Help! University not processing transcript so son can't apply for Masters degree.

[rosiethehen]

Ds completed his degree this year and was awarded a First. He wishes to start a Masters this autumn, but his applications are stalled due to his university not forwarding a pdf of his transcript to prove he has actually graduated. One of his application deadlines is next week.

He has contacted his tutors and the department responsible, but nobody appears to be interested.

He is also planning on applying to the Civil Service this autumn and it may affect this process as well.

Please, does anybody have any advice on what to do?

I’ve just read further and have seen that he does have SN, so that does explain his stubbornness perhaps All you can do is keep reassuring him that there is a way through this. Could you call the tutor perhaps, given the situation?

Believe me unis will be so keen for the income if he can explain to the new uni the reason for the transcript delay then they will still accept him I'm sure. They'll just make it conditional on provision of the transcript and I bet he'll have it before the start of the course.

I've started postgrad courses before without being officially registered and I've been in the admin office on the first week with exam certs, etc sorting it out still.

Could you call the tutor perhaps, given the situation?

Certainly at my place, we'e not allowed to be in our offices, and nothing was done to switch our office phones through to personal phones (not that I would have agreed to that anyway). Email is best in these circumstances. But Admissions Tutors are currently snowed under ...

Daughter has emailed the admissions office in the masters uni at least 6 times to explain the situation, screenshot of her marks etc. Each time she got an email back saying, ‘ send us your transcript ‘. No helpline, no one bothering to reply . It’s a competitive masters course with a waiting list, in another country , she needs to quarantine on arrival and still waiting for her paper copy of her degree result . Can’t be emailed or uploaded. What are her next steps ?

Email the course director directly.

I work at a University ‘from home’ , at the moment. Our database crashes every hour or so from home and takes ages to reload! We’ve a recruitment freeze due to the uncertainty Coronavirus has brought. We had around 1000 outstanding enquires as of Friday (thankfully, not for transcripts, as we subscribe to Gradintel). If your son has a Gradinel account he can login and share his transcript/HEAR report straight away. If his University doesn’t offer this he will have to wait. I think most Universities do now.
We can’t print transcripts as no staff are allowed into the buildings yet.
Xeina’s idea of rounding up students to sort this, is simply not possible, due to strict GDPR rules, we couldn’t grant students access to all the University data and due to data protection, it’s really not as simple as pressing a button & the results appear in a pdf. Several steps need to be taken and with all the other non standard enquires, if a student hasn’t requested a document with plenty of notice, they can’t simply jump the queue.
The university requesting the documents without any consideration of the current situation are the unreasonable ones here, unless they will accept the screenshot and confirm his place upon receiving the transcript.

@Carriemac

Daughter has emailed the admissions office in the masters uni at least 6 times to explain the situation, screenshot of her marks etc. Each time she got an email back saying, ‘ send us your transcript ‘. No helpline, no one bothering to reply . It’s a competitive masters course with a waiting list, in another country , she needs to quarantine on arrival and still waiting for her paper copy of her degree result . Can’t be emailed or uploaded. What are her next steps ?

Email the named course leader.

Ds doesn't have Gradintel apparently.

So I suppose one question is why are most commercial office companies, law firms and many others letting staff in buildings but universities are not? My daughter's boyfriend is back to work in his office and I doubt it is less risky than going into a university building. Also I do not accept GDPR stops hiring of graduates to do the work as you can impose legal obligations on them and require them to sign confidentiality agreements.

Anyway hopefully it can be resolved fairly soon. I don't know what the technical issue is eg that the person who would send the transcript has no electronic access to the marks to generate the transcript or if it needs special software or whatever.

I disagree with all the posters saying 'don't you realise what a muck up this year is'. Yes, we do. Muck up re A'levels and GCSE's.

All I he more reason not to let this dc miss out on a MA!

Please contact someone else at the uni.

And also the contact for the MA to at least explain.

This is very poor. Someone needs to get this a actioned.

@Xenia

So I suppose one question is why are most commercial office companies, law firms and many others letting staff in buildings but universities are not? My daughter's boyfriend is back to work in his office and I doubt it is less risky than going into a university building. Also I do not accept GDPR stops hiring of graduates to do the work as you can impose legal obligations on them and require them to sign confidentiality agreements.

Anyway hopefully it can be resolved fairly soon. I don't know what the technical issue is eg that the person who would send the transcript has no electronic access to the marks to generate the transcript or if it needs special software or whatever.

No offence but you have absolutely no idea how universities function.

Universities are having to reconfigure their entire campus so that we can accommodate teaching from September. In some cases this has meant office space being converted into teaching space as students and teaching takes priority.

You can't do that with staff working in those spaces. We are having to accommodate thousands of students come September- it's not a case of staff just going back into work. Offices are cramped and there is no space to make some of them Covid secure as teaching space takes priority.

Some critical staff have started to return but universities employ thousands of staff - they can't all return whole social distancing is in place. The idea is to reduce the number of people on campus to make it as safe as possible for students. As academic I've been told to only go into campus when I'm teaching - other than that I should be working from home.

Lots of universities already employ students to work for them but we've all had recruitment freezes and that includes part time, temporary staff.

What @SueEllenMishke said.

Transcripts and degrees are specially printed. They aren’t just churned out on a home printer with paper from Tesco.

Law firms don’t generally have classes with 250/300 people all, sitting cheek by jowl. Literally usually touching or mm apart.

Xenia yes specialist software is required and while it can be done from home, luckily we don’t need to do this anymore as we give our students Gradintel access, which would solve OP’s issue.

Some Universities may have phone lines open, a lot don’t, we are offering very restricted phone access due to many staff not having quiet spaces to answer calls.

Also apart from the fact we have a total recruitment freeze and can’t replace any staff who leave, it’s not that easy to recruit and train staff.

One of the reasons we don’t have many staff on Campus is because we are a Central London University, practically all staff would need to commute in by tube/train, many have caring responsibilities and we hot desk. We have around 8000 staff if that helps to put it into context. All these factors are making it difficult to get staff back in, though we are working on a return plan.

OP I would suggest your son makes it clear to the university he’s applying for a masters to that he has requested his transcript and will provide it as soon as he has it. Most universities will accept this at the moment, he can send the screen shots in the interim.

This is very poor. Someone needs to get this a actioned.

I should think they are actioning it. The OP's son has been given a schedule: 21 days. I'm assuming working days.

If he had requested his transcript straight after graduation, he would have received it earlier this week - if his university is doing paper versions - many are not. But they are making PDF or other versions of electronic transcripts available.

The OP tells us the deadlines are the end of August/next week.

21 working days before 31st August is gets us back to 30th July.

So the question is, if a transcript was known to be needed, and the time this would take is advertised as 21 days, why did the OP's son leave it till last week?

Is the OP complaining about the university not providing a transcript in 5 days, when they make it clear it will take 21 days? She is being unreasonable. Her DS did not request it in time.

A quick google using academic transcript gives me this information:
Oxford
www.ox.ac.uk/students/graduation/transcripts
Here's what Birmingham tells its graduates:
intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/as/registry/studentrecords/services/academic-transcripts.aspx

Here's what DMU in Leicester says:
www.dmu.ac.uk/current-students/graduations/index.aspx

Information about the HEAR here: www.dmu.ac.uk/dmu-students/your-dmu-experience/hear/higher-education-achievement-report-(hear).aspx

University of Leeds posted DD’s transcript with her degree certificate (thanks Leeds).
Surely it’s not that difficult, particularly when they do need proof of their degree for jobs/masters etc.

Surely it’s not that difficult

Universities closed their physical buildings with the rest of the country in March. Only essential staff are physically in offices or on the grounds, getting ready for the new intake.

I forget when our omnishambolic government decided it was 'safe' for us all to go back to work, but it was only recently.

Think about adding admin staff, socially distanced, in COVID safe buildings, generating the transcripts for 5,000 students. Is this essential or frontline work?

Oxford offers an electronic transcript, with a 21 working day turn around. One might ask, why didn't the OP's son request one in time for his applications?

He wasn't planning on doing a Masters. He then changed his mind after doing some thinking about his future and how the jobs market is at present.

I'm sorry for being naive, I just assumed that it would be an automatic electronic process, which is how other institutions do it.

Yet Bristol can issue them almost immediately and even the degree certificates have arrived by post.

@Xenia

Yet Bristol can issue them almost immediately and even the degree certificates have arrived by post.

Universities all work differently- who'd have thought it? 🤷🏼‍♀️

And as several people have said, it won't be a problem if he screen shots and sends his marks in. He's the one that's insisting it's a problem.

There is no uni in the UK that would turn down an Oxford graduate for a Masters in the middle of a pandemic because he sent screen shots pending the official transcript.

Yeah honestly don’t let him stress. He decided to apply late as he wasn’t going to go on to MA, so he didn’t leave himself enough time to get his admin done, but really, it’s not a big deal. Like as not the transcripts will turn up as he only has a few days before the 21 days, and he can apply for a HEAR or use screenshots in the interim.
I have been working from home since March and will be here until January (Registrar) at least due to no on-campus availability. All of our IT has been consolidated so that support staff can reset in the event of VPN crashes, so even if I could get into my office, there is no IT in it - they are all in banks in an unknown building to support business continuity.
But thanks for the fucking quote marks. We’ve lost 75% of our staff and are desperately trying to keep everything going. I’m pretty much dead on my feet with no end in sight, trying to do our best to keep everything going. It doesn’t help that people (Xenia, really?!) think we should just grab a few unemployed and they can just do it, no drama, right?
I don’t know any institution that isn’t making exceptions and trying their best to figure out these anomalies. And for an MA, yeah, he just needs to get his act together. How over subscribed is the program? Is it taught or research? Self funded?
If he doesn’t get it, it won’t be because of transcripts.

It's a taught masters, not over subscribed and he needs a student loan for the fees. He'll be living at home and I'll support him.

Titchy’s right (as usual ). No MA course will turn down an Oxford grad with a First.

He really can’t blame Ox for his late decision ...

Italian! Thank you!