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?

@sendsummer

SueEllenMishke from what I can see the OP and CarrieMac were simply asking for help to understand how their DCs could navigate an administrative wall. Obviously stressful due to the very tight deadlines.

And lots of us offered advice and help. We tried to explain why some things aren't as simple as people would think and offered up some context.

However it didn't take long for someone to suggest we were dossing about 'working from home' and for someone to suggest it was ridiculous that we weren't all back on campus as normal.

I did not mean to suggest all uni staff were on a jolly but asI said earlier in the thread , I have both NHS and ( Russel group ) uni commitments . NHS part has been unbelievably stressful during lockdown, and my uni (research ) part has almost ground to a halt . Lots of jolly WhatsApp's from the admin staff about baking and gardening
And all
The teams meetings are academics concentrating on catching up on publications .
I can appreciate that student t facing staff have had a different experience in lockdown

I had three children back home from Uni for lockdown. The oxford one has had lectures , tutorials and Intensive suppprt for exams but terrible admin hence the post . Her twin has hardly had a lecture or tute since March and just got an automatic pass for third year one his first semester results
The med student was essentially sent home and told to find an six week elective o finish fourth year - no uni help wth this - luckily as medics this was possible for us to sort him out but some of his more disadvantaged friends did nothing

So whilst I appreciate some university staff have been super busy I can see from my family's experience not all of them have .
Just like some NHS staff

Carrie loads of us here tried to help you.

I’ve had to work the whole way through and to be honest I found your assumption in one of your posts that uni staff were baking and slacking off hurtful.

Research has ground to a halt in the practical sciences, yes, because most people can’t do their experiments at home. However I think it is disingenuous to imply this is in any way the whole story for most academics who are also involved in teaching and admin. Those very sciences that need physical experiments as part of their courses are now having to work out how to give students an equivalent experience remotely or by running labs from 8am to 8pm 6 days a week. And record lectures in a new format to increase student engagement and active learning when only a fraction of the students can be allowed on campus at any time. And figure out how we will give pastoral support to students who are not always able to drop in to our offices (which we may only be allowed to occupy part time). So Carriemac, your experience seems very different from mine and my colleagues, and maybe a bit ignorant of more typical academic and university life at the moment. Even my most research biased colleagues seem to have noticed there is a major upheaval going on which means much more work, uncertainty and stress. Luck you, to sit around chatting about publications. Our teaching admin staff generally have had no significant time off this year and send emails late at night and at weekends which are definitely not about baking, it’s an insult to them to imply they are or have been twiddling their thumbs. Their efforts in making online exams work back in June were nothing short of miraculous.

This is exactly what you said @Carriemac

This is what my daughter is experiencing too, she needs a transcript by the end of August or she loses her masters place but , despite having applied for it on August 1st , it has not been issued yet. I understand that the uni buildings may be inaccessible but surely this is an electronic process ? 30 k in fees, staff in full pay ‘working from home’ and the lack of interest and help from the university is appalling.

It’s not an electronic process. The printing of the official transcript can’t be done from home.

And the working from home in quotation marks was dismissive.

However, I’m glad it should be sorted. The issue is more with the receiving institution she has applied to who won’t accept screenshots.

And admin staff are baking etc during the day because they have kids to homeschool And are dealing with their workload outside of the 9-5. I’m my experience.

I did not mean to suggest all uni staff were on a jolly but asI said earlier in the thread , I have both NHS and ( Russel group ) uni commitments . NHS part has been unbelievably stressful during lockdown, and my uni (research ) part has almost ground to a halt . Lots of jolly WhatsApp's from the admin staff about baking and gardening
And all
The teams meetings are academics concentrating on catching up on publications.

I really don't think this is representative of the sector though. I've had two days max on research since March as all my time has been spent supporting students, re-designing courses and marking. ( so my lack of research is yet another thing to stress about) I've never been so busy or so stressed. Our professional support staff are the same.

My husband works at a different university and even though we're on leave and away we're both spending some time every day working.

I also work closely with 7 other universities and they are reporting similar experiences to me.
All of us are worried about burning out before term has even started.

So you can see why we might get a little pissed off at people suggesting we're all at home having a jolly

Lots of people have had a terrible time during the pandemic and continue to (no work, no pay, died and things that are not as bad). Universities will be the same. It sounds like Oxford has managed to produce something which fingers crossed might let the Carriemac daughter who is already abroad and quarantining and rented property for the soon to start masters and may be publicity for the issue might help Oxford move this particular issue higher up a list below something else (particularly as Bristol has managed it all so much quicker and better although I accept Oxford may have college issues whereas Bristol seems to do it more by faculties - eg my son got his Bristol BA degree cert about a week before his twins' Bristol BSc. So I think Bristol are sending the certificates by signed for post by faculty.

Anyway let us hope all of us can get through our particular challenges of the pandemic and we can return to some kind of acceptable new normal.

Ok so my working week looks like this at the moment: 3 days a week I work 0700-1000, 1230-1500 and 2030-2230: 2 days a week I work 0830-1700 (childcare sorted); and I put in a couple of hours at the weekend. That’s well over 40h of actual work, but I’m only actually contracted and paid for 28. This has been going on for months now. Yes there has been baking and going for walks and play dates because I have children. I’m not ‘working from home’ I’m working my arse off.

I completely understand that we're not the only sector that's had it tough and we're not the only staff that are overworked and stressed..... I don't think any of us have said that.
But should we just sit back when people accuse us of being lazy?

Prof Services/Middle Management here. I've been working 50+ hours per week since lockdown began in March (contracted and paid for 35). During March and April I was regularly working 60+ hours and am seeing this creep up again now to those levels again. I've "taken" annual leave because I was told to but I worked through it all. I'm drained and broken. Yesterday I had to leave my laptop for 20 minutes in the middle of the day just to lie on my bed and have a bloody good cry. This morning, I've thrown up after a particularly heavy meeting which has just resulted in more urgent work that I cannot squeeze in. My team are also at breaking point and constantly complaining/refusing to take on any more work and I'm getting complaints from other colleagues, especially those more senior because things are getting delayed. I can't help any of these people and I hate it. I don't have proper workspace at home - am hunched over a laptop in my kitchen but I'm lucky that I don't have young dc at home to deal with alongside this. I am, however, dealing with elderly parents, managing their Covid risks and have been bereaved so am grieving on top of all of this.

When I speak to friends and relatives they are completely confused, asking how can I possibly be busy at work and responding with scepticism when I try to explain. Or my favourite, "but it's the summer - I thought you'd be off". Then I come on MN and see folk claiming we are "working from home" and dismissing explanations and advice given by those who work in the sector. It is utterly relentless and demoralising and I'm doing all of this despite knowing that there's a good chance my department will be centralised and I'll be made redundant soon. I do it because I'm dedicated to my job, to my colleagues and our students.

And if anyone wonders why I'm posting now, I'm waiting in my car outside the GP surgery for an appointment. I'll be making up the time, and then a lot more, this evening.

SueEllenMishke from what I can see the OP and CarrieMac were simply asking for help to understand how their DCs could navigate an administrative wall. Obviously stressful due to the very tight deadlines

Let's look at the facts here.

The OP's son decided quite late in the day to apply for a Masters. He applied maybe 10 days ago? (It's not clear from the OP but her post is dated 22 August).

@Carriemac's DD knew all along she wanted to apply for a Masters and applied for her transcript on 1st August (a Saturday, so not generally a working day - oh, except pretty much my whole life as an academic ...).

The university that they both went to has a system (you can go see for yourself - publicly available website) which states that they will take up to 21 working days to supply what both DC needed.

Deadlines - according to both posters - are around 31st August. BOTH DC now have their transcript. It's 26th August. So for Carriemac's DD, that took 18 working days. For Rosiethehen's DS, considerably fewer days.

Both panicked over nothing really, didn't they, but let's not miss an opportunity to bash universities, academic staff, and university professional administrators.

After all, they're all just servants to the MN genius DC.

They won't lose their masters places - universities need the money and the bums on seats.
Chill your boots, ring/email the masters university and explain the situation and ask how you pay the fees.
I'd be very surprised if they turned your dc away!

And those pushy parents who think university staff have had an easy ride since Covid are insane.

They have been working double hard - especially those with unmotivated students, plus they have had to deal with job security concerns & colleagues losing their jobs, plus the gov fuck up over the a levels.

Believe me, I know several academic staff....and this year has been exceptionally tough!

Oxford degree results were stretched out until 3rd week of July, some other universities like UCL 1st week in August. For completely understandable reasons.

CarrieMac’s DD requested degree certificate and transcripts from the week of degree results from a PP.
OP’s DS requested transcripts more than 2 weeks before and one application required transcripts upfront and therefore was impossible in the time frame.
A perfect storm due to unique situations but yes stressful for the young people involved and their parents by proxy.

Yes and we know many of the lecturers have been on strike this year (albeit without pay) so things have been pretty difficult for the students as well as the lecturers. Hopefully we will all get through this with our own individual difficulties.

Sometimes someone in charge at organisations has to decide what is important - eg the transcripts rather than preparing notes for students for the next year or whatever and give orders about what should be done in priority to something else. Not easy decisions to take.

Actually DD was not issued a transcript at all . Oxford are not issuing them this year . Her masters university were very oversubscribed and told her categorically that she would miss her place if they didn't receive degree confirmation on time . She has spent the three weeks uncertain if she would get her documentation on time and had to do a lot of chasing and escalation to get a pdf .

@Xenia

Yes and we know many of the lecturers have been on strike this year (albeit without pay) so things have been pretty difficult for the students as well as the lecturers. Hopefully we will all get through this with our own individual difficulties.

Sometimes someone in charge at organisations has to decide what is important - eg the transcripts rather than preparing notes for students for the next year or whatever and give orders about what should be done in priority to something else. Not easy decisions to take.

Hardly anyone at my university went on strike. I certainly didn't and non of my colleagues in my department did either.

Two lecturers from my department of well over a hundred were on strike.

There would be no point telling me to stop preparing my teaching materials for next semester to print transcripts since I wouldn’t have access to the building or the first idea of how to do it. Then in a couple of months I’d have MN ranting about not being prepared. Transcripts are not produced by academics (now, I remember doing it about 20 years ago when there were virtually no teaching support staff and things were very decentralised). Or, Xenia, do you believe that we have admin staff who photocopy notes? Or that we photocopy things at all, nowadays? I don’t remember when I last produced photocopied notes.

Sometimes someone in charge at organisations has to decide what is important - eg the transcripts rather than preparing notes for students for the next year or whatever and give orders about what should be done in priority to something else. Not easy decisions to take.

Literally no idea how a university works ....

Sometimes someone in charge at organisations has to decide what is important - eg the transcripts rather than preparing notes for students for the next year or whatever and give orders about what should be done in priority to something else. Not easy decisions to take.

Actually no clue.

I think it's the 'preparing notes' bit I find particularly insulting.

People are under a lot of pressure at present so I am not surprised someone found my suggestion lecturers prepare lecture notes. I have given 1700 public talks and I prepare lecture notes from which I speak. That may well not be the way you prepare what you say in universities in which case I am sorry about that. I know the effort and work people put in including for research. I am sitting here this morning updating a law text book. I am not utterly unfamiliar with the work of lecturers.

Delivering one off public lectures are completely different to planning, writing and delivering an entire module or degree programme.

Preparing lecture notes for individual lectures is the easy bit. Before you've even got to that stage you have to plan the entire programme and ensure the content is fit for purpose and adheres to national standards and in some cases professional standards. You can't veer away from programme and module specs and any changes ( even really minor ) have to go to validation.
Your pedagogical approach is scrutinised and student experience is king - poor scores and you're in trouble.
Not to mention that most of us have very little admin support so we're also responsible for marketing and admissions.

This is all really challenging in normal times but this year we're have to re-write entire programmes to be delivered as blended learning which also means going back through the validation process. Most of us are seeing our teaching responsibility double as we're need to run sessions twice due to social distancing.

Oh and we're meant to be active researchers - failure to meet your research targets means disciplinary at my place.

Universities are the second biggest sector using zero hour contracts so many academics are doing this while not knowing if they have a job in September. Even permanent employees aren't paid that well - not when you consider the responsibility we have.

So, In no way comparable to delivering ad hoc guest lectures.

1700 public lectures seems quite high. For a 30 year career that would be more than one per week (and most of us don’t get invited to give public lectures from the very start of our careers). You must be very sought after to give 1700 different public lectures and it must have been a lot of work to produce a different set of notes for each. Or maybe you would understand why a complete change in format would mean that entire bodies of lecture material would need to be rewritten when in previous years just small tweaks would be needed.