Next year university tuition arrangements

[Lunar567]

My daughter received an email from her London university that she would have 2 hours of face to face teaching in the first term and similar in the second term.
I told her that I cannot justify paying a lot of money for rent in London if she can commute 1 hour for 2 hours university seminars a week. She is going into her third year.
Our jobs have been affected a lot by Covid and it could get worst.
She is upset and said that she would be isolated at home.
I don't want to sign a contract for a year as I think the economic situation will get worse.
What are arrangements in other universities?
Have any students decided to commute rather than rent?

And there's mounting evidence that people over 40 who are infected will suffer far more than those under 40. Anyone over 60 who is infected has a risk of dying which is 19 times higher than for anyone under 40.

The nature of teaching is part of the risk: length of time, in an enclosed indoor space, speaking. The possibilities of aerosol & droplet transmission is magnified by length of exposure x activity x enclosure (think of the outbreaks amongst choirs early on).

I hate putting my camera on - I find it incredibly intrusive - and usually have kids and dogs wandering into shot

You can use the fake backgrounds in Zoom or Teams. In a seminar, I think it's a courtesy to show your face. A lecture might be different, but then at my place, lectures will be 'asynchronous.'

I think I'll be asking my students to keep their cameras on, unless they start having connectivity problems.

To get a perspective - what would your DDs 'contact time' per week have been at this stage under normal circumstances, OP? How much of that genuine 'contact' ie not just attending a lecture?

In the final years of an Arts degree, it might be only 2 hours a week in a seminar.

I teach in the humanities, and if asks (sometimes fairly aggressively) about the low level of contact hours, I always like to ask people what they'd think about a comparable degree at Oxford where there was a compulsory weekly tutorial of 60-90 minutes, and then lots of lectures, but they weren't required. And 3 x 8 week terms (we teach 2 x 12 weeks plus 8 weeks in the summer).

@ErrolTheDragon

My daughter is doing science subject with a language.
Last year before university went online she had 4 hours of language in a small group, 4 hours of seminars and 7 hours of lectures.

After the university closed for lockdown they had 1 week of lectures only, then 4 weeks of Easter holiday, then online exams. That was it.

After the university closed for lockdown they had 1 week of lectures only, then 4 weeks of Easter holiday, then online exams. That was it.

That actually sounds quite normal for the end of Spring Term, and the summer term. We do a little bit of teaching in the Summer Term, but we're not supposed to. It's an examination term - plus at my place, anyway, we switch over to intensive MA teaching to get them into & through their dissertations.

The final week of our spring term is often take up with assessed presentations and feedback tutorials (and I could go on about the tutorials students book & then don't turn up to ...).

And really, what would you have wanted? For the universities not to have acted fast to keep your children safe? Or to countervene the lockdown?

Dd only has 8 hours a week 5 of them lectures easily given online. This is normal for arts degrees

For the 6th week running the total number of deaths are below the 5 year average. How can anyone say that were are in the middle of serious pandemic?

Exactly BECAUSE of social distancing! Our library is still closed. Schools are still on holiday, Unis have stopped large lectures etc etc.

In other words we could easily be back in a pandemic if we didn't take these measures.

I don't understand what lecturers are scared of. Pandemic in the UK is over.

You don't understand what lecturers are scared of? They're scared of catching and potentially dying from Coronavirus if we get a second wave!

@ItalianHat

My question was about the future. I didn't critisized the lockdown.

Do people genuinely think students are following social distancing in the summer? They are not. And they are not getting infected and ill with Covid. I suggest rational thinking and not scare mongering. The average age of coronavirus death is over eighty. Life expectancy is about eighty.
It has already been proven that fatalities have been exaggerated.

No data available suggests second wave is coming.

And they are not getting infected and ill with Covid

Most young people are asymptomatic. Where has it been proven that fatalities have been exaggerated? The official figures have understated deaths if anything.

If we opened up the uk fully then we'd be back to the massive spike in cases and fatalities we saw earlier this year. The virus hasn't actually changed you know.

Or are you Dom Cummings and back on Plan Herd Immunity?

The average age of cv death isn't 80 btw.

I only have 5 contact hours a week, 4 in term 2, for the tutorials fir the 5 subjects. That's law. Rest are lectures (2 hours per subject, could watch online) and private study.

Do people genuinely think students are following social distancing in the summer?

Well my 19 and 17 year olds are. Staying mainly at home and if they meet up with friends, always outside.

And they are not getting infected and ill with Covid

Don't the data suggest teens and young people in their 20s can be infected, but are often asymptomatic. And can pass it on to more vulnerable people. Wasn't this the reason for the recent lockdown in Preston?

[quote Lunar567]@ErrolTheDragon

My daughter is doing science subject with a language.
Last year before university went online she had 4 hours of language in a small group, 4 hours of seminars and 7 hours of lectures.

After the university closed for lockdown they had 1 week of lectures only, then 4 weeks of Easter holiday, then online exams. That was it.[/quote]
Hopefully they'll get the lectures online, but what I'd be concerned about more than the tutorials is, if it's a science subject, what's happening re labs?

My DD is about to start 4th year of MEng - lectures online (fine), supervisions as far as I know will be fairly normal and the lab projects will be done but with adjustments - I think maybe not group work as such.

This is some links to prove my points about the average Covid death age and fatalities being exaggerated.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8470843/The-average-Covid-19-victim-OLDER-age-people-usually-die-Scotland.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8610445/Official-UK-daily-coronavirus-death-toll-SCRAPPED-row-PHE-exaggerating-tally.html

Also some graphs for those who are scared if the second wave
www.lockdowntruth.org/post/uk-cases-vs-deaths-etc

Software our course are using doesn't have virtual backgrounds available - plus DH is also on work calls from home so it's keeping the bandwidth use down.

I'm considering just dropping out - Covid seems to have made it impossible for me to continue.

This is some links to prove my points about the average Covid death age and fatalities being exaggerated

The Daily Mail and some wacko conspiracy theorists’ website?

@GCAcademic

Did you actually read it?
Daily mail quotes Telegraph and Oxford university.

The statistics on fatalities in the U.K. probably are too high - they've been including people who died with it, or quite a while after having it, rather than of it. That's about to be revised.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-new-method-of-counting-slashes-official-death-toll-0mwm6tsx9?shareToken=2df1b044ee3f32a467adba18acc98029

But thats not really very relevant to whether covid is still a threat and the likelihood of a second wave - already showing in various European countries and more likely in winter.

I am paying £6k for my son's rent for this academic year and his course is starting 100% on line. He is delighted as even at prep school teachers complained he does not participate (unlike his twin). He must be very frustrating for lecturers. I have given 1700 legal conferences often speaking all day and it is manna from heaven if someone joins in and talks and has questions. It must be very different doing it all on line and there are no easy answers.

My twins' course is post grad law so is a means to an end. If it is on line for months I think we can cope as they have just finished 3 year of almost normal university other than a fair few strikes plus no proper last term.

If universities find too many people defer this year sadly lecturers will lose jobs. As said above it is a difficult choice but I would rather risk my chance of death by 10x than have the laws which are currently in place but of course I appreciate loads of people have all kinds of different views. The views don't matter - it is what action will students take this academic year.

My other son already planned to live at home for his law course this year so no rent issue BUT he is doing the same course as this twin but his is £2k a year higher (I am paying the fees) - yet if it is on line all year then he might as well have registered for hsi twins' Bristol course (same course provider) and paid £2k less. If instead at some point they decide they can risk the lives of the lecturers to such an extent that they actually meet a real student during 2020 or 2021 then the difference in fee cost and indeed the rent for the other boy may be justified.

Also testing is coming in. My son ticked other for his Covid 19 free NHS drive in test this week (needed for his current holiday)Everyone on that plane had to have tested negative.