AIBU to be angry at my university's response to virus

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Advice is - "continue to encourage all students to attend seminars and lectures to get the most benefit from their course." We could easily switch to online, but no, they are too worried about it impacting on attendence figures and we have been told they "will continue to monitor lecture attendence, and follow up non-attendence". (I am a lecturer at this university).

Sounds like the one I've got the misfortune to be a student at at the moment. I'm really bloody angry about it - their attitude is that the 18 year olds have minimal to worry about (despite the ones on my case with previous health conditions who are worried) and they're totally ignoring those who have caring responsibilities, or the older students who have ageing parents and families, and the lecturers and their families. They've even ignored students skiving off during strikes for holidays in infection zones and breezing back into lectures (and placements FFS).

But it's OK cos they've cleaned the door knobs.

I'm going in for absolutely the bare minimum - don't want to put my vulnerable family members in more danger than I need to. Really wish they'd switch to online as they've got the infrastructure there and record absolutely every lecture anyway.

Mine isn't closing either. I emailed my tutor who said I may miss some content if I self isolate. Its not self isolating. I'm just not milling around thousands of people in one day!

Both my DC are coming home and wont be going back for the summer term as both their unis have suspended teaching. On the other hand my DP who is a professor at another uni is expected to carry on as usual.

My husband's university is exactly the same, and they have a confirmed case, plus several more at the other university in the same city. He is really worried about going into work on Monday to be coughed at in an unventilated room by 80 students. I'm not surprised you're angry. My university has just announced that exams will be changed to remote assessment and all teaching will be online, which is the responsible thing to do. A lot of the students do not want to be there at the moment.

I wonder if there is a difference in approach between universities that have terms and those that have semesters? It seems to me that it's those who have terms (and are finishing around now) that are announcing moves to online activity, whereas it's those who have semesters and several weeks to go yet that are planning to stick it out for as long as possible.

The thing is that staff and students will start to self-isolate or actually get ill. Then there will be no teaching, or students won't be availing themselves of the teaching. Whereas if things switched to online, there would at least be some continuity.

We've really wound down now anyway - they only teach curriculum two terms and the final term is exams - there is minimal bloody point in us being in really and it's unnecessary exposure.

Mine has stopped face to face lectures until after the Easter holidays. They will be putting lectures on line ans it will be self study.

We’re still going in too. I’m not really that worried though

We had an email about 5pm changing direction from yesterday. Told to be prepared for uni closing probably from early next week.

Oops, I've reported my post

I'm expecting our uni to start wfh within the week, although I expect it will take 5-10 days to get the infra in place for all directorates to be fully home based.

We had a similar email this morning.

By 5pm the advice had changed and our face to face lessons are suspended until mid April. Everything to take place over e-learning and assessments are suspended in the interim.

Your institution may change their advice over the weekend. But you wouldn’t be unreasonable to miss lessons if you or a member of your household needs to self isolate/is high risk

Mines cancelled lectures and exams. I’m in Scotland- I think lots are up here

Same here with my husbands university, he is expected to carry on as normal 🙄 he's also involved in an extracurricular activity on a business basis (sorry that's extremely badly worded so as not to be outing) and they are continuing their plan to have the groups fly to a few events in the upcoming month. Personally I find this baffling, yes we can't let coronavirus take over our lives where we can help but I also don't think it's worth the risk for what is not a vital trip. Hoping the events get cancelled but I am not holding my breath!

My uni note openly replying to any stated concerns saying sod off you're expected in lectures basically.

They're arses at the best of times and can get stuffed - or kick me out cos I'm not going in on packed trains at the moment.

I rang my student dc last night and she said it was business as usual. She seemed to have only heard of coronavirus in passing and was genuinely surprised when I explained what was going on in the world (yes, she does live in a little student bubble bless her.) The only advice on their uni website is about international students and travel.

Mine is moving over to online lectures but we have been told we are not allowed to work from home. I expect all the academics will anyway but I'm admin so no choice.

Ours have brought the end of term forward to yesterday. There are arrangements in place to get content out to students and graduation is suspended to ensure enough time for teaching, learning and examination

Still business as usual at DD's university.

Mine has moved everything to online. All classes cancelled and they’re trying to work out what to do about exams. It’s still open and you can go in, but dept head sent email on Friday suggesting working from home wherever possible.

Don’t be so sure about how easy it is to move to online teaching. Anyway, things are moving very quickly and I expect your university will change its approach soon - many are changing within a working day. I hope that some students appreciate how much work will go into switching to online teaching for some teams - it’s the right thing to do but it is not a small operation and patience is required, there will be teething problems and the situation is unprecedented.

Academic staff and students at my university are now encouraged to stay away and teaching is moving to online where practicable (teaching staff have one week to organise this). However, admin and technical staff will likely need to continue to come in as no one has bothered to make sure that they have the facilities to work from home (systems don’t work offsite, and things need to happen behind the scenes for students and academics to be able to do their work). But many universities don’t really treat their staff terribly well, so this is not surprising, and if social media is anything to go by most students REALLY don’t give a shit about university staff anyway

Southampton is closing from Monday.As well as UK students there are a lot of international students who have to get flights home, there might be a lockdown soon, I think it's the right decision as Easter holidays are coming up soon.

Mine is certainly pushing "business as usual" and everyone is expected to be in.

Monday will be interesting to see how many actually does come in, staff and students alike.

According to the student room several universities have already closed or moved to online lectures:

Universities stopping face-to-face teaching so far include:

• Durham
• MMU
• Lancaster
• Southampton
• Harper Adams (anecdotal)
• Leicester
• UCL (anecdotal)
• LSE
• KCL
• Birkbeck
• Nottingham
• Glasgow
• Essex
• Loughborough
• Liverpool (anecdotal)
• Westminster
• Sheffield
• Bristol (anecdotal)
• Northumbria
• Portsmouth
• (Potentially) Uni of Birmingham
• Edinburgh
• Queen Mary
• Aberdeen

If anyone is interested there is a gov petition regarding the closure of universities petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300628 cant do clicky link sorry

My DD is at one of the unis mentioned by pp and came home yesterday as did most of her friends. They only had a week left of this term and will be doing distance learning.

She doesn’t live in a bubble and fully understood what was going on, I am much happier to have the whole family under 1 roof.