University Fees for on-line Lectures

[Kastanien]

Latest this morning(sorry if it is already on here, I checked and could not see a thread)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52506283

Just wondering how those of you with DC due to start (or return to Uni) in the Autumn feel about full tuition fees for on-line learning?
I feel there should be a reduction as the teaching is not the same on-line as face to face.

It's more a flat we'll be doing it when we're allowed to do it, really. Do you honestly think anybody posting here has any authority over that?

Actually, industrial action taken by university staff might well have played a part in preventing mass transmission of the virus prior to the middle of March...

What? If you were only allowed to eat on two days per week, but on those two days each wool no food was available, then you wouldn't have eaten for eight weeks would you?

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras - fasting means not eating. If I fasted monday and wednesday for eight weeks (as many people do), I would not have had no food for eight weeks, would I?

CatandtheFiddle

So you are telling me that exams, sat at home, over 24 or 48 hours are sound assessment tools? That cheating won't occur, that there's no chance a student wouldn't get someone else to sit the exam for them or have someone else assisting them?

No matter how great you think it is anyone comparing this year's cohort, who are sitting exams at home not under exam conditions, with any other year who have taken exams under strict conditions will conclude that this year will not have been so rigourously tested

COVID is here to stay.
A vaccine will not be fully available within a year
within a couple of years it will join the list of whatever coronaviruses

The sooner large institutions learn to live with it the better

sadly that will be too late for final year students who feel utterly buggered about

but hopefully proper plans will be in place to support STEM subjects by the autumn

TheMerrickBoy

I was trying to apply your poor metaphor to this situation.

Fasting for two days per week of course means that you can eat on the other five days, but that isn't how university works is it? If you are timetabled to attend on only Mondays and Tuesdays and uni is closed on Monday and Tuesday for eight weeks it won't matter if uni is running on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will it? It was closed on your days and therefore your lessons didn't take place.

That was my point. You can only apply your metaphor if you extended it.

Are you this patronising towards your students?

My students are a lot more open to discussion and thought!

I get it is frustrating if all the strike days occur on your only teaching days, that;s rotten luck.

Also when you pay fees, you are not paying them for the days of the week you are in a class, are you?

Also when you pay fees, you are not paying them for the days of the week you are in a class, are you?

I don't understand. She was paying her fees for X number of contact hours per week and to receive a certain amount of instruction and course content - she didn't get that so why should she have paid?

If you bought a plane ticket or a theatre ticket that didn't take place due to a strike would you expect to just lose your money? No, you expect to be provided with what you have paid for.

She was paying her fees for X number of contact hours per week and to receive a certain amount of instruction and course content

Universities say this over and over and over: tuition fees pay for far more than simply the contact hours per week. I refer you to any number of posts on this thread alone - read YogaFakir's post carefully, for example.

No that's the thing - you're not paying them for X amount of contact hours (otherwise some degrees would be much more expensive). As @catandthefiddle and others explain.

I;ve bought plane tickets I won't be using this summer and certainly don't think I'll be getting what I paid for or a refund.

Students are not paying for contact hours. 🙄
I have had students in the past work out how much they are paying me per hour.... unfortunately it doesn't work like that. In my case it would be bloody brilliant if it did

@SueEllenMishke yes, I've been told their "calculations" too! And yet many obviously don't think of it like that (including the calculating ones), or else surely they'd attend everything and full attendance wouldn't be unheard of?

else surely they'd attend everything and full attendance wouldn't be unheard of?

Very true!
It's used to be very much a UG phenomenon but it's common in PG students now too.

I've been thinking about this thread, on and off. The problem is that two things are true:

a) academics are working unbelievably hard and doing everything they can to mitigate the impact on students in the vast majority of cases
AND
b) many students don't like what they're currently getting and an unknown but non-zero number will choose not to pay for it next year

It's really hard to accept, as someone who works for a university and is passionate about higher education, but I don't know if in all conscience I'd tell a young person I loved to go next year if they had a realistic other option. Again, that's not because I think academics aren't working hard but quite the opposite - I think this is unsustainable extra pressure put on a profession at breaking point and I can't see how it will run smoothly, or perhaps at all, in many cases. If you look at the rate of reported mental health issues already in the profession I think next year as it's shaping up to look at a lot of universities will end many careers, sad as it is to say, and I just don't think it will be a good or pleasant learning experience for the students who witness that. If I, personally, had the option to wait a year for things to stabilise I would - but of course the more students do that the more unstable the sector becomes. It's a hard circle to square.

I also think some universities will go into administration, and I don't know what that will mean for their students and wouldn't particularly want my child to be in the position of finding out.

So what, exactly, do students pay their fees for? Or, more to the point, what have students in the 2019/2020 paid their fees for?

Althouvh Cat only 400 people in the UK under 45 have died of it so for students it is not a killer virus and most of those killed are over 70 or have an underlying health condition or are obese etc.
How is this an acceptable thing to say?! Lots of students have an "underlying health condition". Aside from the fact that it would be stupid for everyone if vast numbers of students moved cross country to access reopened libraries etc as early as June, contaminating everyone in their path (remember not everyone has parents to ship them in hermetically sealed vehicles), the dismissal of students with disabilities and poor health here is heartbreaking. Already students with longterm health problems have difficulty persuading unis to accommodate them, should my friends just be told to suck it up, risk dying, or stop having classes? I am genuinely shocked that you think the entire student body is made up of fit and healthy 18-25 year olds. Anyway, both my best teachers are of an age at which they should be shielding so it doesn't even make sense in that regard.

Bakedpotato I'm glad someone else on this thread is as horrified as I am at this callous view of the safety of all people who work & study at UK universities.

hear that's been explained a number of times but you refuse to hear anything that might show any university or academic.in s positive light.
Contact time is one of many, many things students are paying for.
Other things include:

Course Admin teams
Library ( much of this is online)
Library staff
Careers and employability services
Well being services
Catering staff
Cleaners
Estates services
Academic support
Placement support staff

Most, if not all, of the above would have been available during the strikes and the vast majority is still available now just in a different format.

Most of those aren't available now and many of those things weren't applicable to my DD during the strikes.

She wouldn't have benefited from catering staff, placement support staff, well being services, careers staff.

However you try to justify it, in a "normal" year, she would have benefited from full provision for the month from November until March, and from mid February until now. So, there has to have been a negative impact from that loss.

Hear, take your kid out of university. If it such a waste it is not worth it. Honestly, if you cannot appreciate what university is about, what is the point?

Most of those are available now and if they aren't then she should complain.

As for not benefiting from catering, careers or placements ....well to some extent that's her choice and not the universities fault. However, has she never bought a drink on campus or lunch? Also, careers have input into the curriculum so she would have benefited even if it wasn't explicit.
And it's great that she didn't need well being support but it's there is she needs it.

You're really clutching at straws now.

TheMotherofAllDilemmas

She's finished. This was her final year. And of course I see benefit to a university education - to a properly administered and delivered university education. Not one that is half arsed and where students don't achieve the results they were on track to achieve, because of situations beyond their control.

I do find some of these arguments a bit bizarre. Out of 5 months potential tuition time, she's had two months. If you don't think that hasn't negatively impacted her then what on earth is the point of academics and lecturers? Do you not add value? Are you not invaluable to students, to their education? If so, then how can you insist that no detriment has been suffered? If you say no detriment has occurred then why are lecturers needed?