It’s reported that 17-21 are spreading the virus now , should Universities open ??

[Charliescar]

Just that really ??

I don’t see why schools should shut if Universities can stay open .

I think that students are far more Likely to spread the virus that students at school.

It seems quite ironic why are people not suggesting retired people to stay home, with their pensions to fund them. Who have had those years as a teen and young adult to study etc. Have young people not sacrificed enough.

I'm at university.

I'm in 2 times before Xmas

So no, I don't think universities should shut because they're hardly open

I'm sorry but at some point we have to return to normal

@Egghead68

The worry is that the students will spread it around the country when they move to their university towns. Furthermore it may spread like wildfire in halls of residence where social distancing will be almost impossible (including spreading to older people such as those cleaning the halls of residence).

I’m glad most teaching is online. However I wish students were staying put and accessing the teaching from their parental homes.

Our son starts at the end of this month. It would be a nightmare for him if he didn't physically go to stay at the campus. Yes, he knows all the teaching is online. He also knows he may well not be coming home at Christmas as we're shielding due to his father having cancer and we can't risk him bringing covid into the house.

He's had 6 months stuck at home. He's gradually got more withdrawn, more disinterested, and barely even gets out of bed now. He's desperate for a new challenge, new friends, new experiences. What the hell would he do stuck at home for another year if he deferred? There's no way he'd be motivated to do the work in the house - OH now works from home due to his cancer, so he has the dining room as an office and is on the phone all day. DS would end up working sat on his bed (room not big enough for a desk).

Getting the A level grades DS wanted and getting his first choice of uni, followed by getting his first choice of college/accommodation has really perked him up. He's just got access to the Uni's online portal and is the most happy and interested we've seen him in months. He's started chatting online to other new students in his course and his college and has become animated, friendly and engaged again.

I really feared for his mental health if he didn't have something to look forward to. Leaving home and moving to campus is the making of him. He's started showing interest in the washing machine, shopping, DIY, etc, all getting him ready for campus life.

His cohort have suffered enough. They NEED to go to Uni to get back to normal life. Yes, they know it's online, they know the nightclubs are closed, they know there'll be queues and bookings for bars, etc. They know there's no Freshers week. They're still going to enjoy it, just because it's different.

I do not think it is fair or right to expect this age group to be cooped up in their parents homes for the foreseeable. Even if that was an option. They are young and need the chance to live their lives.

It seems quite ironic why are people not suggesting retired people to stay home, with their pensions to fund them.

Yes quite.

And if the first-years stay in ther parental homes, they’ll socialise with their college/sixth-form friends instead. Probably more so than if they were in accommodation with people their own age.

An excellent point. 18 year olds aren't going to stay at home in their bedrooms studying all the time. They'll be going out socialising, probably to pubs, house parties, etc. Is there any difference if they do that at home in your local community or on campus? Pubs and restaurants are, generally, doing well by taking precautions, limiting numbers, etc and there have been relatively few cases of covid spreading in them. I'm sure that bars/restaurants in Uni campuses and Uni cities will continue to do that. After all, if there are cases linked to a particular bar or restaurant, it gets closed down for a short while and staff etc have to quarantine so most pubs/restaurants will comply with the guidance.

work in a university! I'm non-student facing, but I would be very very cautious about returning to campus.

DH is in a student facing role and was also going via train to work in March when figues were much higher.

Currently he has to apply to be allowed on campus at all and it's expect home will be main work place till January.

They've manage to move their labs on-line but for some subjects that's not as possible - they may well access to equipment or placements - many courses are doing a mix of on-line and socailly distance labs.

There were worriedsmany students might defer fucking up university finances to point some would fail.

That hasn't happened at least at DH univeristy but altenratives gap year travel isn't really looking possible and work -well younger aged workers have been disproportionately affected by economic downturn.

If they stayed home with parents I expect they'd still be out and about and possibly putting their older parents at risk rather than being on campus with generally younger people.

My daughter goes back to university in a lockdown area soon. 20% of her contact time will be in person on campus (labs). She'll be living with a couple of people who are much less cautious than her (ie likely to be partying and not social distancing) and can only see her close friends outside. She usually comes home every 4 weeks but won't be able to do that now (I'm shielding) and we've been told she shouldn't come home at Christmas either. Her mental health (my main concern) is already in tatters (OCD and anxiety). I wish they'd delay term starting until January. I know that'll cause knock on issues for the university but given the increase in cases it seems madness to send the group who currently have the highest number of infections all over the country and then back again at Christmas (if they're allowed). I haven't mentioned any of this to her just tried to reassure her that we'll all make the best of whatever comes.

How is saying young people should stay in their childhood bedrooms at their parents house and do nothing but online work any less unfair than saying “the vulnerable/elderly are those in danger if they catch it, they should stay home”? Universities are hardly opening as normal anyway.

Also, I’d quite like some medics, teachers, nurses, engineers etc to graduate this year, and in a few years time.

I wish they'd delay term starting until January

They have for some of DH master students move from Spetember to January start date at start of summer.

It has caused no end of issues for the students as they'd already taken out accomodation contracts but can't access student funding till January- even internatioanl students who it was supposedly for have encountered problems with January start date. It's likely they'll lose quite a few who have places on the course.

There can be quite a knock on effect for staff and students for an apparently simple start date change.

They need to get back, to resume their studies (whether online or face to face) and get some normality back into their lives. My DD (about to go into second year) desperately needs this, she's been hanging around home for six months, unable to work, only recently able to go out and see friends. Her life has been on hold and it needs to stop.

They are better off in university bars together even when they socialise than hanging around childhood homes.

It’s so important we don’t just continue to squash young people in all this (I include school age too).

And as for first year students deferring … what are they going to do for a year. Traditionally a gap year was full of fun, travelling, working, meeting new people. A year at home would be a complete waste of time and very damaging mentally.

I wish they'd delay term starting until January

Why, will Covid be cured by then?

Just look at what happened with schools - when it was proposed they returned start of June after half term, we had the same howls of "they should wait until September". What was different in September compared with June - nothing at all? We just wasted 6 weeks of potential education for no reason at all.

If, and only If, there was some miracle cure, everyone had been vaccinated, or similar in the next 3 months, then fair enough, delay it temporarily, but only if you know the "end game". As it is, every chance nothing will be different in January, maybe things will be worse. Delaying would have just wasted another 3 months of students' lives, and cost the govt billions to fund the Unis doing nothing,

What happens in Jan when we're still in the same position. Do we defer again? Do we restart Uni anyway and accept billions wasted on 3 months of doing nothing?

@LadyOfTheImprovisedBath

I wish they'd delay term starting until January

They have for some of DH master students move from Spetember to January start date at start of summer.

It has caused no end of issues for the students as they'd already taken out accomodation contracts but can't access student funding till January- even internatioanl students who it was supposedly for have encountered problems with January start date. It's likely they'll lose quite a few who have places on the course.

There can be quite a knock on effect for staff and students for an apparently simple start date change.

Yes, I work with international students and some who are supposed to start in January have had problems getting accommodation etc. Our university relies heavily on overseas students: numbers are already way down, and it's likely many of those signed up for Jan starts will drop out over the coming weeks and months.

And of course unis should go back, obviously with precautions. Young people have already sacrificed enough. And while online learning is OK as an emergency stop-gap, having worked that way for several months I can say it is nothing close to being a substitute for real face-to-face teaching.

I think they have to open, people can't keep putting their lives on hold like this. I think possibly bars/pubs should close before universities. But again that's peoples livelihoods, etc.

@BigSandyBalls2015

They need to get back, to resume their studies (whether online or face to face) and get some normality back into their lives. My DD (about to go into second year) desperately needs this, she's been hanging around home for six months, unable to work, only recently able to go out and see friends. Her life has been on hold and it needs to stop.

Fully agree. Our DS is happy to start with online only tuition - in fact he's desperate for anything at the moment. He wouldn't want it online for the full 3 years, but willing to put up with it for the first year. He has said he'd regard it as some kind of "easing in" to Uni life. He's happy to wait until next September for a real Fresher's week etc. He also thinks it would be a kind of novelty to do first year online and then second year in lectures, tutorials, etc. He's planning on staying in campus accommodation in second year (Uni have plenty on campus), so he'll make up for the "experience" etc in year 2 of what he missed in year 1. He's very philosophical about the whole thing. If the Uni suddenly announced he couldn't go to live on campus, I think he'd be absolutely gutted - it's the only thing that's kept him going for the past six months. He's already missed his A levels, he missed "last day", he missed the leavers Prom, he missed picking up his results - there's only so much they can take!

It seems quite ironic why are people not suggesting retired people to stay home, with their pensions to fund them

Retired people are not moving round the country en masse taking disease with them.

Actually a lot of the modeling I saw a while ago suggested January would be the most likley time to see a rise in deaths and hospital admissions - though at a lower rate than this year - with covid.

Flu tends to peak December to February/March - and that's a respiratory virus illness and many other ones have similar patterns - so a January start makes even less sense.

I start uni in 2 weeks. As a very mature student living in my normal home.

We aren't expected to be actually in uni very much at all, and when we are, it's in small groups wearing a mask. So safer than Mary and Ethel meeting for pensioners fish and chips in the local pub every Tuesday.

We cannot and must not expect or demand anymore from young people and children. They have lost enough to save granny.

Is it 3 million that were shielded? Surely much cheaper and much safer and much more practical to ask those 3 million to shield again, with the correct financial, physical and emotional support that they need and the other 63 million people get on with it in a SDed way? If they chose not to shield then fair enough that's their choice.

But we can't keep closing the country down to protect this group of people. Long term it will have a greater impact on them than any other group. We need kids in education, business to adapt, the NHS and other sectors to return to the new normal.

The numbers will continue to climb, kids being back will guarantee that but with the death rate so low no one should be prevented from going to university or school or work.

[quote StatisticalSense]@Egghead68
Unless you have an irrational hatred for the current generation of young adults and would like exponential falls in the state of the generations mental and physical health what you would like to see is literally impossible.
The reality is that only the most privileged of students have a set up in their parental home that is even close to what is needed for extended periods of home study, and the vast majority of other students have neither the space or financial resources for such a set up. Expecting students to study for degrees in the parental home will in many cases mean studying on their beds or sofas and lead to an endemic of back, shoulder and wrist issues. Many young people would also struggle to get any quiet time to actually study without interruptions if they had to do so at their parental home leading to mental health issues and many completely underachieving and degrees basically being awarded on the basis of financial wealth rather than merit.[/quote]
What’s your evidence that students’ emotional and physical health would suffer if they did not return to campus?

Their A level revision will have been done successfully on beds and sofas and most of them will have access to their local libraries.

Retired people are not moving round the country en masse taking disease with them.

Young people aren’t very vulnerable to Covid. Why are they being asked to give up so much for it?

What’s your evidence that students’ emotional and physical health would suffer if they did not return to campus?

I don’t think we need evidence to say that being cooped up in their parents house for months/years and staring at screens all day isn’t good for youngsters just starting off in independent life. Common sense tells us that.

Yes, let's all stay home and watch how the economy crumbles, people suffer from a variety of mental health issues and nobody gets any education. If this continues the number of deaths from suicides will be much larger than covid related ones.

@halcyondays

Aren’t unis doing a lot of their teaching online?

Most universities are doing a mixture .... my on campus, face to face teaching timetable is very similar to last years

We need to stop caring about the absolute numbers of cases but more about the number of hospitalisations and cases amongst higher risk groups. University students are overwhelmingly at very little risk of severe illness or death and most have little to no contact with vulnerable groups of society on a day to day basis meaning very few at risk people will catch the virus in a university setting or off of people who caught it in a university setting. School pupils on the other hand often come into contact with elderly relatives so could lead to significantly more exposure to vulnerable groups.

I don't really agree with this. If there is significant spread of the virus amongst 17-21 it feels inevitable that this will then infect people outside of that age range after some time lag. 17-21 year olds don't live in an entirely hermetically sealed container.

My view, for what it is worth, is that in the scenario where lots of 17-21 year olds get it we will see first a large rise in infections reported but no increase in hospitalisations and deaths (because young people large don't get that ill). Then after a lag of a few weeks the number of infections of people in other age brackets will go up and then after a couple of months a rise in deaths.

We really can't afford to let a sizeable population become infected, even if they won't suffer too badly themselves.