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.

To those of you saying the last few years with Covid have been unprecedented, I agree. However, this problem long predates covid. I joined my university in 2016, and rates of mit circs and extensions were rising rapidly year-on-year down to 2019. I look at that 2016 cohort & even they would be almost unrecognisable compared to the 2019 group in terms of number of extension requests, deferrals etc., not to mention how independent they were in terms of research and managing their work. It seems unlikely, but it’s true.

Then once Covid hit, everything exploded & we were into the territory of 60%+ extension rates. But the worrying thing is that it doesn’t show signs of coming back down much, even now that evidence requirements have been reintroduced. Students currently at uni have had the crutch of easy extensions for the past 2 years now and we’re seeing the effect. Maybe we’ll need to work extra hard with the incoming first years to try and change the culture…

I think it may be the same too!

@RollingInTheCreek Exactly, and I can think of multiple cases where the student would have been better off interrupting than continuing the year, taking

Posted too soon again! ...taking very little from it and ultimately not progressing in any case. Conversely, some cases where a student has interrupted and has come back in a really good place having had some time out.

What annoys me the most is that the people that "can't cope" expect everyone else that apparently "can cope" to pick up the slack without actually checking they can cope. There's an assumption that THEY have issues that need extra help but everyone else is totally fine so they should do it. I work in healthcare. I'm also autistic. I struggled massively as a child and young adult. I used to get home from school/ work and have full meltdowns which occasionally involved minor self harm. This usually resulted from being too busy at school/ work. My mum spent years helping me cope and building resilience. Maybe counselling or something would have been useful but it just wasn't really the done thing years ago so I'll never know. But anyway now in my 40s I have learned ways to cope with things and can deal with most things without too many issues although I'm still prone to getting extremely stressed but i try and focus and get things done. However because of this colleagues think it's fine to pile everything on top of me and they "can't cope". I work with patients who have appointments booked. If a colleague says sorry I'm too anxious to work today what happens to all those patients? They either get cancelled (which results in them getting very stressed) or they get squeezed into my diary and I'm stressed as I'm running late and people are angry with me and shout at me which means I start to feel like I'm about to have a meltdown but I know i can't as you just can't do that in a professional healthcare setting. The one thing my mum taught me the most is that there's a time to be sad/ stressed/anxious and a time when you just have to get on with it. It took years for me to be able to do this but unless you try you'll never be able to.
Surgeons can't just say oh I'm sad today so I'll cancel the entire day of patients. A lot of jobs have serious repercussions if you just don't go in. Obviously sometimes people are just too ill. Which is fine. But let's face it you're not going to have a brain surgeon taking 2 weeks off because their cat died. But yet people in other jobs feel its absolutely essential for some reason. Why is grieving for the cat essential for the office worker who can't cope with the sadness but not for the surgeon who is expected (rightly) to get on with it?
The people demanding weeks off for these issues are likely the same people complaining when no one answers the phone at the GP (receptionist is off with stress), police haven't turned up to look into their issue (pc plods second cousin died 2 weeks ago so she's still off), the dentist cancelled their appt that they took the day annual leave for (dentist is too anxious to work today) etc etc. If allowances at made for any reason then the whole country falls apart.

I can see both sides of this. I'm wary of the way that mental health difficulties have become a currency within what we call 'identity politics' - but I also know several young people who have developed serious disorders over the last couple of years.

Only their parents have seen them at their very very worst - they instinctively mask for others, even mental health professionals. I don't think that anyone on university academic or pastoral staff could reliably distinguish which are the suicidal ones and which are a bit anxious. I think we have to accept that some students will be cotton-wooled in order to catch those who are in major crisis, but look exactly the same to the naked eye. The risk of getting it wrong is ... well, it's life or death.

I agree with this, and several others who have actually seen the effects of anxiety on a family member they know well and care about, rather than sweeping an arm over '40 percent'...'so much of a cohort'... or anything else as a statistic that deviates from a desired norm rather than the people that make up that number.

The problems have hit the university stage at the point of the first year; the final year; the school 6th form, college, and even GCSE years that came before undergrad age. Most of these people won't have had the experience of exam hall conditions or resilience about them, unlike those that came earlier, and the decisions made on how they would do A-levels or GCSE by the powers that be, were botched and made fairly last-minute. They had to be led, because the lack of predictability of assessment (and the extent of what they could expect to be taught online in time for then) was such that nobody appeared to know exactly what was going on. It was hard work but it's been minimised and eroded nevertheless. And postgrads? Plenty of individual, self-directed work, less spoon feeding, more time, a lot more freedom and experience and even age, in some cases, behind them? They should be able to get back on the horse, suck it up etc.? Or... not: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/11/cambridge-university-opens-urgent-review-five-students-die-within/
You believe you are pandering to them. The university experience should be about more than academic prowess and grades, and all of the growing up, failing and bouncing back, and taking responsibility part of it has been taken away recently.

Anxiety, and many other MH conditions, have physical symptoms too. They can't be worked away, logic-ed away, put in a box when you feel like it, kicked down the road. To others they often look as if there is nothing really wrong. The medical advice for actually getting through them includes medication and consciously reducing stress, whatever that might look like for the sufferer - neither of which are guaranteed to solve the problem predictably. Exams, as they were, can be something of a superspreader event (there was an end of year show in an art school a few weeks ago that felt more 'celebratory', but definitely had this effect) and unfortunately there will be many still afraid of, trying to avoid, Covid. These students have just become statistics to you, and things are very far from how they were when you were in their position.

@Jourdain11 I agree. I tend to offer low level support and intervention (eg counselling referral, support with mitigation for one exam/assignment for acute need) but for ongoing issues which are having a real impact I feel there should be a low threshold for taking some time out. I appreciate this is a big deal as people have often signed up for shared houses etc but I have had students step out mid year, take a job and just work and focus on their mental health and come back as you said in a much better and place and easily complete their course the next year.

However, this problem long predates covid. I joined my university in 2016, and rates of mit circs and extensions were rising rapidly year-on-year down to 2019.

I can completely believe this @FlySwimmer - but perhaps we should look this in teh eye and ask in good faith why children's mental health was already crumbling before Covid? These children are the symptom, not the cause. For many, there is no hope of any of the rewards that previous generations took for granted - the pressure to succeed in a world that they can see and are often told is becoming more and more competitive for a smaller and smaller pot of rewards must be unbearable. Gen X experienced nothing like it and tbh it's outrageously un-self-aware to think that we understand any of what they are feeling. We've done this to them, or at least failed to prevent it. We need to rethink everything.

Thank you Winter. It's very sobering.

As someone who has led grad recruitment drives for over ten years I would say graduate intake resilience and aptitude has been sliding for some time but the last two years have seen that downward trajectory increase dramatically.

Many people under the age of 30 view their Manager as their third parent who are somehow meant to solve their life problems. It’s extraordinary. Capable, resilient people are being promoted ahead of their peers who then lodge grievances because they haven’t been promoted. I despair some days.

I've just completed my BA as a mature student and I must agree with you too, OP. Some of the babying of my peers was absolutely ridiculous. There was one person who deferred who I completely agree was right to do so, however they are genuinely an exceptional student who happened to have a lot of personal life issues occur all at once and necessitate a short notice house move etc, that would have affected their performance. They will continue to work hard when they complete next year and deserve to do very well. I have huge sympathy for anyone going through genuine mental health/life crises.

Others, well. That wasn't the case. It became a piss take at times, and as a student who worked to deadlines and didn't take extensions just because I could, it was frustrating to see their refusal to organise themselves and just STUDY enabled by the faculty. Then those same people seem to struggle to now understand why they don't have the same sort of jobs/further study lined up as those of us who did the thing properly.

I did get a major bout of dissertation nerves and think I couldn't do it, so I accessed some academic support and a wellbeing meeting, which just reassured me that my nerves were normal and there was no reason I couldn't do this piece of work just as well as the previous pieces. No special circumstances were put in place off the back of my having those meetings, it's available for anyone to access any time.

I graduate with a First, which I worked extremely hard for, without any extensions.

Totally agree. Much better to stop, reset, save some money and come back when you are ready.

But work does not make accommodations, or not as many as young students seem to think it will.
And I know many people with autism who work. The difference is they have coping strategies.

This narrative is part of the problem. You are not helping young people.

Totally disagree with this. There are assessment tools mental health professionals use to assess who is at risk of suicide. They are not perfect, nothing is.
University students are at a lower risk of suicide than their non-university peers. Those most at risk are young people struggling with lots of major life events and trauma.

Exactly. Our outgoing school captain (a bright, optimistic capable girl) gave a leaving speech stating confidently that 'no generation has ever had to go through what we've gone through!' Well, sort of, but you're hardly the only generation that's had to endure any hardship. It's this idea that they've had it worse than anyone else that's crippling them.

My DD graduated to last year and worked in NHS local to university then decided to move back to London early this year.
London has been hard, with a big caseload. She has been expected to get on with it and hit the floor running. I think they did realise they were being a little harsh and did a little intervention in the end and that helped her and she is much happier. She is sticking it out because she knows it is really good experience .

I think we are doing our children a disfavour telling them that no other generation had it worse.
I think what my DMIL and her sister went through in WW11 where she was evacuated and had barely any education after the age of 12. No computers to keep in touch with friends or to learn on line, split from their family and in her sisters case badly treated and starved

@antelopevalley
For what it’s worth, I’m a Millenial and despite the crap thrown at our generation, I think our resilience & self-reliance was/is better on the whole. We need to figure out what has gone wrong with this group. PP have mentioned their ideas, and I think it’s a combination of the systemic and the individual.

The university does have a pastoral responsibility, but we are not in loco parentis, nor are we mental health professionals. The MH service my institution offers is not a crisis service and isn't suitable to treat serious MH conditions. There is a misunderstanding of what the service is able to offer (and unfortunately some inappropriate signposting), which is not helpful to students.

There is a perception that counselling is the answer to everything, when in fact it is inappropriate in many cases. Often a bit of pastoral advice on dealing with housing issues, or attending study skills workshops, would be a much better way of addressing the issues. The clogging up of the counselling system means that those who would benefit from accessing it face very long waits.

That said, I do appreciate that Covid has had a big impact on students' experiences and I fully accept that there was genuine anxiety around spread of Covid in exams and being asked to do things which hadn't been asked for 2 academic years. It is difficult, but sometimes it is necessary to challenge people a bit - doing something outside your comfort zone can be very empowering. Whereas if you keep trying to avoid it, you will never gain confidence to handle it.

I actually disagree that this generation faces a worse situation than any other and I'm not sure that the victim narrative is so helpful. When I was a UG in the late noughties, we were also in recession and there was none of the awareness around MH that there is now.

workplaces usually do make accomodations if
if an employee has a diagnosis of autism.
I think there's a general feeling in this thread that young people are just molly coddled and pampered these days and as such have zero resilience. I think it's
more nuanced than that and (as a previous poster mentioned) as a society we need to question the role we've all played.

I hope her history teacher politely took her aside afterwards and directed her attention to some articles on the two world wars, the plague, or any of the tens to hundreds of other periods when life was far more brutal, deadly or harsh than the last few years have been.

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.

Brava to your DD! What an accomplishment and one she can be very proud of. She knows she can face up to extraordinary circumstances and deal with them.

Such a useful thing to know about herself I hope it has lifted her confidence.

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

Shocking - all of them.

And pace the other thread about graduate jobs -£60k is the start of the Professorial salary scale.

And you have to do a helluva lot more than get out of bed in time to become a Professor!