Daughter unable to attend her graduation ceremony as it is full. Advice please

[mildlyfried]

My daughter has just finished a three year Bsc (hons) at a major University. She has been advised that she cannot attend her graduation ceremony as it is full and she is on a waiting list. All the other ceremonies are at capacity too. She has been told that if a place does not become available then she can either try to graduate in November without her friends or have her certificate posted to her for a £10 fee.

To say we are upset and disappointed is an understatement. Has anyone ever heard of this before? I did not think a University would do this and would make sure they had enough graduation days/dates for all their students. The students have paid tens of thousands in fees and slogged for three years to be denied the chance to get their degree in a ceremony with their family watching.

Is there anyone out there with any advice? maybe someone who works at a University? I'm tempted to go to the local paper and tell the story so other students know what to expect at this University. Students should be told when they are choosing the University that they are not guaranteed a graduation.

Thanks for reading

They need to address this imo, OP.

tuition fees are not 'high' relative to the cost of education. Universities lose an average of £3k per year, per home student, which is why there are so many international students now (often getting places on lower grades and with barely any English proficiency) - they subsidise course fees for British ones! Most unis are financially on their arse. The result at Lancaster seems to be cutting back on graduation ceremonies, which I agree is awful, but is a result of the current state of the sector. Everything is rubbish and on an austerity budget. Admin staff have now been cut back so severely in many places that academic staff are doing both academic and admin roles. In reality, that means e.g. in my dept a world leading Economics professor on £100k plus filling in marks spreadsheets on excel for dozens of hours of a week and not doing much Economics (which as well as being a waste of resource, obviously lowers the quality of research and teaching). Plus it means mistakes are made, including transcript errors, fees errors, timetabling errors etc. as academics are now doing jobs they do not have the skillset for. It is like employing someone to do coding at Google and then deciding actually that person now also needs to clean the toilets because hiring a cleaner is too expensive (if this seems nuts actually in my place we now have to clean our own offices as they have also cut back cleaning staff. So a Professor employed to teach and research in Roman literature will now also need to use some of her allocated working hours to hoover the carpet and dust her shelving). The whole model is not working. I wish people understood this is NOT about unis overcharging and underdelivering, it is about a whole system that has been dismantled by successive governments, and no one wants to address it. The public barely understand it.

What are you on about? This is batshit. Between my siblings and cousins we had multiple graduations - everyone was allowed to attend their own graduation ceremony with their own course mates and graduate at the same time. How is this the student's fault if the uni doesn't have enough space for the graduates to attend their own ceremony?! Shouldn't they be given priority?!? The student in question didn't miss any deadlines - she responded to the email before the deadline.

Of course she is ALLOWED to - but she didn’t book in time!!! How is that ‘batshit’? Was the uni booking team supposed to just hold a place just in case OPs daughter decided to reply? It’s first come, first served. If she had booked it promptly, she WOULD have been able to graduate with her peers. FFS.

for example - I am ALLOWED to travel to France next month. But a) I need to book it and b) I need to do so before the finite number of seats on the flight have been booked by other passengers. Today there may be an empty plane and thus lots of availability. I can book up to an hour before the flight leaves - but if all of the seats get booked up tomorrow I will loose out. It is out of the airline’s control if I miss out. It is down to me to book now to guarantee my place… it’s no different for a place at graduation? Or at least it has been for my past two graduations,

Did you read what @Paqposted?

'First come first served' means 'apply asap'.

DD’s friends read that. Took it seriously. Responded. Got their tickets.

DD opened the email and thought “later”. Then opened the reminders and thought “later” and then towards the end of the deadline thought “oh yeah, I should probably respond”

and didn’t get a ticket.

and that’s that really!

My university managed to organise a graduation ceremony that everyone on my course could attend. So did my mother's (I went to hers). It is a pretty basic expectation. It isn't as if OP is being overly demanding. It is misleading to have a deadline, if the deadline is irrelevant. That does suggest a level of administrative incompetence. It isn't as if no one at a university is capable of predicting numbers.

I totally agree. Places Should not be
limited AT ALL to the people graduating.

What if they change the criteria: ‘ only the top marks students get a ceremony. Those lower down the list with lesser marks, tough luck’

There would be uproar.

There should not be any limits. It’s part of getting a qualification, it’s getting the qualification.

There is no way anyone can convince me that this is ok. Even if she was late applying. Everyone should be included.

My DD graduated last year from LSE, there is no limit on the number of students who can attend the graduation ceremony, however there is a limit on the number of guests. They have about 7,000 students graduating each year.

I cannot believe there are some posters here who accept it is correct that a university does not have the capacity to allow all their graduants to attend their graduation ceremony.

The student was not late requesting her ticket, she was within the deadline.

Talking of airlines, it’s better than an airline booking system, because the university does not allow overbooking, it puts people on waiting lists. Places will inevitably come up closer to the time, but it cannot be guaranteed. At least nobody who has a confirmed place can have it withdrawn on the day because more people turned up than expected, as is the case with airline overbooking policies. You have to be a bit dim to think, “first come, first served” for a graduation ceremony means you don’t have to rush to book and the timing of your booking makes no difference…

The graduation ceremony clearly meant nothing to you. For many families, it is a lovely day. You can celebrate your child, feel proud and see them graduate with their friends. It is a great day out for many, and the memories and pictures can last a lifetime. Not ‘silly’ at all.

I cant believe there are 18 pages of a thread where 50% of people and the OP and daughter all don't understand what "first come first served" means.

This^^. I can almost understand about guest tickets being restricted-but not really.

If you provide a degree course to 100 people you should be preparing for 100 young people to graduate and for each graduate to have 2 guests. It’s not hard. I think it’s unacceptable to have a first come first served-they need to provide enough ceremonies to accommodate all of their graduates. They’ve paid nearly £30k for their degree and can’t be guaranteed to be able to have their moment to celebrate with their friends?

Absolutely agree. Also, at the university I work at graduation is never paid for from student tuition fees. 100% of tuition fees goes up the academic department to fund their tuition.
Graduation is funded from central university funds - which is next to nothing. Staff organising graduation also have other roles within the university and take these duties on in addition to their ‘real’ role. In the past there was a dedicated graduation team but lately due to redundancies in universities these roles have been drastically cut or disappeared which means the people left have to take on organising graduations on top of their own jobs.

People are still not understanding that at Lancaster graduation is collegiate. It’s done by college not by department. Each college has a day and there are then various slots for each college. The likelihood of graduating with friends who are also course mates is therefore low anyway since they’d have to be in both your college and on your course.
Students in their final year were told in March about booking graduation ceremonies. The colleges themselves get split so they do eg stem degrees in one ceremony and then humanities in another (this varies across colleges - some colleges are much bigger than others ). They were at the same time told it was important to book early. they were told they could potentially request extra tickets but these wouldn’t be considered until later once initial allocations were made.

they were told they would hear by mid May which ceremony they had been allocated and that it was important to keep an eye on their email in mid May.

As promised, in mid May they were told which ceremony they were allocated to. the OPs DDs friends got their allocations. The OPs DD then realised she hadn’t applied and applied late. It wasn’t until the end of May. On 31st May the OP was posting in the Lancaster University Parents Facebookgroup about the fact that her daughter had just found out she was waitlisted.

The university told the oP that a space may come up but the requested ceremony was full at that stage She was told DD could be allocated to a different ceremony that week where there would be people from her course since the ceremonies are held by college not course or that she could go to the ceremony for her college in November or in July of next year.

In an ideal world the whole college would graduate in one massive ceremony but it isn’t possible due to capacity in the hall. It isn’t like other universities where there might be 100 students on a course. There are eight undergraduate colleges with around 600 kids in each year on average (more in the big. Colleges)

I’m sure everyone is sympathetic and it is upsetting but if the DD had applied on time she is extremely likely to have been allocated a space in the ceremony she wanted.

Those insisting she applied on time are wrong. She applied AFTER the allocations had been made .

Ouch

Double post*

That’s awful for her especially if they can go and she can’t - total disorganisation from the university - I’d be putting in a huge complaint what an anti-climax for her - sending big hugs this is so sad.

Last try: the deadline at most universities is a ‘hard deadline’ at which they close bookings. If all the seats go before that deadline they CLOSE the bookings before the deadlines. This is explicitly stated on most websites - Surrey, KCL, etc ALL state this, for instance.

A basic Google enquiry confirms it.

Calling me ‘batshit’ is actually bloody rude.

It won’t get through

It’s so clear. Deadline for applications is X
but there are only limited tickets so first come first served

so straightforward. DD’s friends understood. DD didn’t

@PerditaCampbellBlack In an ideal world the whole college would graduate in one massive ceremony but it isn’t possible due to capacity in the hall.

Really? People don't want that, the procession of students across the stage would be endless, and boring even to me who loves graduations. Groups of smaller ceremonies will do the job.

This.

As I posted upthread the OP has been (put mildly) highly judicious in the information she chose to share on this thread which has led to many posters drawing conclusions that do not reflect the facts.

We can be sympathetic that she hasn’t got the date she wanted and hope she gets a place via the waitlist but this isn’t a failing on the part of the University nor has she been denied the opportunity to attend a graduation ceremony.

There shouldn't be a situation where bookings need to be closed before the deadline though. They should have enough seats for everyone who is graduating. If the hall is full they need to run more ceremonies.

Yes. They need more ceremonies so everyone can attend.