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.

I think it’s fair to say millennials are the first generation to have known right from when they start out that they are not going to work their way up to a good salary in a loyal company, buy a house and retire on a decent pension. Plenty of people have found out along the way, but they had that starry-eyed dream in mind when they were at the bottom the ladder. And that’s what gets you up the first few shitty rungs, isn’t it? The dream. But they’ve never had it. They’re expecting the dirty end of the corporate stick right from the get-go. And that’s going change attitudes. Significantly.

@Eeksteek That is a myth.
My generation in the eighties leaving school in towns where Thatcher had destroyed industry and unemployment was sky high were worried whether we could even get a job. And many of this generation will get a house and a pension.
The idea of a loyal company died years ago. Anyone who still had it in older generations was very lucky.

And I think this myth of how hard done to the current generation does not help them.
Of course there are sky high house prices and rents - an issue for other generations as well who are not well off.
But we are seeing a massively changing world with robotics and other advances. My family are all working class. My nephew who is 21 is doing better than any of us because he has taken advantage of this new world and is running his own business in a very specialist field.
Simply telling young adults everything is shit and they will never achieve anything does not help them. It encourages them to give up.

My generation in the eighties leaving school in towns where Thatcher had destroyed industry and unemployment was sky high were worried whether we could even get a job.

And before that was the 1970s, when inflation was pushing 25% at one point.

Yeah, people talk about how much cheaper housing prices were, but they don't realize that those people paid far than the properties were worth when you consider the interest rates they had!

Yeah, people talk about how much cheaper housing prices were, but they don't realize that those people paid far than the properties were worth when you consider the interest rates they had!

And that's if they could get a mortgage. Building societies were quite tight; they weren't throwing money at people like they did later.

What's wrong with wanting to work 4 days a week? We should be normalising this.

Open book is a better test of abilities in the real world, given that we all carry a smart phone / easy access to information. A good open book exam tests a student's ability to use that information.

Hard agree about the deadline crisis. It's impossible. And lecturing them about it has no apparent effect, nor does guiding them through the deadlines. The other factor, I think, is the absolute shock given to students in March '20 when they were essentially tossed out of school 3 months early often with minimal further contact, or else given the message that school, previously totally compulsory, could just be stopped.

I think you may be giving insufficient weight to the impact of the last few years on young people. We still don’t understand this yet but I can see many effects I would not have predicted on my two who are younger. But I also think you are being asked to collude in a dishonest system which, while nominally kind, is actually just compounding their problems and you are essentially right in your criticism

I like the idea of exams with a generous time allowance. The A-level I teach, like most, I suspect, appears to mostly test how fast you can write. Sadly, it will not happen as the administration of exams twice as long would be impossible for schools (you'd need 4 hours for a 2 hour paper I think, to genuinely remove the time pressure for all).

I'm enjoying this thread so much, because it isn't succumbing to snarky comments or descending into a pointless argument.

It's so fascinating. And quite worrying really.

Our recent grads (finance) have been a mixed bag. One thing I have noticed is that they speak so much more emotionally and consider themselves first (before their team)
They are also very quick to be “triggered” which is a guaranteed way to end up on our CIOs untrustworthy list.
Their lack of resilience is concerning, I’m spending a lot of my time mopping up tears and reassuring and on one occasion have had to talk to a parent.

My son refused any help at university and deeply resented that so many students faked MH issues to get extra time etc

But that is his responsibility @LikeADogWithABone Academics and professional services colleagues such as the OP cannot mind read. Your son needs to take responsibility and frankly, you’re excusing him and blaming his tutors and his managers. While it might be the first “natural” response of a loving caring parent, it really doesn’t help in the long run. This is @Jourdain11 ‘s main point.

I’m interested in @MargaretThursday ’s approach to her daughters’s struggles, and impressed by her recognition of the problem but also her determination to help her daughter to see that she can face difficult situations and complete hard tasks.

this is such an interesting thread. I work in mental health, mostly with neurodiverse students. The world is mostly neurotypical. I work with year 11/12 and Uni aged students who have what presents as PTSD from a lifetime of masking and trying to fit their triangle shaped self into a square hole.
I think it's fantastic that these students are given accommodations at both Uni and in work. They're protected by the equality act.
About 85% of autistic students don't work and I'm pretty sure it's not down to laziness or lack of resilience.

Yup. My first house (no hot water or heating system), no decent kitchen) I bought with a very restricted mortgage offer and interest starting at 12%. At one point I was paying 16% interest. I worked my main job, a second part-time teaching gig, plus writing a PhD to afford the house and lived with very basic amenities for about 3 years before I could afford a decent kitchen and heating system. Luckily it was a tiny mud-terrace so not difficult to heat …

Whilst I agree with some of the sentiments here and you’re right that some students will be trying it on feigning mental health issues, pp saying ‘Uni gives focus and time management skills so it doesn’t matter what has happened, deadlines are set’ etc. The entire point of depression is that when it’s bad, it’s crippling. The person may not be able to even drag themselves out of bed at times, so I do think that some of you are being quite dismissive and harsh, plus, the last few years have been a situation nobody has ever lived through before and could have done untold damage to some people. There are a lot of people who use it as a get out of jail free card and it makes the genuine ones indistinguishable though, which can be frustrating.

Taking time off work for your grandmother dying is ridiculous, unless they actually raised you.

You are being very dishonest in your characterisation of what I wrote now too. A graduate taking time off is neither here nor there, but maybe you don’t understand that a graduate is supposed to grow into being an actual productive member of their team after some time in the job, and that there comes a point when yes, if they are not there it’s a major problem.

Surely even if your presence doesn’t matter you can understand that there are jobs that don’t work like this, can’t you?

To take an example, do you think that the Mercedes F1 team would operate just fine if one Sunday Lewis Hamilton said that he wasn’t racing as he had a bit of anxiety, and felt sad because his aunt was unwell?

I do and I have. I accommodated in recent years one staff member’s extended trip to Fhina to deal with a family death and another to have a month in India to help care for their sick father.

Taking time off work for your grandmother dying is ridiculous, unless they actually raised you.

I do actually agree with minimal or no compassionate leave in such circumstances, but I hope that you are at least allowing for being able to book short notice leave for the funeral?

Also your caveat “unless they actually raised you” does I think answer my earlier question about the death of a parent. By the way, the thing I was working on at the time was a major corporate acquisition. I’m sure it had deadlines that couldn’t be moved, but I was a trainee and I still, 20 years later, think back with horror to the phone call when that man expected me to be able to talk coherently about some document I had been working on. It was beyond heartless.

I think I agree with you. My DD2 has just finished her first year studying Marine Biology at Plymouth. In that year she has been diagnosed with PTSD and depression and her physical health has deteriorated to the point where she now uses a wheelchair. Still waiting to see several specialists to find out what's causing it all.

She hasn't deferred, she's kept working away and has passed her first year with good grades. It's been at the expense of many other things, the bulk of her social life for the most part, but she reckons it's worth it.

Examples from this year of reasons my staff did not come in, with zero notice (minimum wage in my team is around £60,000) include

I had to wait in for a delivery for my mother, she couldn’t as she had to go to work
My brother asked me to pick up his medicine from the chemist
I slept in and missed my flight home from my weekend in Barcelona

I completely agree with you OP. I spent last night marking a number of resubmissions that we have been given one day to turn around as students were allowed to self extend submission dates. The number of students who feel that they should not experience any level of anxiety in assessment is unbelievable. The University I currently work for is now so tail wagging dog in its approach that I am starting to look for another position. It is not normal in professional life to submit work when you feel ready.

This is such an interesting thread. The university I work at (which I think may be the same as @Jourdain11??? ) has been grappling with these issues. Students find it really hard to manage their own time and to work within expected limits. We set a bunch of 24 hour timed assessments during the COVID period (in part to accommodate students in multiple time zones), very clearly saying to students that we expected them to spend about 3 hours on the actual work. And lots of them worked the majority of the 24 hours. The assessment's not designed to be done like that, the benefit of additional work will be marginal and the additional stress is considerable, but they are not able to set and stick to the advised limits. Now, that's not their fault - but it's also a skill they need to learn because otherwise they will absolutely be taken advantage of in the workplace - and won't be able to recognise when a piece of work is done and it's time to move onto the next thing.

I think there's a similar problem for essays and other coursework-type assessments. If you can't figure out what's a reasonable amount of time to spend on your work, and how best to use that time, of course it's going to feel overwhelming. The solution is not to put off the problem, it's to learn how to deal with something that feels really unpleasant, how to put boundaries in place for yourself, how to shut out the 'noise' from others that will stress you out even more and how to do the best you can even if it is hard and not perfect.

@Scurryfunge12 i completely agree depression (and anxiety too) can be debilitating. I think the point PP are making is that at that point what is often needed is to step away from the course (interrupt) take some to seek help and support and return when in a better place to deal with the stresses of university work. Struggling on with extension after extension, struggling because you fail to get taught most of the content as they aren’t attending teaching or seminars and forcing yourself to try and complete what should rightly be a difficult degree isn’t helpful for anyone. The university has a responsibility to the student but sometimes that responsibility is that this isn’t right for you just now.