My university has spent the best part of 20 million pounds to keep your DC safe. That's money we don't have, that's taken from cuts in staffing, cuts to staff salaries, and increases in staff workloads. Tuition fees don't touch these kinds of costs. If you want world-class universities to survive, and keep on educating your DC, some of you need to have a bit of a think about your attitudes here.
Patronising rubbish. Undergraduates are at minimal risk from Covid-19. Look at David Spiegelhalter’s recent publications which lay this out clearly. The money spent on safety measures is to keep staff (and wider community) who are elderly or otherwise vulnerable safe. If the costs of these measures were more expensive than the profits to be made from rent and fees (and food and fines...) then universities wouldn’t have reopened.
Even those tiny numbers of students who have an existing medical condition that raises their risk would, I suspect, be safer travelling home to be with their family for the Christmas weeks than staying living in close proximity with other students who are likely to be going out and about (supermarkets, pubs). So don’t make this about all the things university staff have sacrificed for the sake of lowering the COVID risk for their students. It just doesn’t ring true.
Added to which, the mental health and wellbeing of students needs to be given much more priority. They are at demonstrably greater risk of harm from strict lockdowns in small rooms, according to the analysis I’ve read so far, than from COVID. Which isn’t to say that students who are infectious shouldn’t isolate; the risk to the old and vulnerable means they should, IMO, with all necessary support. But stranding them in halls for 3-5 weeks (depending on the university) in the holidays is unconscionable, as is an enforced two week “just in case” lockdown regardless of individual circumstance.
My daughter is on a term time only contract in her fresher year at her accommodation. She gets 5 weeks off for Christmas and has already committed to work 3 days a week during that time - she needs the money, and certainly couldn’t afford to pay holiday rent and for the universities expensive food deliveries instead. She also couldn’t cope with spending that time with the near-strangers she’s living with, and who she has already been locked down with once, rather than with the family she is desperately missing.
An offer for students who have vulnerable family members to remain in universities free of charge doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. Testing students as they return to their families and/or back to uni in January would be eminently sensible. I’m sure there are other measures that could lower the risk for the old/vulnerable while also respecting that students are not prisoners and have a human right to a family life, leisure time and access to their paid employment.
Perhaps if the lockdown experience hadn’t been made so miserable for my daughter and many other students they would be more open to considering whether they should lockdown for final fortnight of term. But my daughter’s “lockdown welfare support” were useless - the student kitchens were immediately closed, expensive meals were the only “option” and were delivered late and cold, and tasted unpleasant (she’s lost a lot of weight), the wifi went down for 2 days and they got behind with delivering mail so she didn’t get her care package. As she points out, it cost her a small fortune in those expensive shit meals, and she ended up underweight and depressed; how much worse would the “support services” be if it was every single student locked down at once...
I know there has been massive pressure on university staff and I don’t think the blame for lack of care lies with individuals, but with government policies and university financial decisions. But whoever’s fault the lack of decent care for isolating students has been, the fact is that most universities have shown that they don’t have enough staff and resources to look after them properly, so students locking down en masse doesn’t seem a realistic proposition.