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.

@MysticMeghan. That is great that your daughter has found a way to make things work for her. My DD has applied to a Uni 170 miles from home so sadly not commutable. She turned down our home town university as she wanted to experience live away from home.

@Kastanien She had offers from Durham and Exeter but sadly couldn't take them up. We are in Scotland and my DH has been out of work due to ill health. Scottish Students are fairly limited in what funding they can claim (no bursary if parental household income is above £32k which sounds a lot but many NHS staff couples earn more and they are not known for being well paid) but Scottish students get free tuition here.

The downside is that the maximum loan doesn't even cover a basic Uni flat and parents are expected to find the rest. As a 17 year old, wasn't keen on her getting a job as bar work isn't possible and most common jobs like Primark the 17 year olds get slave wages which are further eroded by bus fares. Better to wait until they are 18 when the same job pays more per hour. Of course now she is 18 everything is shut and no-one's recruiting :(

St Andrews flatly refuses to even look at state school pupils even with straight A's now and she didn't fancy Edinburgh (I didn't when I was her age - nothing against them, just didn't appeal) so Glasgow was an obvious choice. She is very happy there and the city has good transport links so easy to get to and get around. She's had a year away and much more confident but knows what she wants. And must say I may be facing a wage cut next year so very glad she's decided to do this.

For anyone considering Glasgow, they not only bend over backwards to help state school kids, but will also tweak the grades for kids from extremely deprived living or school areas. My daughter had two A's and a C but they took into account that the C was for a subject where her school hadn't had a proper teacher for a year because they couldn't recruit anyone. The various fill-in teachers weren't trained in the subject and did a piss poor job of preparing them for the exam. That was all taken into account. Anyone looking to defer would do well to chat to their admissions. The most helpful of any University.

St Andrew's flatly refuses to look at state school pupils even with straight As I'd be interested where you got this information from as I didn't get this impression when I was considering it (although I didn't apply there in the end for other reasons)

My DS is thoroughly fed up. He studies jazz. Most exams and teaching are practical and involve students and tutors playing together in small ensembles. This can't be replicated online even with the use of apps as you can't improvise or communicate with your audience.

I can't believe, that 5 pages in, no-one has yet mentioned that - for the overwhelming majority of students - it is irrelevant whether the University charges £9250 or £8000 or £6500 or some other 'plucked from the air' amount.
You don't pay your student loan back in the way of a normal loan.
You pay your student loan in the way of a tax.
The amount you earn determines the amount you pay back, not the amount you owe. So somehow arranging to withhold £1K or £2K of next year's fees will have no effect on the amount the overwhelming majority of students pay back anyway.

I prefer my online degree, it’s much more personable, from a better uni, better resources, petter prepared and better lectures than my traditional degree, from a top uni in the subject.
The teachers don’t do “hands up” for zoom meetings but pick out students from everyone who’s there, if you have something to add there’s a moderator for the chat who will tell the teacher who wants to speak. At the end the teacher joins the chat and we all talk about it and get more clarifications if needed.
All material is online, but te lectures are clearer. Slides are uploaded + an MP3 + a video of both in sync depending on how you want to study. Teachers are available to be called or emailed at certain times, and it’s much more flexible.
I live far away from the uni but there are face to face weekends that you can attend once a term, and full use of the facilities at that uni and other select unis around the world to help people who live away. When I go there for the study weekends all my food and board is paid for.

Obviously online classes aren’t for everyone, but for me I’m doing much better and I can do everything in my own time. We do group projects and have one on one tutorials online, which is brilliant.

I assume that you are a mature student grisen. I doubt that many 18 year olds want to stay in their bedrooms for 3 years to get a degree. Most of them want the whole university experience.

I agree that I think universities will refuse the majority of deferral requests. So students will have the choice of letting go of their place and applying again.

If a lot of people do this then the amount of people fighting for places for next year could be huge. So a bit of a gamble. Plus no guarantee that we’re not in the same boat in sept 2021, this could be how higher education looks for the next 5 years.

Dd is currently in first year and considering asking to interrupt for a year. She’s doing architecture so unless they can get back in the studios I don’t know how they can run an effective course.

I’m in my second year of a part-time taught MA (and haven’t been particularly impressed with the course anyway). Because of being part-time, the timing of lecturer strikes and then Covid, I haven’t been taught in-person by my lecturers since 19th February. We also missed a week of classes in the winter because of strikes. As my classes are only on one day, that meant I had no classes at all for weeks. Our lecturers have worked really hard to get content up online and to mimic classes through Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate which has been great, but I’m still conscious that it’s not really the same as in-person teaching, nor am I able to access any of the university facilities I’m paying for.

I wouldn’t mind a small refund in recognition of not having probably a 3rd of this year’s planned teaching but as someone else has pointed out, as I took a Masters loan to pay the fees for this course, it fundamentally won’t impact my repayments anyway. So seems a bit pointless.

Grisen Are you studying with the OU?

@BackForGood this was what I was trying to say, but I don't think I expressed it very well. Excellent point

Backforgood. That’s not true? The loan costs 5% from the day they take it out. For a 3 year course plus accom that could be interest on a 45k loan?

They start paying it back when they earn over 28k. Any reduction in fees means less to pay back which would help.

That’s important if you want to pay for a flat deposit within a couple of years of graduating.

Not saying reduction in fees is the right thing but I can see why 18 year olds would want them

Actually newgirl interest is 3% plus RPI and repayments start at £26,575 ....and you pay 9% on your salary above this threshold.

And the amount you own does not impact on your repayment figure so it would make zero difference on saving for a house deposit......

*amount you owe

here we go again. OP your complaint is written from the POV of lack of thinking through what's involved in high-level teaching and learning in a large institution (upwards of 20,000 undergrads).

Just off the top of my head - if there is wholly online teaching in September/October:
Tuition fees pay for:

• teaching
• preparation for teaching. To give you an example, in the Humanities, I find that for me, to write a new lecture is about 2 days' work) - so a whole new module of 35-40 contact hours across a teaching term - 2 days a week work, plus the actual hours, plus marking, plus student advising
• marking
• personal tutorials
• office hours - being online & available - even though (as PP have said) students don't take up the offer, but generally tend to email me the night with before an essay is due with the Subject line "Urgent" requiring that I sort out their lack of planning.

None of this takes into account the years of experience, work, and expertise that any academic brings to her work. I've been doing this for 30 years. It's lovely to read about how that is notvalued.

Then learning resources:

• Library electronic purchasing: some science journals cost around £10,000+ per annum subscription; in my field essential databases have annual subscription fees in the 10s of thousands of pounds.
• learning support
• disability services: assessment and support
• computer services support (at my place this includes means-tested emergency cash grants of on average £2k per student for laptops etc)
• IT infrastructure support - really necessary now.

Then there are costs to keep up buildings - we won't be online permanently, and I know we are planning mixed delivery - physically distanced in person teaching & learning when/where it is safe, and online when/where it is not safe - for vulnerable staff as much as vulnerable students.

£9k really doesn't come close to covering the university education of a domestic UK student. All your DC are subsidised by overseas students, despite that fact that a small, but worrying, proportion of your DC actively dislike working and living with OS students.

You might like to know I attended a planning meeting last week looking at how we could make savings in the millions for my Faculty. The conversation started with salary cuts of around 20% for senior academics and pay freezes for junior academics. While working longer hours than ever. We then went on to a recruitment freeze, cutting all casual hourly-paid & part-time staff, cutting any research budgets and international travel ...

It's as if the country wants degrees for their children, but expects them to be taught by - I don't know - unskilled underpaid unvalued experts? Because "no-one pays attention to experts any more."

We have some of the best universities in the world. Their excellence is enabled & facilitated by the whole HE system. We consistently punch above our weight and funding. Which university hosts one of the 10 or so labs close to a vaccine for COVID-19? Yes, it's a UK one.

It's as if the country wants degrees for their children, but expects them to be taught by - I don't know - unskilled underpaid unvalued experts? Because "no-one pays attention to experts any more."

As long as their children get high marks and ego-pleasing comments I'm not sure that many would care. Of course, they also hope that a degree will buy work and riches for their children.

They also expect 24-hour access to academic staff, evenings and weekends. That's what email is for right?

And if demands are not met - well that is what course evaluations are for.

Basically, we have been reduced to the deliverers of a service, f-t-f or distance oriented.

Depressing, isn't it?

Almost as if they're worried they haven't raised their DC to be motivated learners, and need someone else to do it for them ...

I certainly value the university education being delivered to my DD . She appears to be coping with the changes in place and thriving at present . Working for exams and attending online tuition . Sure she’s pissed at losing out on the social thrills of the summer term but so far being pragmatic about it all and anticipating a return to Durham in Sept/ Oct . Chip off the old block :)

I've been stressing to my students that self-motivation is a skill much valued by employers. It's been interesting. Students who I expected to thrive have not. It's often the 'plodders' who are coping the best. Yay Hufflepuff...

@Bakedpotatoandgin

My DD first became suspicious of St Andrews admissions policy when she applied for a Sutton Trust Summer School at St Andrews and was told that based on her High School and postcode deprivation rating they felt she was "unlikely to be accepted". An odd statement to make. But it proved to be accurate. She had offers from Durham, Aberdeen, Warwick and Glasgow so clearly her grades weren't an issue. And St Andrews also said the grades weren't an issue. They said the course was "full".

5 pupils at DD's High School with straight A's applying for a variety of different courses at St Andrews all rejected. Again the excuse given being that the courses were "full". Early application for courses with fairly high intakes, i.e. not medicine. But courses such as international relations languages and history/art history which are popular with Americans and overseas students. More of that later.

DD's High School is in a poor area and is regarded as "deprived" hence Sutton Trust fairly active. DD asked around friends at other High Schools and it was the same story. Then when she went to Glasgow she met up with a boy who had applied to St Andrews for the same course as one of her friends, been accepted but decided to go to Glasgow as he was a rugby player and felt the facilities were better. His grades were significantly WORSE than some of her straight A friends but for the same course. He went to a fee paying school.

But state school versus fee paying school is only PART of the story.
DD then went on several open days and shadowing days at St Andrews and was amazed at how few Scottish Students there were compared to Americans and English. Many of the English were fee paying schools. She wondered if this was possibly because private schools deliver a better set of grades on the whole but didn't feel this was the whole picture. She concluded that nationality is also a factor in the St Andrews admissions policy.

One thing she WAS told when visiting several language departments at St Andrews is that one thing holding back State School pupils in both Scotland AND England is that many State Schools don't have the budget to offer languages beyond French and German so if you want to do Arabic/Russian/Spanish/Italian/Chinese and aren't native speakers, you're at a relative disadvantage compared to private school pupils. One exception here was Russian where they prefer you NOT to have prior knowledge of the language (this was St Andrews - other Unis may differ). Many fee paying schools offer these languages, if not as part of the general curriculum then as fee paying extras.

Nothing to conclusively prove this but there have been several media stories hinting at the fact that for a Scottish University, St Andrews has a fairly low level of Scottish intake compared to 30 years ago when DH and myself were there. This has been blamed on the the fact that the Universities receive only £1820 from the Scottish Government for every Scottish student they admit (based on the policy of free University education for Scottish students). Compare this to the £9250 they can receive for English students (sometimes more for certain medicine and science based courses) and the average £20,000 which they get for Americans. Do the maths. It makes no economic sense for them to admit many Scottish students at all.

Most Universities will seek to cream off the top students. And inevitably those will come from the fee paying sector, they have the best prospects and teaching after all. And in languages they often have a basic grounding in the less common languages so less foundation level teaching required. Plus many fee paying Schools in Scotland offer A levels and/or International Baccalaureate as an alternative to Scottish Highers (which are NOT well regarded by some Universities even though the students learn a wider range of subjects). So if you have a Scottish Student with good Highers and a state school background trying to get into St Andrews the grades are fairly irrelevant as you don't represent a very good rate of return from a Business perspective AT ALL.

Our Universities have become businesses where the generation of revenue is the highest priority. And the highest priority will always be given to those parents waving fat wads of cash.

I’m a lecturer at a university with a very strong flexible learning background as well as campus based courses, we are able to offer high quality teaching in both - but actually developing and delivery of high quality online materials usually takes much longer than face to face content and often with more follow up from students- I’m really passionate about my job and providing a high quality teaching experience is important to me and obviously for my students, but I like many colleagues are already working way beyond contracted hours, and the resource implications of moving campus based programmes online even with that tech in use in other distance and flexible learning programmes will be huge - let alone for universities who don’t have the tech in place or widespread experience in using it and developing content specifically for it. If full fees are not paid then either poor quality materials will be provided (not necessarily by choice but because there isn’t the resource to do better), we’ll all be working even longer hours again which also risks student experience if we’re completely burnt out, or programmes, departments and maybe even universities will close. Many universities are also looking at blended options with new modes of study to introduce this my September/ October will require huge work by academics. Many regular academics who actually provide the highest quality education do not earn huge salaries, have quite insecure working conditions, extremely high workloads and unrealistic performance management and regularly work 50/60 hour weeks including evenings and weekends.
It’s really not as simple as assuming online means cheaper.

but actually developing and delivery of high quality online materials usually takes much longer than face to face content and often with more follow up from students

Yes. This!!

I was involved in the mid-1990s with feasibility planning and early experiments for flexibly delivered postgrad degrees in an area which could only have been served by the university I was working by a mix of face-to-face and distance learning.

The distance learning was by far the more resource-intensive. To do the face to face was a 3 hour journey each way, but once I was there, the teaching, advising & pastoral care was straightforward. Not so with the distance learning component. The university finally stopped delivery in this way because it took several academics out of play for other duties & other teaching.

I can see why students and parents would be miffed about this but universities who run distance learning degrees tend to charge the same. However, given the circumstances and the disruption caused to students who haven't chosen a distant learning model, I think a good will rebate of a token sum would be a good idea - particularly if the students got it as cash.

“Depressing, isn't it?

Almost as if they're worried they haven't raised their DC to be motivated learners, and need someone else to do it for them ...”

I don’t sit particularly in either ‘camp’ on this issue, but I do think in a climate where universities are businesses and students are customers, an attitude of trying to belittle and shame parents and students if they feel that they aren’t getting the service and experience that they were led to expect and have been saving for and anticipating and working towards for years is just divisive and unhelpful.