Study in the time of COVID-19 (2019/20 intake): online learning, the rule of six and who knows what's next? Anything could happen!

[NewModelArmyMayhem18]

Following on from the previous thread as our young adults start their second year at universities up and down the land (and some overseas too!).

@Alicatz66 it looks like there are 2 services - one for symptomatic students where the walk in is for student but also the local community. I guess this could be hard to access if there is a high demand. The asymptomatic testing service looks different - I clicked on the link and it talks about halls and it is a saliva test so I think this technology is new. I think Southampton was testing it too. Spitting into a pot is definitely preferable to a swab test!

Only one person’s perspective, but DS is the only southerner in his flat in Newcastle and one of only two he knows on his floor. I’m wondering whether students are tending to study closer to home nowadays because of financial pressures?

DD has several friends at Newcastle who come from the Bristol area. They tend to fly home for holidays as it is quicker and cheaper. One of the girls in her house is from Surrey, and another from Dorset. The rest are from the East Midlands and the North.

DD said that when she first started at Newcastle there were a lot of privately educated southerners on her course. Apparently, slumming it up north is a rite of passage to some people. She didn't make friends with any of them!

Most of my DS's friends there were privately educated and quite posh - we're not! 😆

Most of my DSs friends at Durham were privately educated (some from public schools) - soooo different from his friends here
I am really proud of him being able to mix it with such a wide range of people.

@simbobs

DD said that when she first started at Newcastle there were a lot of privately educated southerners on her course. Apparently, slumming it up north is a rite of passage to some people. She didn't make friends with any of them!

DD said that all the"rahs" choose Castle Leazes halls to slum it, and party.

The unofficial university Facebook page had quite a few comments on it last Christmas about the rahs going skiing.

OK so some southern public school types going to Durham and Newcastle weren’t bringing Covid with them were they?

Deffo blame it on the southerners (especially as we’re not from the South)

You would expect Durham to have a high number of southerners, I would have thought. It's a collegiate university and many of its students will be young people who would have tried for Oxbridge too (and we know the majority of the latters' students are from London/Home Counties).

Newcastle always seems to have attracted a quite 'Sloaney' (showing my age now!) contingent. Not sure why that would be historically? FWIW, I am friends with one Durham graduate (not from a pukka background) and the friends/family I know who went to Newcastle are a mixed bag, background wise.

I wonder if there is a rule of thumb generally that the wealthier your background, the less likely you are to consider distance as an obstacle when thinking about university options? (With the exception of Oxbridge - for Londoners and those in the Home Counties, both universities are practically on their door step!)

DD chose Durham because it was one of 5 that offered the right course. We are 4 hours away. Other choices were Oxford, Exeter, UCL and Manchester. She went to state schools as did we.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18 my point is that those southern students (who have always been there in numbers) cannot have taken CV19 from v low infection areas with them when they went back for the new term. Can they?? The exponential explosion of CV on Northern campuses incredibly quickly after term started is a puzzler!

It's more likely to be schools that caused the rise rather than uni's (though of course we teachers are always told that Covid magically stops at a school door!!).

If you look at the graph of outbreaks in education settings, universities are a very small part. It's driven by secondary, then primary.

It's easy to blame young people. There's lots of scapegoating going on already :-(.

On a different note, would you be discouraging your young people from travelling home for reading week?

To be fair, there are a lot less universities than schools so % wise (as someone on the data thread ALWAYS reminds us!) universities play a bigger role.

However, of course, what students are getting is the side effect of the government doing the three monkeys act on schools...they can't discuss schools so they finger point at students instead. This looks then like it is their fault,whereas multiple outbreaks in schools would be blamed on failing strategy

DH and I were discussing this yesterday OP. They don't have reading week at Lincoln anyway and his term started later so our feeling is no, not until Christmas, unless there is a crisis. I think Lincoln may well go up to tier 2/High/ man the hatches/ whatever they call it.

I think the southerners at Newcastle and Durham are largely southeastern and can possibly be explained by transport links being so good to practically anywhere if you are from the London area. There are a LOT of Brummies at Aberystwyth , for example, because it is the one place with good transport links to the area.

A lot of the really highly regarded English unis are in the North (Durham, Manchester, Sheffield, York,Leeds, Newcastle etc) and so perhaps Northern high achieving students don't feel the need or desire to travel downwards as much to the -let's face it- more expensive South?

We were talking about reading week just last night. Both Uni city and home are (currently!) Tier 1 so I don’t see an issue. However two housemateS come from a Tier 2 area so They are conflicted about it.

DD doesn't get reading week.

It is difficult to know where the blame lies for infection (and also more testing confuses things too as it make it seem there are more cases when when there were fewer tests of course fewer positive results). I live in covid central in London or it was in March and just about is now in October and that is because we are majority BAME here, outer London so people are older than inner London, many people live in cramped quarters with multigenerational families and houses are cheaper than inner London so the less well off live here. However we feel pretty safe in a big house in a fairly prosperous bit where most people follow the rules and have distanced pretty well since March. So sending my son off to university and his similar friends none of them have had it even those tests have been negative - they are not freshers so all in student houses. I don't think he is a demographic to spread it whether from North to South. I am originally from NE England so have no skin in the game of North v South.

My son h as a kind of half term week this week but is staying in Bristol. He also shares a flat with one other person. It tends to be boarding schools, meat factories, the army, universities where traditionally infectious diseases have always run rife for hundreds of years due to that way of living.

I blame fast/easy LNER and also the fact that Newcastle is so fantastic that when you go for an open day you don’t want to leave. Durham is beautiful. We will probably retire to the NE.

Also the NE figures were fairly high before term and the culture (going out and socialising) is common with locals and students. It is so friendly and people chat to each other much more (spreading viruses!!).

When we went for an open day 2 years ago the LNER train was completely packed. Stupidly Newcastle and Durham open days clashed. They had scrapped seat tickets and we had no where to sit. We paid £15 extra and got the last seats in first class. Everyone already on (southerners!) taking about Bristol, Oxford and Durham. Also skiing and which school they were at. And who knew who and each school. We were the only people left on all the first class carriages after Durham! Dd had lots of stereotypes in her head that I had been trying to dispel. But the same conversations went on between a group of lads behind her in the lecture hall in the first term at Newcastle so there’s definitely a ‘sloaney’ element there too. Bizarrely they all congregated in the (grimmest) first year catered accommodation Castle Leazes. It reminded me of that Pulp song. I went to private and public school and Dd is state so no axe to grind either way. What united many students was they wanted to have a good time socially. We didn’t get that vibe from Cambridge.

The transport links are so good. Lots from Northern Ireland, Leeds, Manchester, Middlesborough and Durham that Dd knows.

WIth such limited face to face time, isn't every week a reading week at the moment? I don't know if DS has one but if he did I'd go with what he wants, but staying down seems sensible after so long away from peers

I agree about the transport links. The metro system is brilliant, and the airport is easily accessible via the metro. One of DD's Bristol friends flew up for the weekend in the summer to visit her.

Another theory about Castle Leazes is that as far as I know it is the only halls in Newcastle that is catered, and the boarding school educated students go there because that is what they are used to.

@Ginfordinner, my DD flew up to see my DGodD who is at Newcastle - easy!

@Zandathepanda, lol about Common People