University experience is awful at the moment

[Cupcakke]

DD moved into university on Saturday. The rules are very stringent, both campus bars are closed, the university library has very little capacity and the restaurant is take away only. There are virtually no freshers events in person.

Her flat mates are very shy and not very social and she is in a small flat.

Large gatherings keep occurring but the penalty for this is very severe so DD very cautious not to attend these.

She is essentially watching Netflix in her room. I fear for the loneliness. The online events she has attended are poorly attended and just very boring.

Teaching starts next week and her In person contact hours are just 4 hours a week.

Anyone else’s dc thinking this years university experience is non existent.

I'm a university lecturer, as is my husband, and I find the pretence that courses can be delivered without campus access quite remarkable. Really sorry to hear some of the experiences on this thread.

It's difficult for school children to learn online for a whole host of behavioural reasons, but almost all of the material learned in school can be studied without special resources. That's not true of a decent university course. It's certainly not true of academic research in most subjects. My husband who works in maths is able to do his work with a pencil and paper anywhere (though the loss of opportunities for collaboration is problematic). As a humanities academic, I have been able to do very little real research since the beginning of March because I need to work in a research library.

The same thing is true of students. Particularly students in the natural sciences, who would normally be having lab sessions, but also pretty much all humanities students. Pre-covid, I spent the first term of the year encouraging freshers not to cobble together essays from the visible pages of Google books and a few random articles from the 1970s on JSTOR. A lot of focus on how to use the library, how to find materials, how to access special collections etc. Although 18 year olds are digital natives, I find that many of them have surprisingly poor research skills online, even to the extent of being unable to construct a simple Google search query with quotation marks.

I would not want my DCs to be paying full student fees without being allowed on campus in a fairly unrestricted way. A lot of universities (incl. some Oxbridge colleges) are close enough to bankruptcy that they will do anything at the moment to be allowed to take student fees. They're fighting for their lives.

One problem with the idea of student as consumer is that consumers are easily exploited by unscrupulous (and desperate) companies!

11:09DimityandDeNimes

And I do hope that if your DGD does start to struggle, she is able to confide in her mum and not feel under obligation to play the role of golden girl living her best life at all times because that's what you seem to expect.

My Dgd had to be shielded for 16 weeks from end of February till June practically on her own as her single mother worked 12 hour shifts as a carer, due to an auto immune blood disorder which she nearly died from in february. She has MH issues due to that of course , she had been completely isolated for so long mostly on her own apart from hourly calls from me as I was isolating too having just finished cancer treatment to make sure she wasn't collapsed from internal bleeding. But as my small family are very close she has had and still has massive support from us both. She is no golden child she is one of 2 grandchildren I have but my dgs has a mother AND a father and is well supported by us all and us completely fit and healthy. So do not fear, we know how to deal with my dgds MH and she also knows how to deal with her MH. So you do not need to worry yourself about something you have wrongly construed that does not concern you being as you know nothing about our circumstances whatsoever.

The way that Scotland has handled the Universities will result in lots of English and Welsh kids disregarding them in future

Not sure the English universities are handling it any better. The goings-on at MMU sound horrific.

@Sostenueto

And there is no 'normal' anywhere! My life hasn't been ' normal' since February. Only the ones that haven't followed the guidelines have had a ' normal' life. There is no ' normal' and won't be for a long time. Universities are trying their best. Our DC are no longer children but young adults. Adults who should take responsibility for their own lives and their own safety. young adults who should know about Covid and measures that will be taken to control it in unis and anywhere else an out real occurs. They should know the risks that their behaviour might cause. They should learn that as adults you may not be able to do what you want to do if it means safeguarding both themselves and others. In other words welcome to the adult world.

The rest of us aren't being locked up in small rooms and having our self-isolation extended every time there's a new case. There was an article in the Times about someone who actually has it, their 14 days isolation was to Oct 6th and now they've been told it's being extended for another 3 days.

We were all allowed out during lockdown, this is very different. It's not welcome to the adult world, it's "we are going to continue to treat you all like naughty children because we are too lazy to deal with those who break the rules".

MMU is indeed a disgraceful situation that should NOT have arisen.

As I say, the guidance from Westminster has been shit
and the SLTs of certain Unis have been shit
and the lack of link up with local Public Health teams is disgraceful

especially as the problems in Scotland showed what could go wrong two weeks before.

As I said, the Uni my child has just arrived at have been very organised.
There is no excuse for those that have not

cologne this Government is completely unable to do anything through incompetence and the fact we police by consent. Even his own backbenchers are now turning on him having put in an amendment to Covid bill to ask that they get to vote on future Covid measures. After all this is supposed to be a democracy. But it hadn't been since Boris got in ( it should I say since Cummings pulls the strings on Boris). Pity no one noticed that when the Covid bill was drawn up that our civil rights and liberties were to be took away without scrutiny or a vote in Parliament.

@tinselvestsparklepants

As a PP has mentioned it should be possible for staff to leave a lecture, or start it early, without them being there - allowing students (who want to) the chance to chat and swap contact details. I'm doing this. Please do encourage your students to ask their tutors for things like this if they'd find it useful. Some lecturers just might not have thought of it, and I can't tell you how great it is when students suggest easy fixes like this that can help the whole group. It's a two way thing!

i am creating whats app groups and posting it in the student forums for the modules. But it would be good if the lecturer sees it and suggests people look and use it. Rather than me relying on people noticing it in the forums (which students aren;t alerted to UNLESS the lecturer posts)

For tutor groups, we can see uni emails so i can email all 15 with the links. One tutorial actually had as task for week 1 to create a group.

Agree listening

But nonetheless it's a shambles.

I have been lurking but just wanted to pop in to provide some thoughts. I find it very helpful to hear BOTH the bad and the good experiences. I particularly find the @Sostenueto DGS sharing to be positive and I have passed on some of her tips to my DS.

I recall when some of the first universities shared back in early summer they would be 100% online there was a lot of backlash from parents. The universities are trying to balance a number of things I imagine and one of them being to ensure they survive this is not a bad thing. Could some of them have handled it better - absolutely by we are where we are and need to focus on making the best of an unusual evolving situation which no one expected. I have been working from home since March and seems unlikely I will be back to my office this year. Resilience and the ability to adapt to challenging situations we can't control is an important life lesson we are all having to get better at this year.

I believe one of our most important responsibilities is to support our DC in the best way for them to get through this. Even for those for whom going home is preferable, it is still not going to be smooth sailing but I am positive it will all work out eventually. Hoping and praying for the best for all our DC

Thank you Bonkus and I agree with every word you say. 💐👍Xx

I think it would help if the Universities can begin to reach out to all students to see if they are OK and what can be done to assist them. This may help facilitate a change in accommodation for some students (if possible) who cannot bond with other students for whatever reason. It maybe that some students return hope for this term and accommodation costs are reduced.

A high level of communication is required to make this all work and protect the vulnerable.

Labour have called for a delay in any further students returning to uni.
Don’t know the numbers involved, that haven’t yet arrived.

@catpoooffender nah our uni timetabling is always ridiculously late and changes all the flipping time anyway. Covid doesn't make it any exceptionally crapper than normal in that regard - only they've had to knock their usual stunt of timetabling us 20 minutes walk from one side to the campus to the other in 5 minute turnaround between sessions on the head this year for a bit (one of our lecturers usually just mutinies and finds a more sensible room and changes it herself).

I'm not annoyed about the online stuff (it saves me a fortune in travel and campus coffee and bacon cobs) - but I AM annoyed on behalf of the students that the unis have squeezed them into coming to campus to essentially be stuck in their rooms most of the time (and student accommodation varies but still tends to be on the shoebox side of sizing) and now being viewed as public enemy number 1 and vilified for such crimes as (according to our local social media - uni town) "waiting in the street" (at a tram stop) and "all getting off the tram together" (at the university tram stop).

I'm just so worried for the quieter first years or ones who don't click with their flatmates and how that might pan out. Possibly worse in my uni as the vast majority of halls are private provider owned so there's no way of getting out of contracts easily unless you manage to get someone to take it on - and there are a LOT of people trying to find someone to do that already.

Yeah, bollocks to that.
Tens of thousands are arriving this weekend.
Second and Third years signed their house contracts months ago.
Freshers have already been shat on by missing a term of school and then the
Clusterfuck of their A level results.
Sending them home again will just result in more anger

my reply was to HelloMissus about the stupid statement from Labour

@ListeningQuietly - I agree!!! And for all those for whom it isn’t working (like my daughter who’s come back home) there are surely many, perhaps most, who will muddle through in their accomodation and be fine.

If my DS who has been told he will have 3.5 hours a week studio time gets told sowwy, only online time. Sorry he is coming home architecture degree.

I don’t know if Scottish unis massively worse - they are, however, 2 weeks ahead. So a good indication of what might happen as all the English unis open.

Listening I hope you’re right.
But if unis do decide to delay I hope they say so soon. We cannot be arsed to pack up, if DS ain’t returning

Hello
Private rentals won't give money back so those kids will stay in their Uni towns.
Kids who would be going back to childhood bedrooms in towns with rising unemployment will stay in their Uni towns.

In town last night, and lots of young people (school age and a little over) were hanging around in groups with no social distancing. Then going back home to their more vulnerable families. In some ways students who are allowed to socialise with other students on campus should be safer than schoolchildren. Especially as schoolchildren are packed into small classrooms with no social distancing or masks. Sending them back home won't necessarily help?

fuf I guess Keir has looked at the shit show in Scotland and chucked his hat into the ring.

Seems far too late in the day but hey ho,...

Also let’s be honest. MPs are interested in their voter base reactions to things.
So if freshers bring and spread the virus into a local community, they won’t side with the freshers.

Lots of university students vote in their university constituency.

fuf not in the sorts of numbers that labour MPs worry about (freshers won’t suddenly all register and vote Tory).