Will other unis follow Cambridge and say no face to face lectures for the whole of next year?

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If so won’t that cause huge levels of deferring and a tight squeeze on places for the following years coming up. Places will surely go to those who have deferred first.Just feeling for year 11. Exams cancelled, no support from schools, term ending early, Alevels courses going to be disrupted and potentially now huge competition for uni places.

But applicants would be wise to hold fire. Most universities haven't even published their plans for September yet. They should wait until they have the full picture before making a decision....but that's another thread altogether.

Yes students get to decide what is 'value for money' and they have plenty of opportunities to voice that opinion but they are not customers or clients.

I have children at private school. They are getting an excellent online education, but we get a 15% discount in fees to reflect the fact that they aren't getting all the benefits of being in school.

Perhaps this is something universities could consider. It might encourage students to start this year.

And insofar as students (and/or their parents) are paying thousands of pounds for a service, then they are indeed clients

no, they are not paying tuition fees, (funded by taxpayers in a loans scheme) for the opportunity to study for a degree. They are very much not "clients" paying for a service.

A 'service' suggests they are passive recipients; if students stayed passive, they'd not achieve even a Pass degree.

I love the way supposedly Labour-voting MNers have swallowed the neo-liberal Kool Aid.

That's for the government to decide. Not the universities

I'm sure they could suggest it.

But it's they who will decide if they think paying full fees for Zoom classes is a good deal or not

I think pretty much all the academics on this thread have said they're working on mixed modes of delivery. Not "Zoom classes".

@IcedPurple you say you work in a university - you really should know that teaching is not a service. It is an exchange, a facilitation, sometimes a knowledge co-creation, sometimes content delivery.

But teaching is not a service delivered to passive clients/customers. I"m quite shocked that a university employee has no understanding of the core activity and values of their workplace.

@IcedPurple you say you work in a university - you really should know that teaching is not a service. It is an exchange, a facilitation, sometimes a knowledge co-creation, sometimes content delivery

So if I pay 50 quid for a private yoga lesson and don't participate adequately and hence don't benefit as much as I should, does that mean that I am not a client?

Do you know any potential students starting in Sept 2020 who feel it's perfectly ok to pay full fees? I don't. And as they are the ones who pay, do you not think they are worth listening to?

Do you know any potential students starting in Sept 2020 who feel it's perfectly ok to pay full fees?

But they don't know what they're paying for yet. They need to wait until it's announced officially and then make an informed decision

Tonya will your children's schools be putting themselves in a position where they are in the red by making that 15% cut in fees? Or will a profit be made, just a smaller one?

DoctorDoctor I don't know.

Ok, thanks for your honesty. I am honestly loath to jump to the defence of senior university management, as they can often be the ones talking the talk about 'listening to students' while lecturers and other front line staff are walking the walk. But they are not necessarily in a position to make a lot of these calls yet. I can see it would look great from a student point of view but they may end up being literally unsustainable. I don't imagine anyone wants to go to a university that offers a nice discount at the start but then ends up collapsing a year later leaving them needing to transfer and having even more uncertainty. The government could have offered more assurance on this, but has chosen not to. And parents should be wary of thinking it's only 'lesser' institutions in danger of this and that students at the much-loved-on-MN Russell Group will be completely safe.

I would not want to be part of a university senior management team at the moment. Mostly because we have such an appalling pile of lower-than-mediocre steaming crap for a government. We are getting no leadership, and no policy from the government. We can't make decisions until we have a firm and clear way forward coming from the top ie the Cabinet.

And they are like deer caught in the headlights.

I'm just about to start the last year of my degree with the OU. Entirely online and absolutely great!
I can't see what all the fuss is about, the OU's been doing it for decades!

I think in general covid 19 has made a lot of people stop and reassess things.

If I was in my 20s, I think I would head to Spain/Greece/Sweden/Denmark (once this is over) or somewhere cheap and see what I could do over there. Spend a few years working in jobs to learn the language well then do a degree (free) in their universities and try and get funding from there to do a masters in the UK. They will still be in the Erasmus scheme, too so you could feasibly live in Spain, do an Erasmus in Germany and then UK for postgrad. That way, you'd get the languages, experience and opportunities for much less cost.

This 'poor students' narrative is pretty irksome. It's ok now to complain about online lectures when previously they could only be arsed to turn up to lectures when they felt like it and claim ECs whenever a deadline was going to be missed...it's easy to point the finger at everyone but themselves. Everyone had to adapt and change expectations in these circumstances.

Private school parents shaking their fists and worrying about their Russell group education...only on MN...if your children can't adapt to blended learning then maybe we're all doomed anyway as the workforce moves to distance working? How on earth will they cope with their 2.1 from a RG and no graduate recruitment!?

My experience of lectures both in person and online is that online lectures are totally fit for purpose, and in some cases better. Degrees or courses involving lab work, hands on training and practical experience will face more of a challenge.

f I was in my 20s, I think I would head to Spain/Greece/Sweden/Denmark (once this is over) or somewhere cheap and see what I could do over there. Spend a few years working in jobs to learn the language (well) then do a degree (free) in their universities

The end of freedom of movement for Brits is going to curtail this kind of plan.

My DS has been making the most of lectures being on-line for the last 4 years, as he can pause, think about what is being said, rewind if it was something he didn’t get immediately, refer to text books etc. Useful in a very maths heavy course where it’s easy to get lost if you don’t catch what is being said or struggle to fully understand something straightaway.

Quite different from my time where at least one lecturer delighted in using a set of overheads on a topic but would speak about something different and you had to try and absorb both at the same time. No handouts either.

@seren "if I was in my 20s, I think I would head to Spain/Greece/Sweden/Denmark (once this is over) or somewhere cheap and see what I could do over there. Spend a few years working in jobs to learn the language well then do a degree (free) in their universities and try and get funding from there to do a masters in the UK. They will still be in the Erasmus scheme, too so you could feasibly live in Spain, do an Erasmus in Germany and then UK for postgrad. That way, you'd get the languages, experience and opportunities for much less cost." Tragically, half of UK voted by referendum to leave the EU so these suggestions don't work any more. It is beyond sad for this generation in England and extremely isolating. The repercussions go on and on and on like waves, most people are unawares.

Private school parents shaking their fists and worrying about their Russell group education...only on MN...if your children can't adapt to blended learning then maybe we're all doomed anyway as the workforce moves to distance working? How on earth will they cope with their 2.1 from a RG and no graduate recruitment!?

What a spiteful, pointless post.

SOME STUDENTS ACTIVELY PREFER LIVE LECTURES is worth shouting from the rooftops. Hopefully online only will be a blip, not the norm, however much people on here are tying themselves in knots trying to say that online is preferable in case they offend university staff.

Online lectures were already a no-brainer as they are typically just one-way imparting of info to a crowd of people - even in 2010 when I was doing my masters at the LSE the best lecturers were also recording their lectures to watch again. Students will have to self regulate their own ‘attendance’, which is as it should be. But there should still be socially distanced field trips and seminars and practicals, one hopes.

My DD is going back to a Scottish uni for 2nd year zoology. We’ve already booked the accommodation, which may have been a bit precipitous. I’m a bit grrr because they seem to have treated the first year as a bit of a write off and nobody else seems that bothered as, unlike us (English) their children are not paying. (Scottish uni wasn’t my choice - but obviously it wasn’t up to me.)

Online lectures and remote learning are two different things. Remote learning is not one way and involves student participation. All the academics I know are planning for a blended approach which included some online lectures ( if you have big groups) remote delivery and face to face teaching.
It not going to be a case of students just listening to a load of recordings.
Students will be expected to engage with the materials, contribute to seminars and work in groups just as they've always been.