Why or why did they open universities

[Alex50]

Universities should all have been online this year, students should never have been encouraged to go. It’s a recipe for disaster. The students will eventually come home as they can’t keep locking the students away week after week.

Not all classes can be done online. I’m doing a midwifery degree and at some point we HAVE to go in, there’s just no option. And given our course is 50% theory we can’t not go to placement either.
We’ve been on online lectures for 3 weeks and it’s soulless. I have to make a real effort to find a way to leave the flat despite being exhausted from 9-5 lectures.

Because their parents were calling for reduced fees if the courses were run entirely online.

Because is not fair to expect healthy young people to put their lives on hold indefinitely.

The course I support is required by our professional body to have face to face teaching for certain areas particularly the practical, they cannot progress without us seeing and signing off the competency, and there's no way it can be taught online.
Face to face has been kept to a minimum and everything we can teach online we are

@HeddaGarbled that’s very generalising. You know it’s not just young people to go to university, right?

@TableFlowerss

Because is not fair to expect healthy young people to put their lives on hold indefinitely.

Stop being dramatic .. it's not 'indefinitely' it's until spring.. when you can safely see people outside OR there's a vaccine ..

Would you really put you daughters right to go to the pub above a 70 yr olds right to life/6 months of serious ill health?

Some pp have already said this but Universities are not big greedy money-making machines. They don't make profits, don't pay out to shareholders, most of them are in debt. The government decided that University education should be funded by students taking loans (with horiffic interest rates) rather than being publicly funded. UUK - which is theoretically meant to represent UK Universities although we won't go down that rabbit hole - specifically asked the government for financial support due to the impact of Covid, which has been huge, and they basically refused. So the Unis have to balance the books somehow. There was also a fair amount of pressure from the government for education to forge ahead and to not provide a 'reduced offering' which means only online teaching in normal language. So now everywhere has to deliver blended learning which is both online and F2F and has massively increased workloads of most University staff, many of whom are now facing pay cuts because of the financial black hole they are looking at. Let's not forget as well that Universities are spending more than ever on shiny new buildings to lure in students who now have very high expectations because they are 'paying' £9k a year tuition.

Loads of courses used to have only a few hours of tuition each week, especially at places like Oxbridge, and students were expected to spend the rest of the time reading books and getting on with stuff independently. But that's when university education was free to students (not free, they paid for it with their taxes, and the new student loan system is more like a graduate tax now anyway but nobody sees it like that) so noone seemed to mind. Now it's all about 'value for money'. Sigh.

@AlecTrevelyan006

loads of young people getting covid helps us move towards herd immunity

yup. this is what I think. because MOST of them will be relatively unaffected, and they blamed the young people previously for killing granny, so they deliberately sent them off to giant glorified covid party lockdown to deal with a whole swathe of them in one go.

and the next thing will be a circuit break during the half term of the private schools (private schools get 2 weeks, so wont lose any education, unlike the state schools which will lose another week)

starting at the end of next week. Mark my words

(although the SE may be spared any restrictions)

And it’s the universities doing all the research which will, in time, save us from this.

Not that I agree it was a good idea though. But I expect this is the govnt plan

**Stop being dramatic .. it's not 'indefinitely' it's until spring.. when you can safely see people outside OR there's a vaccine ..

Would you really put you daughters right to go to the pub above a 70 yr olds right to life/6 months of serious ill health**

@Smallereveryday

Ckearjy you’re only seeing if from one side. You’re assuming that is just a few weeks of ‘getting pissed’ well it’s not. Many youngsters are being affected much more than you’d care to know and by your ignorant comment!

We may have to live with this virus for years to come. There’s no guarantee of a vaccine!

@Prettybluepigeons

My son definitely wouldn't be better off at home. He is in a shared house with 5 other lads and having a right laugh. They're a household so can go to the pub together etc

If he was at home he'd be staring at me and his dad bored out of his mind.

This is the exact same for my DS. Yes, he’s not particularly happy he can’t do the practical elements of his course, but he’s loving living with his friends.

Because on line learning is lonely, isolating and shite.
Because young people have the lowest risk level
Because we have to accept that life needs to go on, we can’t have a whole generation of young people hiding at home

This!

In addition the vast majority of students who get Covid are asymptomatic, about 90%!

Money

Many youngsters are being affected much more than you’d care to know and by your ignorant comment!

This years freshers had a tough year already, with the A level fiasco and lockdown. Many will have been desperate to go to Uni and make new friends.

@HeddaGarbled excellent point. We are lucky to have some excellent universities in this country. We need their research just as we need a new generation of doctors, nurses, engineers, etc etc.
I wonder if those who believe unis shouldn't open think most uni students go to study criminology or something air fairy and get pissed. My ds is mega stressed right now because he studies construction and some elements just can't be delivered online. He shares a house with a physiotherapy student, architecture student and a law student. Perhaps the law student could manage online but I don't know enough to say for sure. The others couldn't and we need people with these skills. They're studying hard, having some fun but trying to be sensible. Every now and again the uni sends emails warning everyone to behave or there may be a lockdown. It's extremely stressful because their futures depend on something they have no control over. I wonder how many bright and promising students will drop out this year .

I still don't understand the Greed accusation.
Please explain to me who has bad motives by wanting to benefit from University "Greed."

My nearest big Uni acknowledged carrying £100 million in debt in 2018 & will end up about £25 million extra in debt because of the spring/summer Lockdown. I don't understand where is greed or profit in this picture. How is "Greed" different from survival?

@feelingverylazytoday

Universities are a business, and the government, aka the taxpayers, cannot afford to bail them out. Yes it will be shit for a few weeks/couple of months. The virus will burn it's way through. There will be a few casualties, at the same time many will gain long term immunity which will stand them in good stead for the future.

The chief medical officer has been very clear .. immunity is NOT long term.!

So tell me why the SE is so unaffected.. I will tell you MY view.

The southeast is the richest area in the UK..

We can afford to keep our kids at home for an extra year.. mummy and daddy can fund them for 12 months and then they go to Uni next year..

It's so wrong. ... so many kids used to finance a dangerous situation. All 'up north' .. never has the North South divide been so apparent .

The rest of the county

[quote NeonBella]@LimaFoxtrotCharlie I'm doing close to 100% remote learning with the very occasional lab on campus.
It's beyond shit.
I have around 3-4 hours a day of lectures and 'practicals', 5 days a week and then I need to spend around 3-4 hrs each evening reading and writing notes up. It's incredibly lonely and just 2 weeks in I'm struggling to have any enthusiasm for it.

My lecturers are trying hard to be engaging and provide the module content as close as possible to normal but it's still shit.[/quote]
It's fucking terrible. I've gone from getting straight firsts in all my modules last year - to feeling completely lost, overwhelmed, bored shitless by ploughing through content at home with no escape from it (can't even go spend a day on campus to work and mix things up as study room slots are 2 hours max and it takes me 90 mins to get there)... I wish I'd taken the year out or just chucked it in right now.

I love love love my subject - but this is shit.

Businesses have dividends consisting of cash profits or share options.

Businesses' first duty is to make a financial profit for shareholders.
Which universities operate such that their first duty is making a profit for... shareholders. Who are the shareholders of universities who make that financial profit?

Because on line learning is lonely, isolating and shite.
Because young people have the lowest risk level
Because we have to accept that life needs to go on, we can’t have a whole generation of young people hiding at home

This x 100

The chief medical officer has been very clear .. immunity is NOT long term.!

He has no idea if it's long term or not. He said we should assume it isn't.

@Sunflowers247

Many youngsters are being affected much more than you’d care to know and by your ignorant comment!

This years freshers had a tough year already, with the A level fiasco and lockdown. Many will have been desperate to go to Uni and make new friends.

Exactly this, but sadly some people couldn’t care less about the younger generation.

Because on line learning is lonely, isolating and shite.
Because young people have the lowest risk level
Because we have to accept that life needs to go on, we can’t have a whole generation of young people hiding at home

This ^

and

My son definitely wouldn't be better off at home.
He is in a shared house with 5 other lads and having a right laugh. They're a household so can go to the pub together etc

If he was at home he'd be staring at me and his dad bored out of his mind.

and this ^

Well, ok, mine is a dd, and sharing a flat with 5 new friends. Also meeting others from the other flats. Also meeting others from her course. She is loving life at the moment So good to see after everything she (and her peers) missed this Summer. The thought of her being isolated at home with me and her Dad is awful. As it is she has been inspired back to enjoying learning, she has a couple of dozen new friends to get to know and start having good times with. She has a new place to investigate and, as I said, is just loving it. I dread to think where she would be mentally if she hadn't had this opportunity.