher earners and the lower earners!

I don't agree @WillMcAvoy . Admitting things have been tough is not what makes them incapable. Downplaying tough times causes a separate set of problems.

To create resilience, the best way forward (imo) is to say: it has been reallyu tough on your generation - all your normal milestones and opportunities to make new friendships, to get starter jobs and internships were put on hold for two years. So it's not surprising you feel like this. However, you can't let it hold you back. Now you must...

I'm getting otugh on my DC. Last summer I didn't fund DS1. He had to find a job and eventually did, at minimum wage, getting up at 6 am. He admits it was good for him. Doing the same to DS2 this year. Just nodding and saying, yep, it's tough isn't it? How do you plan to keep going?

But minimising what they have experienced versus what they grew up expecting to experience is just dismissivem and that's neither helpful nor necessary. Empathy doesn't make people soft. Infantilising does. They are not the same thing.

You are absolutely right to point out the problems caused to very young children by removal from home, but that is not the age group we are talking about here (nor is it the same thing as lockdown, but never mind that for now).
you seem determined to make the response of our young people to lockdown the result of them being inferior to the wartime generation in different ways - but it seems equally possible that the difference in response is due to the experiences being qualitatively different (which they are, and I have pointed out some of the more obvious differences). The resistance to accepting possible explanations not rooted in defects in young people is quite telling.

Oh and also castigating their parents. That’s very important.
this is prejudice talking, not reason.

Yes it is quite telling that you are determined to make all young adults into sad victims riddled with mental health difficulties. They aren't, and you are not helping them at all. Why are you pretending asif they were all locked into cages for 2 years, when that is far far from the case?
It is no wonder these young adults can't cope with even an essay, you have schooled them to be pathetic.

TF mine and most I know are nothing like this.

This seems bang on to me. It’s easier for management to default to « remove the demands » mode. Students ask for that because that’s what they’ve learned to do. Teaching staff caught in the middle, a generation of young people unable to cope with any rigour at all. It’s no good.

I am not saying that at all. I am saying they have been through a highly abnormal experience which has compromised their resilience and development and those around them need to bear that in mind. Outside the rather odd little world of MN I doubt you would find many people who would argue with that, tbh

Surely the aim is for things to get back closer to pre covid "normal" over time?

Accommodations needed to be made, virtually without question/argument during the worst affected years, but as things improve, with new cohorts coming through, then things need tightening up again, slowly, over time.

Just like in virtually every other walk in life, where changes and flexibility had to be invoked just for things to continue moving at all, and where mostly, those changes have now been reversed and we're heading back to normal.